

Show HN: Sameroom.io - Qwl

We wanted an easy way to connect #channels&#x2F;rooms between different chat teams, so we made Sameroom. It&#x27;s like plumbing for chat—allowing you to connect different services in interesting ways (e.g. Hipchat &lt;=&gt; Slack, Flowdock &lt;=&gt; IRC, Slack &lt;=&gt; Slack). Would love to hear what you all think about it.
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uzi
Over the years for work chat, I've used IRC, Skype, Slack and Hipchat (not to
mention outside of work use of some of those, plus ICQ, AIM, Facebook, Meebo,
etc). I've had coworkers keep multiple clients open so they can reach everyone
-- so having a bridge to connect them could be valuable.

I can see this being especially useful as a support chat for a company or open
source project or ... where you have one chat room that can be connected by
all the different chat platforms so you don't have multiple places to monitor.

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alexschiff
I wonder how important (and difficult) it's going to be to have a desktop app
for this. Everyone I know that uses Slack, Hipchat, etc. has the desktop app.

Do you plan to offer one / is that possible?

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Qwl
Definitely no apps.

Our goal is to be the plumbing that connects other apps/services. We think the
main value here is the possibility to use whatever app/service you like best
to communicate with other teams.

~~~
Qwl
Obviously we've got a ways to go to support more platforms. (And some
platforms have a ways to go with API development)

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grishick
This is awesome! I've seen different startups try to tackle this problem for
the last 4 years and so far this looks like most useful solution.

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anotherstiffler
Nice! Since we work with so many different companies (clients) to develop
solutions that work for them, it would be great to be able to keep them
comfortable with their existing chat tools instead of asking them to move over
to our systems. Great for keeping people happy and having to take time
training people on systems that they might only use once.

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elpeper
Pretty sweet way to provide the infrastructure necessary to communicate across
teams using different chat services.

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yoavlurie
I don't get it. We use Slack and that works for us. We don't IM w/ customers.
When we want a mentor or vendor or someone to participate, we just invite them
as a single-room guest to our main room. What's the point?

~~~
Qwl
Your solution is pretty good, but it has some drawbacks:

1\. when you kick the mentor or vendor out of your main room, they no longer
have a record of what happened. Since Sameroom replicates messages across
channels, everyone has a copy (like with email)

2\. If your mentor or vendor wants to involve someone else from their side,
it's not easy (they have to ask you to send an invite). With Sameroom they
would control access on their end of the discussion.

3\. Your invitee is forced to use Slack, which isn't ideal if they normally
use another tool, say HipChat. Even if they already use Slack, they have to
switch teams, which... well, it doesn't seem to scale very well.

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bennyjoseph
I work at a large company and have been surprised at all the different
communication tools used across teams. This is a super helpful tool to help
fix that because I think its hopeless to think that everyone will get on the
same tool.

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zawaideh
Just going to your site, the value is not immediately clear.

One possible thing to consider: Have a public chat room on the homepage
connecting some sample chat rooms. Allow users to jump to the rooms in
different services.

~~~
Qwl
We're thinking something like a video might be a better approach... Public
chatrooms immediately face the graffiti issue.

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rhaker
Yes. It is always very important to think about how bad actors will use the
service. Just focusing on the good guys can lead to big problems.

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ronnoles
Looks interesting, but isn't it just like Slackline?
[http://www.slackline.io/](http://www.slackline.io/)

~~~
Qwl
Yes, similar, but with two major differences:

\- there is support for services other than Slack (and more coming)

\- no webhooks are involved, you just click some buttons and it's on

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azsharapov
This tool has been helping me connecting public gitter channel to my Kato
room, to stay up to date. Gitter seems very slow for me (yet).

~~~
Qwl
What do you mean by slow -- performance?

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azsharapov
I mean UI mainly. UI performance, yes.

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minimal_o
sweet! i'm looking forward to trying this out since i'd really like to be able
to connect my Kato rooms to my clients that insist on using Skype or that are
already committed to other services like Slack.

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CMCDragonkai
A great way to connect a bunch of public IRC rooms to your internal system!

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ben_pr
Looks cool!

Do all the chat messages pipe through your servers? How is privacy protected?

~~~
Qwl
All messages in #channels/rooms you've connected, yes.

The great thing about Sameroom is it doesn't store anything! It's just a
broker.

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zmkahn
Really interesting. Do you plan to integrate Skype?

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Qwl
We hope to. It does involve, um, figuring out how the protocol works.

So once we do, our main concern is how to keep it legal. Because clearly, the
functionality would be really great for a lot of use cases.

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lomowin
I don't get it. Why it's not clickable?

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mjhea0
clickable -> [http://sameroom.io](http://sameroom.io)

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courington
can i connect my IRC behind a vpn with a service outside of the vpn?

~~~
Qwl
No, sameroom wouldn't be able to access your IRC servers behind the firewall.
(Which is probably a good thing!)

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bmarrelli
Looks really awesome!

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MCKapur
Looks great!!

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arnav
looks great!

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borissoroker
Try it!

