I'm a solo developer who often uses group chat tools. Frustrated by the limitations of products from other startups in this space, I've come up with my ideal group communications platform.<p>Fluid interaction with multiple groups, both public and private along with a simple person to person messaging system makes this one of the easiest to use messaging systems.<p>As with most others in this space; historical data, search functionality, image/file uploading, and audible notifications are included.<p>The website is functional, however there is still some tweaking that needs to be completed. I'm at a very early alpha stage on the iPhone app with it only running on my personal phone.<p>I'd also like to hear from any designers interested in joining the project.<p>My gripe on others in this space:<p>Yammer:
1. only communications in same url domain - fatal flaw
2. very slow, using the iPhone app, the website, and the Air app it would take up to 2 minutes to get a new message - this is not usable in a chat situation
3. no location service<p>GroupMe:
1. required sms signup (at least from iPhone app)
2. no group search or historical data
3. limited functionality on the website version, really not suited for a team working together on a project
4. no stream, no feed, less than ideal for many groups<p>Beluga:
1. no group search or historical data
2. limited functionality on the website version, really not suited for a team working together on a project
3. no stream, no feed, less than ideal for many groups<p>Campfire:
1. $COST
2. no stream, no feed, less than ideal for many groups
3. no public groups
4. no location service<p>As such, my feature list beyond the basics became:<p>1. no $cost, free service
2. no sms requirements
3. website and mobile apps fully functional
4. a feed for all messages
5. public and private groups
6. direct user to user chat
7. smart notification system that gets a users attention when he or she is offline and a user is trying to contact them
8. ability to share location with friends<p>One exciting conclusion I drew from this is that with public groups you can actually have public value. This is a major hurdle for other startups in this space providing a free product. If all communications are private, any value derived from the overall knowledge of your userbase is effectively worthless.<p>You may ask what purpose a public group would serve, my best response would be that of IRC for any developers. Join Freenode #mongodb and you'll find a room full of experts ready to help. Now imagine this in Twitter like fashion, along with being publicly searchable simply from a website or api.<p>Groups don't have to be just for nerds! There's no reason you wouldn't see a public group pop up for the local farmers market.<p>Another important part is the social aspect, once again with private groups and data you lose a real value of social... social sharing. I've built in friendships and recommendations based on common groups. If you aren't in a public group that 10 of your friends are, you should know about it!<p>Easily share interesting groups via email, twitter, fb and so on. Find your friends from other services that are also users. The service automatically builds an address book of your friends so you can chat with them in the future.<p>So take any group chat app, add the feature list I just laid out, then tack on a public groups feature and a social layer.<p>I'm looking for alpha testers, I've got this built and fully operational on AWS w/ mongodb & php. What would be spectacular is to find a few groups of people with the need to chat regularly!<p>If you're interested, please send me an email: andrewhodel_at_gmail.com<p>I'll get you setup with an account on the service.