
Chat.center and Facebook's Unique Chat ID - kteare
On Saturday I published a story on Medium called &quot;Dear Zuck, What the Fuck&quot; - https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@kteare&#x2F;dear-zuck-fuck-84d9c1bdba26#.8mm0qbhhz. Insiders here at HN described it as link bait. Another said he didn&#x27;t understand the point. Commenters said that the accusation related to the look of FB Messenger and that this look is common to many apps, including iMessage and others that pre-date chat.center.<p>These comments miss the point. Of course there are links in my story, although they are clearly not bait... This is the internet, so I did use the basic link tools. But the links are not &quot;bait&quot;. The intent of the links is clear from the context and nobody who clicks would have been baited.<p>More inportant. The article does not accuse Facebook of copying a UI. Indeed it explicitly says that may be a reasonable and obvious UI. It accuses them of copying the entire concept of a Unique chat ID (a human readable URL pointing to a SaaS chat service), and then of linking that from any end point - to the owner of the ID via a Webb and mobile app, linked via SaaS.<p>Until Friday chat.center was novel in offering such a service. We fully integrate into the DNS using this approach, making chat ID&#x27;s open. There is no requirement of a clicker to &quot;join&quot; anything.<p>Facebook has definitely duplicated our service. They may or may not have copied it.<p>These are reasonable reasons for my article and for my complaint, but also reasons for explaining to the world what has happened and what I as the founder of chat.center think about it.<p>To put this article into the context of click bait, or to suggest I am complaining about a UI being stolen are both mistaken.<p>Keith Teare
http:&#x2F;&#x2F;chat.center&#x2F;keith
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minimaxir
Link to referenced HN discussion as I don't feel the proposed characterization
is accurate:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11463349](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11463349)

None of those commenters called it linkbait.

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kteare
Here is the link i referred to -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11465528](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11465528)

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kteare
Basically it was flagged as spammy or link-baity which I must say I strongly
dispute

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kteare
I just published a longer form of this here -
[https://medium.com/@kteare/zuck-what-the-fuck-rebuttal-a-
fol...](https://medium.com/@kteare/zuck-what-the-fuck-rebuttal-a-follow-
up-19c915e89081#.j2y39wvhy)

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herbst
are you claiming you are the first SaaS that provides a chat with a direct
url? seriously?

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kteare
No. I am claiming we are the first to use a human readable ID in a URL,
integrated with the DNS

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arrty88
keep fighting the good fight.

do you have a mobile app? sms integration? auto responders? group chat?

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kteare
We have IOS, Android and web apps. We have group chat. Auto-Responders 6-8
weeks away

