

Show HN: FlyByChat, the site I'm working on. Looking for feedback. - bdr
http://beta.flybychat.com/

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spking
I'd suggest making a single, clear call to action. Perhaps "Chat anonymously
with a random partner" would be the best option to drive attention to first,
since it requires the least effort and commitment from the user. I'd make the
button say something like "Start a Chat Now!", with smaller subtext to the
effect of "100% Anonymous and Fun".

~~~
bdr
Good feedback. I was worried about that. Thanks.

~~~
veemjeem
You should tell people that the global chat room isn't anonymous, and that
their facebook profile will be linked in the chat room. It's always bad when
users have to find out from other users that they aren't anonymous.

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Yesh
\- UI is nice. Excellent idea. Was able to quickly use the site and chat with
two people.

\- The space to say something is small. \- Can improve on giving more visual
feedback \- First panel should be anonymous chat \- Easy way to enter your
anonymous profile \- There was a javascript alert window that pop up (maybe
debug message or something) \- .. Unable to connect.. \- .. Down for
maintenance ... \- The icon to add more panel should be more clear. It sort of
surprise me. \- Ability to maximize a panel (I suppose I can delete the other
panels)

~~~
bdr
Thanks. Yeah, it was down for maintenance for a few minutes there.

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jrnkntl
I'd like to see when my chat partner is actually active (like in typing) and
stuff or update the title bar of the window.

also an option to enlarge the chat window would be nice.

~~~
bdr
When you say enlarge, are you thinking of resizing the windows horizontally?

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mechanical_fish
To me (Safari 5/Mac) this site is a big blue screen with no content except an
"About" link that doesn't work. I waited five to ten seconds before giving up.

I'm using a 3G connection which may be flaky, so maybe I'm just suffering from
extreme latency. Nevertheless, you should probably try to show at least a
sentence on initial page load to keep me curious enough to suffer through
another few seconds...

~~~
bdr
Yeah, the site works on Safari 5, so it must be latency. In particular,
sometimes the external Facebook JS takes a long time to load. I'll add a
loading message. Thanks!

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petervandijck
Nice idea, but it hangs on "finding partner", which kind of sucks (I closed
the window after about 30 secs)

~~~
bdr
I think the hanging is probably that there was no one else looking. You don't
have cookies disabled, do you?

~~~
sev
Might be a good idea to let the user know that's the case so that they don't
mistake it with hanging.

------
bdr
Submitter here. Thanks for checking out my site. I'm looking for feedback on
all levels: the UI and implementation, the product idea, and the market.

Particular questions: do you "know what to do" when you get to the site? Is it
ugly? What would make you use a site like this?

The idea here is to iterate in the same space as ChatRoulette, towards the
goal of becoming the best place to meet new people online. There are some
obvious directions to go in, like adding video, dating features (FB'
Interested In/Looking For), and locale support, and maybe some not so obvious
ones, but I'd like to hear what you think.

~~~
veemjeem
isn't omegle anonymous chat too?

~~~
bdr
? Yes, Omegle supports anonymous chat.

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veemjeem
On chrome, it looks a little strange. The chat window is all compressed into
one line.

<http://imgur.com/ldNpV>

~~~
bdr
It doesn't do that on mine. :|

What OS + version of Chrome are you using? What happens if you resize the
browser window?

Thanks for taking the time to get a screenshot, I appreciate that.

------
ent
The ui is very nice, I really like the ability to add more chat windows side
by side. The obvious problem is that there don't seem to be very many people
online.

~~~
bdr
Thank you. This post is the first place I've announced the site, so it makes
sense that there aren't a lot of people on. I think I'll try to get some more
now.

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arram
Nice - the location features are something I definitely wanted while messing
around on Chatroulette and Omegle.

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malloc
Looks great, the site. Would add sound notification on message arrival
(optional).

