
Flock, fast and free team messenger - chang2301
https://www.flock.co
======
dang
This post got a huge number of bogus upvotes. We ban accounts and sites that
do that, so please don't do it again.

~~~
chaitanya
We're sorry about this. It wasn't our intention to promote bogus upvotes.
We're guessing as word spread throughout our group of companies, people got
excited and up-voted. We’re definitely going to be more careful about this in
the future.

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chubs
If you want this to be a good Slack competitor, please make a native mac
client which doesn't perpetually take 15% of my CPU the way Slack does - i'd
convince our team to switch on that basis alone (all else being equal).

~~~
chaitanya
I get why you are saying that, and we are working hard to ensure that our
CPU/memory usage stays low. We aren't there yet, but hopefully we should soon
be at a point where this is no longer a concern. (Not denying that Webkit
based apps have some overhead already, but we are trying to keep the remaining
overhead low).

That said, there's a significant advantage to using this approach -- you don't
need to build different apps for different desktop platforms, plus it also
helps to have same UI across platforms, which is why we went for this.

~~~
mikecsh
This reasoning is essentially "it's easier for us". I have to use slack for
work and it is extraordinarily frustrating to have to use such a ridiculously
slow and resource intensive application for sending text messages in _2016_.
Coupled with the non-native UI (can I right click on that message? Oh no -
it's a web page, let's find the cog to click on). Saying that it allows the UI
to be the same on every platform to me means that it is not _good_ on any
platform. I would take IRC over slack any day at this point.

~~~
mikecsh
Oops, also read your message as being from Slack!

~~~
chaitanya
No issues, your criticism is still valid. We are working hard towards fixing
these issues.

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munaf
I recognize several of the people in your front page screenshot [1]. They are
well-known in the design community.

Did you get permission to use their photographs?

[1] [http://imgur.com/a/nWbtt](http://imgur.com/a/nWbtt)

~~~
vidhisn
we use [http://uifaces.com/](http://uifaces.com/) for our mocks and
screenshots, and these are all pre-authorised images. However, if anyone from
the community doesn’t want their pic up, we’ll be happy to take it down.

(I manage the marketing at Flock, and happy to answer any more questions you
may have)

------
Shank
Is Accenture really a customer? Whirlpool?

These are absolutely huge names -- how have I not heard of this before?

~~~
paukiatwee
> 25000+ COMPANIES AROUND THE WORLD USE FLOCK

A lot of Show HN apps/websites using big companies logo, not sure why it is
legal to do so, when I believe all is for marketing.

And I hope they will response to your comment.

~~~
BorisMelnik
it happens, and the legalities really vary from company to company. a few
years ago there was the "startup logo generator" or something like that here
on HN it got so bad.

also, let's say I work for Staples in customer support. Me and my 3 buddies
use Flock to communicate at work using Flock, and send files back and
forth...now "Staples uses Flock."

~~~
goatherders
Yes, and? When you build a product hoping for bottom-up user adoption (as
opposed to getting the CtO to make a company wide mandate) then its totally
fair to do this. Half the hosting companies on earth have Disney and NewsCorp
and Nike and Starbucks logos on their client pages because an employee used
his work email to buy a $5 shared hosting account for his mom's blog.

------
agilebyte
tl;dr of difference to Slack: a) 2.5x faster to load initially than Slack, b)
UI that will "sweep you of your feet", c) seamless app integration

(according to them)

~~~
me551ah
Also apps are a lot more powerful in flock. In slack you can only interact
with apps using slash commands. In flock, an app can declare UI buttons in
multiple places which can trigger actions like opening a widget or sending
events to app backend. You can also include widgets inside your messages (e.g.
checkout our polls app). Read our API docs for more:
[https://docs.flock.co/](https://docs.flock.co/)

(PS: I work in the Flock android team)

~~~
spdustin
You may want to rethink how you differentiate Flock from Slack

[https://api.slack.com/docs/message-
buttons](https://api.slack.com/docs/message-buttons)

~~~
me551ah
Flock supports message buttons too. And also buttons for apps across the UI,
more on that here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zQfbeh_gKk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zQfbeh_gKk)
\-- Not just that, you can craft your own custom UI in an inline attachment
widget which can do whatever you want (for e.g. take a look at polls app)

And finally, apps are first class citizens in Flock, which means they have
much deeper integration with UI widgets. You can have an app show its own UI
right inside Flock, Our To-DO app for instance, is an app anyone could build
to extent what Flock can do.

More on our platform here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zQfbeh_gKk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zQfbeh_gKk)

( P.S : I work in the flock android team )

------
sandGorgon
Proudly built in India -
[http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/social/flock-
the...](http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/social/flock-the-indian-
competition-for-slack-2784044/)

Good going @chaitanya - can you talk about the technology stack choices ?
Clojure ?

Quick question - how does one _migrate_ ? can you pull all data out of
hipchat/slack ?

~~~
chaitanya
Sorry no Lisp or Clojure here ;-)

Our backend is mostly Java, the desktop app is based on HTML/CSS/Javascript
while the mobile apps are native.

We are working on a migration tool from Slack (and others) to Flock, we will
release it soon.

~~~
sandGorgon
java 8 + lambda by any chance ? we have been considering kotlin + vertx for
some time now... so it would be interesting to hear about your experience in
the vanilla java world.

~~~
chaitanya
Our core infra doesn't use lambda (we can't really, its not a good fit).
However, I think for some of our ancillary services and especially for a lot
of FlockOS apps ([https://apps.flock.co](https://apps.flock.co)), it makes a
lot of sense.

Just yesterday in fact, I was at AWS dev day in Pune where I explained how
easy it is to build a FlockOS app using lambda and node.js. We will put up a
blog post on it soon.

~~~
sandGorgon
Actually I was not talking about AWS Lambda...but Java 8 "lambdas"
(streams,lombok,lambdas...the whole shebang)

~~~
chaitanya
Arghh.. yes of course we do make use of lambda expressions in Java!

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Keats
Looks neat. Small UI comment on the landing page: the header of the columns
looks exactly like the links so I initially clicked on Flock OS wondering what
it was before realising it wasn't a link.

What's the stack behind it (frontend/backend)?

PS: tried to open the FlockOS blog to see what it was and all I see is an
empty Medium page?

~~~
chaitanya
Thanks for the feedback, we will fix the styling. Also, I think someone was a
little too eager to link to the FlockOS blog, we will remove it.

Our backend is mostly Java, the desktop app is based on HTML/CSS/Javascript
while the mobile apps are native.

------
wnm
as a developer, I was curious to read about building apps for flock. let me
tell you about my experience: first, I had to create an account. I just wanted
to get some information, but ok. after entering an email (in firefox), getting
a pin via email, entering the pin, I got redirected to a page that said: "No
account set yet." I tried to sign in via
[https://web.flock.co/](https://web.flock.co/), where it told me that firefox
wasn't supported. So I tried the same steps with chrome, where it told me
"Access Denied", and I need to contact developer support.

Maybe you guys are not ready yet? Or where can a developer get some
information about creating apps for your platform?

~~~
chaitanya
I am sorry you had to face this, we are aware of this issue and are fixing it.
We have only just opened up our API platform (FlockOS) for external
developers, and we are mostly reaching out to them via hackathons, where we
make the steps required very clear. I hadn't imagined us getting HNed right
now :-|

So the issue is that you need to sign up before you can access the developer
dashboard, and you can only do that through a Flock client as of now.
Unfortunately, as you found out, our web client doesn't support Firefox and
that's basically hit our worst case scenario with this issue.

If you want to try it out, you can sign up using web.flock.co on Chrome or
Safari, or download one of our clients. Once you do that you will be able to
sign in to [https://dev.flock.co](https://dev.flock.co). The documentation for
building apps is on [https://docs.flock.co](https://docs.flock.co).

------
chaitanya
If you are curious about how Flock compares to Slack (we get that a lot), we
made a short video about it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDDapdpgCd8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDDapdpgCd8)

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sergiotapia
Is this a native app or Electron? Electron is super slow and was a mistake.

~~~
domoritz
I thought so too until I used VScode and no I'm not sure anymore.

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gbraad
Invalid email: [http://imgur.com/a/Xo2mS](http://imgur.com/a/Xo2mS)

Wondering why people still check for 'valid' email addresses.

~~~
chaitanya
Whoops! We have a very permissive email regex, your address should have
passed. Can you tell me where exactly this check failed? (edit: I got it, we
will get this fixed quickly)

~~~
gbraad
Check... Thanks. Saw the new verification email.

------
acedinlowball
This is really great! It has all the features I need. Going to get my team to
start using this right away. EVERY team should be using this product.

Thank you sir!

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scottharveyco
Are there any plans to add video calls or screen sharing as a feature? Having
those work cross platform would be a huge advantage over other existing
messaging applications.

~~~
me551ah
Flock supports video calling and screen sharing via appear.in and Google
Hangouts integration. And it works cross platform too. We don't have anything
native yet.

(PS: I work in the Flock android team)

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malnourish
You have some copy duplication at the bottom of the page in the press area,
PCWorld and ComputerWorld both have the same "Meet flock [...] productivity
gains" text.

------
chaitanya
This was a little unexpected, but glad to see Flock featured on HN's front
page!

(I am the CTO of Flock, and will be happy to answer any of your queries).

~~~
zillionize
Congrats! Flock vs Slack reminds me of Zendesk vs Freshdesk. Any thought on
fundraising? Investors would beg to get in :)

~~~
bhavintu
Thank you for your kind words. We are currently flush with funds, however we
are certainly open to raising future rounds externally and will be doing so.

(Founder and CEO, Flock)

~~~
zillionize
Awesome! When you raise your next round keep me posted - zillionize at gmail
dot com.

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mrmondo
Hi, congratulations on your release! Where can I find the source code to
inspect?

~~~
petepete
Maybe try Mattermost if you want something similar that's open Free.

[https://www.mattermost.org](https://www.mattermost.org)

~~~
esseti
does anyone know why people do not use mattermost instead of slack&co? it
seems to have everything in place, and it's free and opensource.. is it
beacuse you need to deploy by yourself?

~~~
petepete
We use it along with the GitLab omnibus package so install and setup was very
straightforward. It's great and has handled everything we've thrown at it; no
complaints whatsoever.

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hoverbear
I'm rather curious, what's preventing you from supporting Firefox?

~~~
chaitanya
Nothing actually, we just want to make sure the Firefox build is fully tested
before releasing it. We will be launching it soon.

~~~
hoverbear
Awesome. Best of luck with the product.

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kedar_apte
Like the ui. The mobile app is nice. Works seamlessly on ubuntu with chrome
extension. Have not seen a situation where I have ran out of cpu cycles. I
have an i5. Its nice. I have faced one challenge though a few times, that is,
it takes a little while to reconnect when u bring the laptop out of suspend.
It connects eventually but u wait like for 15 seconds before u can start. It
is not a deal breaker though :) good job. Keep going.

