Hi Product Hunt!
WeKiki is a simple Chrome video chat platform. There can be up to four participants in video, and more watching and in the sidebar chat.
We are currently only on Chrome, and non-mobile.
The four person format is intimate— I’ve found in Appear.in that groups larger than 4 either talk over each other and get chaotic, or the opposite. In groups of 6+ people will turn their cameras off for long periods of time, or play music, or otherwise lag the conversation.
Thank you in advance to the community for your questions, comments, and suggestions! I look forward to hearing what you have to say!
@bentossell haha, you struck the balance between patience and urging me to post very well, I would say!
First, I would say that Blab was a magical product.
I am a former Blab user and I, like many others, mourned its eventual demise, even if the writing had been on the wall for a while. I have remained in touch with many of the people I met on Blab, and even met or hosted several of the people I knew only from the Internet.
So you might notice that this version of WeKiki looks rather familiar. We kept the 4-person format. There's an active sidebar chat. Many of the people are even the same, haha.
But 2 major things separate us even now:
1. We took a different route with the technology, attempting more P2P connections
2. We intend to monetize (because we are bootstrapping!)
And in the future we have plans to be very different--our monetization strategy is slotted to be private rooms. We will be offering private DMs. We will open our API to the addition of bots and other customizations.
But for now, we're rather retro.
Thanks for the question, Ben!
@osakasaul Wow, Saul thank you for sharing your insights. Maybe I'll catch you on WeKiki sometime to discuss them further, haha. :) I think seeding the community, as you said, will be vital and one of our biggest challenges--that's something I'd like to discuss with you. Thanks again!
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@kikischirr Like the simplicity of the platform. Looking forward to a mobile release if you guys decided to have one! Great job! Good luck!
As others have said, would love if this were to fill the gap blab left. However, they really struggled with the monetization piece - I'm a bit skeptical that paid private chat rooms will fill that void (because at that point, aren't you just video chat like zoom?) but I hope you can make it work!
@afhill My big fear regarding private rooms is not that we will appear just like the competition, but that it will kill the urge to make new friends. So we'll have to approach it carefully. I'm considering making the rooms need to be ephemeral also, like the main rooms currently are. What do you think? Would that help?
@kikischirr could help.. and actually, I should apologize, I was being very "feature-focused" there. If your use case is "people come here to have great convos with smart people they don't know yet", it's really a very different problem you're solving than video conferencing. People probably wouldnt see them as competitiors.. but you COULD benefit from "I already use Wekiki to help me find new friends, why would I want to go off and use something else once I've found them?"
@afhill No need to apologize, you had an excellent point--didn't mean to divert the conversation, it's just that this has worried me for a bit. You're very right that the use case for the private premium rooms might not be apparent... Hm.
@kikischirr ya never know - think about all the sub-services that launched private twitter channels, etc. I always felt like blab had more of a chance to compete as a marketing/ brand awareness platform; maybe bring in some analytics, etc. If it could be used for marketers, you'd hit some legit budgets there!
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I love WeKiki! Kiki and her partner have done an AMAZING job of creating a platform that is for those of us who are in our 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s+ to connect! This platform is not full of hashtaging, seflie experting teenagers, but instead is full of real people wanting to make real connections with their peers!!! Kudos!
@kikischirr you can count me as a teen. I'm constantly told to be less child like!
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I tried too, on Chrome, Windows and it works well. Now it's time to grab a few more friends and start some parties. I like that @kikischirr is fully dedicated to it, this only makes a huge difference with blab.
So awesome to see this hunted! I loved helping and being able to give some early feedback :)
I think the premise is an intriguing one; though I tend to be more of a lurker than anything else, I love the potential of being able to reach out and talk to a variety of people. It's one of the things which originally brought me to Blab and why I became a big supporter of their mission.
I think with WeKiki, there's an opportunity to fill a void which has been left since Blab shut down, especially as a place for people enthusiastic about these interpersonal dynamics to congregate.
Where do you see WeKiki going over the next 6-12 months?
Congrats on a great launch! :D
@adammarx13 Thank you Adam! I appreciate your support. ...and want to say thank you for being my guinea-pig-confidant-co-conspirator-muse in this project.
Looks cool! Anyway to create an account without using Facebook? As an Ex-Meerkat/Houseparty dev, I would like to note that it's a bit of a risk to rely on 3rd-party social graphs. Love the design and the UX, great work.
@avizuber definitely a risk! But at the same time, it cuts down on young children and registered sex offenders, so I think there are definite benefits. :) Thank you!
@larry_lawal I foresee there being 2 core groups of users:
The first I call "power users" --they're on WeKiki for long periods of the day and their goal is to hang out, meet people, and make friends. So their chats are casual, meandering conversations.
The second group I call "content creators" --they're on WeKiki to spread a message, whatever it might be. Right now, WeKiki doesn't have the marketing tools necessary to support all of their needs but as we expand our feature set, they will start showing up more often. I'm talking with Ricki Prime and a few other former Blab show hosts about creating something on WeKiki, and I've had interest from a few content creators who are new to video entirely!
Thanks for the question, Larry! :D Will I see you around on WeKiki?
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