Show HN: Real-Real-Time Chat

10 points by levmiseri 25 days ago | 10 comments

Hi HN! Few months ago I've shared a new kind of markdown editor that we (a team of three from the Czech Republic) have been working on (HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46144801). What resonated with folks the most was Kraa's unique ‘real-real-time’ chat feature. We have now acted on this feedback, improved the chat features, and made what we call Kraa Trees.

Trees allow anyone to create a light-weight community / chat channels. It would be a stretch to call it an alternative to Discord, yet, but we hope that the frictionless nature of Trees will make them useful for small groups that want something simpler, more immediate, and less cluttered. With the live-typing being one of the key differentiating features.

You can create your own community/rooms by selecting "Tree of leaves" in the New leaf button dropdown.

You don't need an account to try Kraa nor Kraa Trees. We would love to know what you think!

cyanydeez 25 days ago |

I love the technolgy, but adoption is going to be too blank canvas for most people. There's no good queues, organization, work flow, etc; no extant content to get into the flow, etc.

What you want to do is the same reddit did: sock puppets; but ethically sourced. Write a LLM routine that looks at a neutral source and starts using your product.

People generally dont know what to do when they can do anything.

Also, once you get active users, your get active trolls, so you'll need some kind of active or passive denial system. I think the most successful system is a lifetime $ subscription cost and a thorough banning of trolls. Either you make a lot of money on troll costs or you end up with a nice harmony.

adrianwaj 24 days ago |

It'd be good to know when something typed has "gone live" or is every keystroke submitted in realtime? Google Wave had that. Can lead to embarrassment and clutter/distraction. Maybe have a time buffer?

Maybe have background color changes to indicate status?

Also, I like the idea of removing the need to press enter..maybe a time delay on "auto-submit." Also, after editing, allow another background color change as someone may change something many hours later.

Can you remove the need for mouse clicks when editing? Just mouseover and then type. Then after a pause (or mouse out,) auto-submit.

Also, I was thinking about a forum for tinkering.. maybe have a way to attach a url to any comment as an extra field?

So the key idea here is to have a browser extension that loads comments for any URL you visit. This has been tried before. But it'd help to know what is being discussed. The web is a giant place.

Did you ever use FriendFeed? Perhaps instead of subscribing to people you subscribe to URLs? Anytime you see a URL that interests you, you select "interesting" - same with people. Have the right side of the screen be a feed-of-feeds.

Also, as with the original Plastic.com, a way to submit as anonymous if required. Also, where is the content stored? Privacy/security/transparency/encryption are the big issues. Maybe have logins with a random string that is used for encryption?

Don't ask for email addresses. Have a "kill-switch" string as well. You could also have a dead-man's-switch built in as well to avoid killing an account. Paste bins usually have a period attached to them.

Can you get micropayments involved? Ask-me-anythings can lead to revenue for people who get asked. People need to pay to view an answer, or pay to view all a user's comments. Or, all old comments require payment - that'd entice people to write things that stand the test of time. Who knows? Split revenue.

Create a leader board of the largest money earners. Attract insiders of all types - people who would otherwise be on the prediction markets. Is that possible? Those sites will end up becoming more risky over time for insiders, I suspect. So make it a place to sell secrets. (muahaha - actually don't) Leader boards can be gamed too, another problem.

Charge for image storage and/or display after a set number of images has been reached.

Are you able to invent a long term CAPTCHA? Maybe have it integrate with the browser extension previously mentioned. How can you guarantee humans?

curtisblaine 25 days ago |

Real-real time meaning other people see your message as you type it? This is a feature that would actually discourage me from using the chat. Having to control how your message looks while you're typing it is added stress for the writer and doesn't really give anything of value to the reader. Not sure why this is better than "traditional" chats.

levmiseri 25 days ago | |

That's fair and something I know will is a love/hate kind of thing. I think if you truly experience a conversation in this format, your opinion on the 'sensibility' of this approach would hopefully change, even if it's still something that's not for you.

That being said, we will have a feature soon where you can compose the entire message before sending it (the 'traditional' way).

sev_verso 25 days ago | |

That reminds me of split-screen BBS chats. Every keypress is sent immediately to the peer and echoed on your own screen as well. It was quite fun, kind of a collaborative editing session more so than just chatting.

kinduff 24 days ago |

I created something similar at https://chat.lasagna.pizza. No room support yet that's why I haven't published it.

But anyone willing to give it a go, its a real-real time chat inspired by the Super Hot video-game.

vipipiccf 25 days ago |

I tried it, the idea might be good for short chats and fast-moving discussions, since it avoids interrupting other people mid-thought. I feel it is only for very specific use cases.

arjunthazhath 25 days ago |

I tried it but whats the value prop it offers compared to reddit or discord?

levmiseri 25 days ago | |

Much more light-weight UI, no need for accounts, connection with the markdown editor underneath. More details about the product itself are here: https://kraa.io/about

logic-designer 23 days ago |

it looks like a cool system but the market currently has so many chat apps/webapps that i dont think this will become very popular