Currently at/near the top of Product Hunt. AMA.
Hey y'all, 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.
I'd love to answer any questions about the launch on producthunt.com or about Relay.
Trending on Indie Hackers
Congrats on the launch! Do you let sites add it directly or is it only a browser extension? How do you plan to get enough people on any given site using it to keep it active? Might be interesting to highlight the most active site so that all extension users can jump to whatever page has a good discussion going. Just a thought!
Thanks, Gabe! It's currently just a browser extension, but we plan to make it available as a script tag in the not-too-far future. I really like your idea of highlighting the most active site. That's a great way to build up critical mass. So far we've mostly relied on a trending section and notifications to congregate everyone.
Oh nice, trending section + notifications does the job as well. I've seen this idea tried a few times (although generally comments, not chat) and they always seem to spike and then die pretty quickly. Your execution is much much better than anything I've seen so far though so really hoping this takes off. Best of luck!
Thank you! It's been a ton of work as you can imagine. I really hope we can be the first to get to consistent activity. Should be all downhill from there.
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Hi,
any examples of such projects that you've seen?
Have you checked out my project? What do you think, can it survive?
Just checking out your homepage it seems like pretty high friction to be able to comment on something, without a compelling value prop. Generally I want to comment on the original site so people see my comment. Do you have any way of making sure comments on your platform get exposure? For example Reddit is similar in that it’s mostly people sharing and commenting on links, but people visit the site directly to discover new content. Is that the direction you’re going?
Thanks for checking it out.
Not sure what you mean, could you elaborate? Because you can comment on "original site" (if you mean homepage for example e.g.
example.com), and visitors will see your comment if they open comment section for that url. Comments on homepage will not be seen on other content pages for that domain e.g.example.comandexample.com/content/1are two different comment section instances.Not sure yet who to target, I have not started marketing yet. One of the ideas is for example to be able to comment on youtube videos with disabled comment section, and also on blog posts which do not include comment sections at all. Problem reaching the public with such demand is... well, they were initially censored so to say, lol.
The irony is I'm commenting here. :P
Also the value is that all your comment history is tied to a single account across the whole Web, which can't be censored/banned from any content.
In your reddit example, you would always have to wait for someone to share the link (which possibly gets shared in some circlejerk i.e. subreddit and thus is also subjected to censorship), and then comments appear. With Voize every comment section already exists by default, there is no need to "share" it anywhere. So for example you don't need to re-share some news article, just start commenting on it.
Also reddit locks the comment section after 6 months or so, thus you would need to re-share, or look elsewhere.
I mean I’d want to comment on someblog.com not the Voize page for someblog.com (because what are the odds there will be someone else that enters that url and sees my comment). The big challenge is how do you get millions of people going to Voize so that comments actually get seen? I think this is the issue that all these kind of services have run into in the past. They tend to be ghost towns because users won’t use them unless there are already lots of users. Even if you focus on YouTube videos with comments disable, same problem, why would I comment on it via Voize if I feel like the odds of someone seeing that comment are very small?
Don’t mean to be a downer! Maybe I’m wrong, just my first impression seeing a few kinds of these sites before.
Yes, no worries, you are not wrong about that being an issue. I'm aware of that problem. I think the solution might be to start building Voize communities around specific sites.
Given your example, I could try to reach out to readers of
someblog.com(let's say the blog itself doesn't provide comment section), and ask them to simply start commenting on each article using Voize.It can also be possible to "embed" Voize comment section directly in sites (just like Disqus does, and facebook et al). Of course site owners would have to agree to use Voize services instead of facebook for example.
Also, for a start, somebody could come up with browser extension which would let readers know if there are any comments already for the currently opened link:
https://i.imgur.com/CRoDKt5.png
This would perhaps save readers time by not having to open Voize just to see there are no comments there.
I'm aware this might take some time, but I think it's doable.
Btw, mind mentioning which similar projects have you seen? I asked but you have not named any. I tried looking for similar projects and found nothing.
Cool, you’re thinking about this in the right way then in my opinion :)
I wish I could remember, it’s been a few years. I just found this when searching google although not one of the ones I’m referring too. Maybe the discussion there will be useful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20292638
Thanks, gulp! I hope so! Haha.
Oh nice, thank you very much for the link! I'll look into it.
Hey Sam! How did you prepare for a successful launch on PH and what were the steps you followed on launch day (and the steps you intend to follow post-launch) ?
Hi! Honestly, it was a lot of work. We built up some solid distribution channels, e.g., Twitter and a mailing list and even my own LinkedIn account. We also paid for someone to design an engaging thumbnail. On launch day, I made sure to reply to comments asap. I think PH might use the number of comments as part of their ranking algo. At worst, it makes the post appear active. Oh yeah, and definitely find a top hunter to hunt your product! All their followers get a notification.
As far as post-launch, our main plan is to follow up on the feedback received. We're working on making Relay available as a script tag, so anyone can embed a chat-based community directly in their website for all their visitors. Super pumped about it!
Thanks Sam, I'm launching in a few weeks too and it is indeed a lot of work. Thanks for the tip on the thumbnail and good luck with Relay!
Thank you :)! Best of luck with the launch.
This is a really fun idea and the experience is super smooth.
I'm by default vary of anything that monitors my browsing habits, what data do you save? And what does you monetization strategy look like, without selling data or ads?
Side not: just noticed that Relay works on localhost which has turned into a lil dev community, pretty damn cool.
Thanks for the kind words, Oscar! We try to store as little data as possible. As far as personal information, we only store your email and IP addresses associated with sessions. Your account is only linked to a certain site when you leave a message there (because we have to store the message itself). On non-Firefox browsers, we use Google Analytics, but you can toggle them off in the extension settings.
Edit: I forgot to reply to your monetization question. Right now we plan to offer Relay as a script tag to website owners. Some have already reached out and said they'd pay for a chat-based community embedded directly in their website. We can also sell digital items like stickers down the line.
Cool!
What was the first audience that you targeted? Who were your first users?
I built something similar, Voize - a website that lets you comment on any website using a single account. With the bookmarklet that I provide, comment sections are also "at most a click away".
Here is my account https://voize.me/user/57KGGELIeUS/
Wow, Traxo looks cool! Our first audience was software developers. They spend a lot of time on desktop computers, are early adopters, and are generally pretty well behaved.
This is such an awesome idea, congrats on the launch, upvoted in PH.
Thanks so much!
Hey Sam, congratulations.
I was about to ask you about moderation challenges - Q is already asked & answered.
I couldn't find link to RelayApp or its PH listing here (figured it out outside this page) but makes easy to jump to your PH or visit RelayApp website.
For the benefit of others here is the link: https://relaychat.app/
Cheers!
Thanks for posting the link! Here's the PH listing as well: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/relay-340ebdce-7227-42f4-b524-ac4cde56f9b9
Congratulations! looks great! I'll try it :)
Well done man! Great product! I'm #4 ;)
Thanks so much! See you on Relay #4 :)
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I'm thinking of writing a blog post about how to launch on Product Hunt. I think it mostly boils down to having a top hunter hunt your product (so his/her followers get a lot of notifications) and lot of firepower in terms of email, social, etc. I'd imagine that a flashy thumbnails helps a lot too.
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Hi! Your site looks super cool. Getting users to download an extension (especially if it doesn't perform a standard function like ad blocking or password storage) is indeed super difficult. On Chrome we've gotten about 600 installs so far today. Adding Google Analytics to the Chrome Store page really helped optimize our conversion rates. extpose.com (cc @gnilly) has also given us some insight on search optimization within the web store.
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Awesome, I just subscribed. Hmm your assets and copy in the Chrome Webstore look great. What's your conversion rate from the webstore detail page?
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Thank you! Moderation is a big concern. We're considering adding moderation and other features for site owners once we make Relay available as a script tag. It's a fine balance, however, because part of the app's appeal is that it's a third party platform and isn't censored by site owners. I don't think there's a clear right answer. We'll have to experiment to create the best experience for both site owners and end users.