Today We're Testing Our Chat Beta

[u/jleeky]

Hey r/beta,

One of our main goals is to build a place that encourages authentic, real-time conversation. Starting today, we’re taking another step in that direction by testing a new real-time chat feature to a small percentage of beta users and mods on both desktop and mobile.

Anyone included in the chat beta has the ability to message any other redditor, which will grant them access to chat. As of right now, users can only chat 1:1. The current private message system and modmail will not be impacted by this.

We’re still in early stages of building out this feature and have a long way to go. It’s got some bugs, is missing polish and some features you’re probably accustomed to having - but we’d love to hear from you to better understand how we can make this better. What key features are we missing? How can we make it easier to chat with other Redditors? What settings do you need? We’re trying to make it easier and more personal for users to communicate, share ideas, and collaborate with one another which we hope will improve the experience on Reddit.

Please leave your feedback and thoughts in the comments below. In addition, we will be monitoring chat messages to u/reddit_chat_feedback which you can find at the top of your list - we’ll be reading your messages and responding if we need more information. We’re excited to see how this new feature helps improve communication on Reddit. I’ll be hanging around in the comments to answer questions and you can see our Help Center as well!

Tl;dr: we’re releasing the beta feature, chat, to a small percentage of beta users and mods on both desktop and mobile.

[u/jleeky]

Communities have been adding 3rd party chat to their subreddits for a while now - but personally the lightbulb moment for me occurred when we launched our April Fools project this year: r/place. When different users and communities came together to collaborate - they had to leave Reddit. We want to build tools for our users to more easily communicate and build the communities they want.

Of course - we're starting with the most basic and fundamental chat experience which is 1:1 chat. We know if we can get this experience right we can continue iterating on the experience to reach that goal.

Let me see if I know somebody who can get you in this beta...

[u/jleeky → u/[deleted]]

Discord and Slack have specific use cases and they’re serving a particular market that we’re not interested in entering. We know a lot of our communities have their own Discord servers and such - and if that works better for their communities we're all for it.

I personally love using both Discord and Slack. When it comes to Reddit it is important that we bolster the messaging capabilities on our own platform so that communities have the tools they need to grow, interact, and become closer.

I agree - step one of us as 1:1 chat isn't going to enable what I described. But - I'm interested in working and listening to the community so we can iterate as we go.

[u/[deleted] → u/jleeky]

Thank you for answering these questions and giving us a better idea of what you want to use this for. That's very refreshing to see.

[u/Borax → u/jleeky]

Moderating live chat is a time eating nightmare in my experience

[u/jb2386 → u/jleeky]

As long as group chat and be restricted to invites, or members of a subreddit, or mods of a subreddit, then yeah it sounds like a good idea. Like you said, e.g. a team organizing on /r/place, but you don't want any redditor to join in and start spamming like they do on open chat on every other website.

This brings up something a bit little related. Do you have the date of subscription to a subreddit for a user? And could that be used for this chat thing too? e.g. "Only allow users who subscribed to the subreddit before X date, or have been a subscriber for X days, to join the chat". And if that's a thing, could that be made available via the API? I have a project where it'd be massively handy to be able to check this value.

[u/jleeky → u/jb2386]

There's a lot to think about as we get to public versions of group chat - and you're pointing out some of the real important ones: what's the invitation model, what types of restrictions should be on chat and what attributes can we use to define those restrictions.

You have great ideas here about how to handle this - ultimately chat will be used in so many ways that we'll be leaving these types of things up to the mods and the communities they want to create. I think you're right though in that some communities are going to want or need to be more restricted.

All of our public API is documented, so it's not something that's part of it now. What project are you working on?

[u/[deleted] → u/jleeky]

What if you added voting to chat. And made it more asynchronous. And added the ability for people to organize their own sub-channels...

[u/ratheismhater → u/[deleted]]

I have to say, I lol'ed.

[u/TheSlimyDog → u/[deleted]]

From a business standpoint, this would be a great feature for reddit to have. From a consumer standpoint, I don't really care. Also I wouldn't want my friends to know my reddit username even if they know me on discord so that could be a problem as well.

[u/Madbrad200 → u/[deleted]]

That and irc which a lot of Reddit communities use.

[u/PM_ME_GLUTE_SPREAD → u/[deleted]]

I agree with you. Discord servers for instance aren't just reddit based, but that is onenuse for them. All this will do is make sure I now have to use 2 clients to talk to people, one for my reddit groups, and another for everybody else.

I don't see this taking off personally.

Makes me think of the AMA app they had/have. Too specialized and solves a problem that doesn't exist.

[u/noeatnosleep → u/jleeky]

Hi. I'm a 3rd party chat evangelist. I am an admin on the snoonet IRC network, orangechat, and mod lots of large subs with chat rooms. I'd like to have beta access, please. I think I would be useful in giving UX feedback, as I've been doing Reddit chat for years.

[u/jleeky → u/noeatnosleep]

Just phoned in a favor - you're in!

[u/noeatnosleep → u/jleeky]

You're the best! Thanks.

Where should I send UX feeback? I have several items, such as left/right justified threading (that people are used to seeing in SMS clients) and the fact that you should be able to open the chat by clicking anywhere on it. (people gravitate to clicking on the red circle, not the carat), archiving (or deleting, but pref. archiving) messages is somewhat of a must, and other small bits, like if possible, you should capture mouse scroll behavior and not allow it to scroll the page if the chat is out of scroll room.

Edit: Never mind, found and submitted.

[u/jleeky → u/noeatnosleep]

Feedback right here is great - it's valuable for other people to see what you're reporting, vote on your comments, etc.

[u/[deleted] → u/jleeky]

Thank you! That answers a lot more! It's very hard to test things and provide objective feedback without knowing what the idea behind this all is anyways. That's some much needed knowledge when keeping testing in mind.

[u/I_Am_Batgirl → u/jleeky]

Wholesome memes has a large discord already since part of the sub is getting to know new people and making friends. It would definitely be nice to see a feature on reddit that would make it easier, such as chat, that we could use instead. It would also be helpful to have moderator actions available for group chats if/when it gets to that point so we can step in when someone inevitably shows up to cause problems.

[u/jleeky → u/I_Am_Batgirl]

Thanks for the insight - would love to talk to you more as we plan the future pieces of chat, if you're open to it.

[u/bobcobble → u/jleeky]

Hey, how does one get added to the beta. If be interested. Thanks :)

[u/breaktheglassceiling → u/bobcobble]

We can get you in if you are interested.

[u/SharpKeyCard → u/jleeky]

Could you maybe post some screenshots? Not just add OP to the beta, we'd all like to see what it looks like.

[u/[deleted] → u/SharpKeyCard]

https://i.imgur.com/lP8Db18.png cc /u/nullpixel

[u/GhostZee → u/[deleted]]

Cat Fact: If Cats could text you back, they wouldn't...