[guardian-dev] making Gibberbot as successful as Whatsapp without selling out

Hans-Christoph Steiner hans at guardianproject.info
Tue Sep 18 22:07:46 EDT 2012


We've been having this discussion off list, so I wanted to bring it out
to the public forum to get more ideas flowing:

On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 9:19 PM, Hans-Christoph Steiner <
hans at guardianproject.info> wrote:

> On 09/14/2012 02:03 AM, Nathan of Guardian wrote:
> > On 09/13/2012 10:50 PM, Mark Belinsky wrote:
> >>
> >> There are a few features that set these apart. Whereas gibberbot
> >> requires a tutorial, these apps "just work".
> >
> > I will say that is is many of the "just works" aspects that are entirely
> > contrary to privacy and security by design. This is the crux we find
> > ourselves at. Being here in India, I am experience the prepaid
> > pay-per-message world people live in, so I think the idea that you get
> > "free unlimited global messaging" is pretty attractive, though deceptive
> > because people are still paying for mobile data packets.
> >
> > I think we could market Gibberbot, or perhaps a better named app, as
> > "Global Free Unlimited Mobile Messaging with the best Security and
> > Privacy Controls". Maybe we come up with a new name for both Gibberbot
> > and ChatSecure, so we can claim Android and iOS, and even integrate with
> > CryptoCat2, so we have a web/desktop experience.
> >
> > I counter Mark's assertion that Gibberbot requires a tutorial to use. We
> > put in the wizard text to help communicate some of the more advanced
> > features of security. Otherwise, putting in your Google or Facebook
> > username and password just works.
> >
> > Still, here are some features that I hope we can adopt in Gibberbot to
> > make the app more simple. I know Miron is working on many of these, and
> > Derek has designed similar concepts in the past:
> >
> > - Make the app feel more like SMS messaging as opposed to the outdated
> > buddy list/chat/IM messaging. This means focus on persistent
> > conversation threads in an inbox as the primary interface.
> >
> > - Hide the concept of "logging in" as much as possible. If people want
> > to communicate via their Google account, then we should tap right into
> > their pre-existing registering Android/Google credentials, or oauth into
> > their Facebook. Any registering/connect/disconnect should happen in the
> > background.
> >
> > - Make it easy to create a new account (prehaps auto-registering on
> > jabber.org servers) for people that don't have or know their gmail or
> > facebook account info. The concept is "message me on Gibberbot" not
> > "chat with me on Gmail/Gtalk/Facebook via Gibberbot".
> >
> > - Perhaps this new account login/username is OPTIONALLY based on their
> > phone number, such that it is easy to find/connect to people you already
> > know w/o any more information. This is similar to RedPhone's use of your
> > phone number as the username/extension. I think this is a huge
> > security/privacy risk in terms of traffic analysis.
> >
> > - Support file, picture, audio transfer/attachments to the
> > conversation... MMS continues to suck and not work, but people still are
> > trying to figure out how to send private picture messages
> >
> > Any others people want to add to the list?
>
> I think we can emulate the Whatsapp quite a bit while keeping to privacy
> by design really just by using sensible defaults.  Honestly, I think the
> only stuff we shouldn't emulate is the marketing and spamming of the
> contacts.  In addition to what Nathan outlines, here's what we would
> need to do:
>
> - we choose a good, no logging service like dukgo.com or jabber.ccc.de
> make it the default.
>
> - if its not setup, use their phone number to create a new account on
> the default service
>
> - have it generate and store a password, with an option to set it if
> they want.
>
> - provide a dead simple way for people to sms the install link to people
> in their contacts, but one-by-one and make it apparent what the message
> is for
>
> - whenever a message from a new contact is received or sent, it can add
> that as a XMPP/gtalk contact, then providing what Whatsapp does not:
> interoperable buddy lists with your gmail/gtalk.
>
>
> This would all be the default setup behavior, but have one button early
> on that leads you to the standard XMPP client setup screens.
>
> .hc

>





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