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Relay
p/relayFree live chat for your website.
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Kevin William David

Relay - An extension that adds Discord-style chat to every website

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Relay is a browser extension that adds anonymous, live chat to every website, so you can chat with everyone else on the same site. Relay eliminates the gap between browsing the Internet and talking about it.

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Joe Keller
My mind is actually blown, haven't seen something like this on PH in forever, hats off to the founders!
Sam Winter
Maker
@joe_keller Thank you! We haven't seen anything like it either, so we had to build it!
@joe_keller @sam_winter wish it didn't have the 75 stars to chat... hard to get going on a website to test.... love it though ... just wish i could use it
Jitin Dodd
Damn bro, this is sick! What tech did you use to make it work? I'd imagine you need it to scale like crazy given you're chatting across the whole freaking internet.
Sam Winter
Maker
@jitindodd Thanks for the kind words! The API is written in Elixir, which is super concurrent out-of-the-box. The hardest part was probably ensuring the app (basically a React app embedded in an iframe) remains performant on every web page. We optimized like crazy.
Eric Froese
@sam_winter We wrote our SaaS API in Elixir too! Love it. Seeing a lot of Elixir on PH, especially the cool products ;)
Sam Winter
Maker
@eric_froese I know right! Huge Elixir fan. My only qualm is the lack of static typing.
Eric Froese
Oh my goodness! I can picture myself on some obscure documentation website and scratching my head about some aspect of the page then... BOOM! Someone else is on this page! Maybe they can give me a hand!
Sam Winter
Maker
@eric_froese This was literally the impetus for Relay! I read one too many obscure documentation websites.
Bona
This is an awesome concept, and I can already see a lot of use cases. Do you have any new features in the pipeline?
Sam Winter
Maker
Hi Andro, thanks for your question! Here are just a few of our plans in ascending order of excitement: * better search (e.g., you could search some Python documentation to see if anyone has asked the same question); * auto-generating FAQs for a given site (goes hand-in-hand with search); * opening our API and building a platform for bot developers; * making Relay available as a script tag, so all visitors of a given website can join the chat (not just users who have downloaded the extension). Hope you’re as pumped about these features as we are!
Dale-Anthony
@sam_winter I came here to suggest the ability to implement as a script, good to know it's already something that's on your minds!
Sam Winter
Maker
@daleanthony Thank you! We'll let you know once it's out :)
Douglas Schmidt
@sam_winter Having it "installed" on my website would be really cool! I see as a community-driven Interconn and that is awesome :) very promising. Also, to make it better for support teams, it would be nice to have a Browser PUSH Notification when new questions arrives.
Sam Winter
Maker
@douglasschmidt that's a great idea! I think browser push notifications are really underrated. I'll add it to our Trello :).
Sam Winter
Maker
Thanks for hunting us, @kevin! And thanks @wheeling51 for your help on the thumbnail! Hi Product Hunt! 😻 This is a dream come true. I’m so excited to launch Relay, a browser extension that adds chat to every website. With Relay, every domain has a built-in, chat-based community that’s at most a click away. Think of it like embedded Discord in your browser, where the channel is whatever website you’re on. People are chatting live right now on producthunt.com! We built Relay to provide a categorically more seamless social experience. We’ve given every domain its own community in a web that’s increasingly dominated by only a few unscrupulous social platforms. We couldn’t be more excited to have you join us. People are already using Relay to get help on Stackoverflow, engage with their own site’s visitors, watch shows together on Netflix, solicit career advice on LinkedIn, talk to other developers on localhost, instantly connect in online classrooms, leave their mark on Google, and pretty much anything else you can think of. It would mean the world to us if you helped us by sharing Relay, whether on social media or offline with your friends. A community is only as great as its members, and I’m sure you all know some great people! If you have any questions or feedback, please leave a comment below or chat with me on Relay. - Sam
James O'Sullivan
@sam_winter Hey Sam! I thought of this idea back in 2016 and noticed some other people tried it before as well (https://www.forbes.com/sites/eri...). I loved the idea and thought it was so cool, my app was going to be called UbiqiChat hehe. I never decided to pursue making it because I saw that the other people who tried it, it didn't take off and I couldn't find a way to monetize it. I'm glad that you are making it and it seems like your are going to make it right! How do you plan on monetizing?
Sam Winter
Maker
@james_osullivan thank you for the question and your kind words! There's a graveyard of failed website-specific chat ideas. They fail for two reasons: they can't reach critical mass (most common) or they become toxic (Dissenter). Much of our secret sauce for monetizing and growth and even moderation to some extent will be selling Relay as a widget. We've built a prototype and are putting in some finishing touches.
Brady McKenna
Very forward thinking project. Love the direction they are taking. The future of the internet is going to be agnostic overlays over everything from websites, games, apps, VR/AR, and other devices. Can't wait to see more of this type of development. Pros: - It gives the internet back to people to some degree in a nostalgic manner. It allows you to use websites, communicate, and connect like you could in the early days, on your terms without platform capture and communication monopolization/balkinization. - Smooth UI, easy to use, light weight. Cons: - It is going to get difficult to self moderate as it scales and will likely need to fall back on some sort of private rooms. This could have some strange unintended side effects where influential groups of people dominate the conversation on a single website in the public channels. - A lot of difficult UI/UX trade-offs will have to be made eventually - Platforms like this tend to get persecuted when certain ideological groups move in. Will be fascinating to see the direction this takes to ensure it stays open and flexible. Overall, the cons are longer term and general open platform concerns more than anything. These issues could be solved the same way similar problems were solved on IRC. Though this may sacrifice it's simplicity and elegance at some level. Not much to do there. Scaling is scaling and I see this platform going far. So this is a good problem to have. Cheers! Loving it so far 😎
Sam Winter
Maker
Hey Brady, Thank you so much for your comment! It really means a lot, especially coming from one of our long-time users! I hope you’re right about the development/trend of agnostic overlays. I totally agree with you about the perils of ideological domination. It’ll be difficult to moderate conversations across the whole Internet and maintain a culture that’s open and inclusive, but we have some strategies/lead bullets that should help. I’m looking forward to seeing how the product develops as it’s informed by user feedback. Excited to continue chatting with you as Relay scales :)
Gregg Blanchard
Extremely impressive, guys. I remember an idea sorta like this crossing my mind last year and my brain instantly melting out my ears as I thought about how to pull it off. This is so cool and so well done.
Sam Winter
Maker
@greggblanchard Thank you so much! That means a lot. I think the only reason we've been able to get this far is because we didn't realize how hard it would be at the outset 😅.
Tosh
This is incredible! Been daydreaming of something like this for a while :). Also out of curiosity I was wondering how you were planning on acquiring new users and growing the # of downloads? Wishing you tons of success and congrats! :)
Sam Winter
Maker
@toshvelaga that's the tough part. Hopefully Product Hunt helps a lot. Like any chat product, it requires a critical mass of users. We're hoping that once that kicks in, it snowballs from there primarily from word of mouth.
Jeffrey Erickson
@toshvelaga @sam_winter You might want to think about an invite system. Connecting to Gmail, facebook, or twitter could allow you to ask your network about the website while sending out invites.
Sam Winter
Maker
@jeffreykaine that's a great idea. Thanks for the suggestion. We need to get that growth engine up to full speed asap to ensure the network becomes even more valuable.
Travis
I guess i'm not getting the execution on this though? I get the tech stack, I get all the use cases, but don't both "chatters" have to have the extension installed? Therefore, it's going to be like building a marketplace...you'll need huge scale and distribution to make this relevant....
Sam Winter
Maker
@askmesaas you're totally right that this is a particularly difficult cold-start problem (which is why I think this type of product hasn't been successful previously). One way we plan to tackle that issue is by making Relay available as a script tag, so website owners can unlock a chat community with a single tag. We're working on that right now.
Travis
@sam_winter Right on. I'm a fan either way and the use cases are really staggering tbh. Single tags, APIs etc, all good ways to make this dead simple if you can. I wish you guys success!
Sam Winter
Maker
@askmesaas thank you! We can't wait to see where this thing takes us.
Markus Saitmacher
Are you guys planning to add mobile support? E.g. thin layer over the default in-app web browser. Would love to support you guys with Flutter or React Native.
Sam Winter
Maker
@markus_saitmacher1 I think mobile is a must for chat. Would love to pick your brain on the implementation.
Lif Ted
@sam_winter i fell in love with the product at first sight.... but on day 2 i found out relay keeps records of all sites you have used relay on... it would be awesome to add option to stay anonymous. 2) how about an option for sites to display the chat widget so users can also access this even when on mobile? 3)good job :-)
Sam Winter
Maker
@lif_ted Thank you for voicing your concern! I'm curious why you think we keep records of the sites you've used Relay on? The only association with your user account to a given site is if you send a message there because we have to store the message object. On non-Firefox browsers we do use Google Analytics, but we give you the option to opt out in your extension settings. We're working on a script-tag version of Relay so any site owner can add chat for all their visitors on desktop and mobile. Glad to hear you fell in love with Relay! We'll do everything we can to keep you that way :)
Lif Ted
@sam_winter Apologies i was not quite clear, clicking on any user shows all sites the user has made comments on, so an option to delete my posts or not to display all my chat history on various sites to all, could be available. I am sure i am not alone in this boat. You have the future of chat right here... good job once again. cheers!!!
Sam Winter
Maker
@lif_ted oh I see. Thanks for sharing your concern. You can delete individual posts. We'll look into deleting in bulk. We added history to each user's profile to hopefully discourage them from being jerks. And thank you. We sure hope so!
Elliott Tran
Like the old chatrooms of yesteryear's internet and modern day discord, I'm impressed that we can have a disqus-like real time chat on any website. For me, that's a huge utility. I can see it being extremely helpful in hobbyist boards, communities, and blogs.
Sam Winter
Maker
@elliott_tran thank you! Can't wait to see all the use cases we haven't even dreamed of.
Patrick Pistor
Have been following this project for around a year now. Really impressed with the project and how intuitive it is to use.
Sam Winter
Maker
@yogert96 Thanks for being there from the start! We'll do our best to keep things simple even as we scale.
Rob Moore
Cool idea! I think there will need to be a way to focus conversation. Otherwise it will just be a lot of "hi", "hello", "what's up". Unlike a live event or live stream, there isn't a single thing everyone is watching and can comment on Also, the bottom right placement goes over a lot of the site chat icons (intercom, drift, etc)
Sam Winter
Maker
@robmoore That's a great point. Hopefully the "hi"s start to die down after launch day. We'll also break the conversation by path etc. (e.g., subreddit-specific chat) on a case-by-case basis as we grow. As far as the placement, you can drag the button around. You can also toggle Relay's visibility by clicking its icon in the browser menu.
Eugeniu Vozoca
Cool project. If only it was launchable from Chrome's extensions bar instead of injecting it into websites... You can't just assume that part of the screen is free for grabs for any website and I wouldn't want to see the icon always there.
Sam Winter
Maker
@devjah Totally hear you on that! To respect users' screen real estate, we made clicking the Relay icon in the browser toggle its visibility. Once you click it, it won't show again until you click it again. Hope that helps!
Josemaria Nriagu
Just joined PH, with my angelList profile to upvote Relay! Keep it up team💯🙌
Sam Winter
Maker
@thedrflynn you the best! Glad to know we have users like you supporting us.
Uğur Keskin
OMG THATS AN AWESOME IDEA I WISH I WOULD THINK THAT BEFORE
Sam Winter
Maker
@ugur_keskin Thanks, we were lucky to think of it!
Rony Fadel
Love it, it's like Yakalike (https://lifehacker.com/download-...) from 15 years ago. Only thing I dislike is that there's no guest mode..
Sam Winter
Maker
@ronyfadel Thank you for the feedback! I'll definitely study Yakalike. We'll consider adding guest mode. Could be pretty powerful to lower the barrier to chat.
Sam Winter
Maker
@lif_ted agreed, social login will become especially important as we start to build out profiles.
esch89
Oh this is super cool!
Sam Winter
Maker
@esther_cheng thank you!
BΞN
@sam_winter great idea. Sadly it only works for domains and not URL's =/ For example » just one chat for all videos on youtube is too general. would be nice to chat with people watching the same video. on the other hand it could resolve into always empty relay chat. But if you would provide a switch (domain/URL) that would be pretty neat I guess.
Sam Winter
Maker
@hi_iamben that's a great point. We do plan to provide path-based channels on a case-by-case basis once a certain domain reaches critical mass.