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Caliber 2.0 — IM for LinkedIn. Instantly chat with your business contacts.
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Thanks Alex! Bram that's a great question. We see this as a big upgrade because even though we re-did the whole app we're still trying to solve the same problem: helping you communicate with the right people to be more efficient professionally.
Our first approach was focused on connecting you with people you don't know. As we continued building the product and observed how people were using the app we realized we stumbled upon a much larger challenge: Why are professional contacts so much harder to message than friends?
There are several work related tasks (like hiring, applying for a job, sales, partnerships and getting expert advice) that require you to spend a lot of time searching who are your right contacts and then sending long and formal emails. We see a huge opportunity in making it much faster for people to interact with their business contacts. By making this process faster you’re able to reach out to more people and in turn you increase your chances of being more productive and successful in your career.
We wrote more about our release here:
https://medium.com/@becaliber/e8...
@becaliber @andresblank Kill.... InMail :)
I'm a longtime user and really like the update. Makes it much more powerful for me. Also you guys didn't lose the 'Tinder-like' mutual interest required for a conversation which is great as it keeps out all them spammy recruiters.
Curious to hear the inspiration behind the new logo. I can't unsee an engine blower: 
;)
;)
@becaliber @andresblank @pieterpaul
Caliber is an engine for career growth? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
We want our brand to immediately communicate our value proposition: to be able to instantly chat with your professional contacts. This is why we went with a chat bubble. The inspiration for the 3 dots of course is what we see in IM apps when someone is typing a message. It captures the real-time nature of chat and the anticipation of a message. We worked with David at Helvetic Brands for the rebrand. We feel he did an amazing job. https://dribbble.com/helveticbrands
@becaliber @andresblank @calc :D nice! Really cool to see how it evolved into the current final version. Reminds me o check out Dribble more often ;)
At scale (i.e. have a lot of my contacts on it) this would be ridiculously amazing to do deals.
@andygcook We're trying hard to compliment LinkedIn and we'd love to be a partner.
@andygcook Thanks for sharing it. I had a call 4 days back to use LinkedIn APIs for a similar purpose, I will check the updates again. Thanks again!
@calc It's unfortunate that LinkedIn has basically declared they are going to block startups from building any product currently competitive, or even possibly on their future radar. It's their data and I know they have the right to distribute as they see fit, but in my opinion it's a long-term bad move on their part.
What is your growth plan if LinkedIn blocks you from utilizing their APIs? Have you thought about a Plan B or are just hoping for the optimistic outcome? Just curious as a fellow developer interested in this general space and dissatisfied with LinkedIn consumer-focused products.
@andygcook As mentioned we started by building what we see as a very complimentary product. For this reason we're optimistic. We do plan to integrate with other networks (Google, Twitter) moving forward though LinkedIn is the most natural fit.
I was one of the early users of its original version few months back, only to see it derailing in a few areas, particularly on web. I see it really evolved for mobile; exploring it now! :)
@vingar Yes, Vinish it was difficult to support multiple platforms. Web was great for iterating/testing especially early on. Ultimately we decided to focus strictly on mobile.
This is the "messaging for professionals" app the market has been waiting for. It capitalizes on the ease/functionality of the ubiquitous and clearly preferred-to-email SMS archetype without sacrificing the privacy of more personal contact details like a person's private phone number.
Basically any time you've wanted to network but have been stymied by your phone and needed to grab a card and revisit when you were at a desktop - that's over now. But instead of the gimmicks that have promised to do this in the past, we have an elegant, easy-to-use solution.
Been following Caliber since v1 so really excited to see this update. Messagging anyone on linkedin is always really awkward, so "texting + profesional network" seems like an obvious evolution for the space... eager to see ho this plays out.
As someone who gets sick at the thought of paying LinkedIn $30 for 3 emails (or whatever their current rates are), I love that someone is disrupting this space. It's a good point that professional networking shouldn't be so hard that people are willing to be gouged like that. The chat feature of Caliber works well. I would love to see improvements in the flow for finding/ranking/browsing professionals. I'm interested to see how this product evolves...
@rahulcap Thanks Rahul. We agree that we need to make finding people as easy as possible. We'll keep at it and would love to keep hearing your thoughts.
I love the effort, but if it would be a way to NOT use InMails for people whom you don't know, that would actually make much more sense. There gotta be a better and more engaging way to make the first interaction with people, than InMails.
Thanks for writing @ekaterinaklink! You are able to send chat requests to some (not all) of the people that you don't know. Beyond extending this ability to more people are there any other networks that you feel we could use as a point of contact (Twitter, Github, Dribbble, etc)?
Why do I need this? I already feel really overwhelmed my communication channels and have no trouble contacting people through email about business. It's actually a fantastic tool and is really good at searching/storing. I never have to worry about losing my documents, but I do have to worry about Caliber under and losing all that info for what? A tool with no new functionality that I can't guarantee the other person will even have?
I'm just trying to identify what this provides me because I'm interested in the overall concept of being able to connect to the right business people easier.
@blainehatab Thanks for writing. Not everyone may feel a need for Caliber. It is our challenge to create something that is useful to the largest possible audience. We also need to build trust that can only come with time. We do feel we're improving upon search while making communication faster / lighter. Also, we're working to make connecting less overwhelming than other channels (http://tcrn.ch/1919XWB). We hope as we improve Caliber we can get to the point where we solve one of your needs and help you connect with the right people.
is this available ? don't seem to be able to sign up or find it in the google play store on either caliber or fetcher websites? Can anybody help and give me a steer please? Thank you Paul
Lugg for Android