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Michael Eckstein

SocialChat by Buffer - Start conversations on your site. Keep them going on social.

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SocialChat is a simple website chat widget from the team at Buffer. By simply copying and pasting a few lines of code, you can enable a chat widget on your website, blog or app. Visitors can then easily send you a Facebook message or Twitter DM, and you can turn those conversations into ongoing relationships on social media. No other tools needed!

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Joseph Ayoub
I love buffer as a product and as a company, but I don't understand this move. Why not use Facebook's plugin directly as 90% of the people have a facebook account. If the +, is to have a twitter DM, then it's not worth the hussle of installing a new widget (vs installing directly the facebook one).
Kevan Lee
Maker
@joseph_ayoub Hi Joseph, thanks so much for the comment. We do a TON of customer support and interaction on Twitter, and we serve a lot of businesses with customer bases and audiences there, too. You're exactly right: Facebook has the biggest market share by far. We've found Twitter to be a significant channel for customer/audience engagement, too. Volume may be lower than FB, but it's an audience we still believe in serving. Would love to keep the conversation going if that sparks any thoughts!
Joseph Ayoub
@kevanlee Ok I get it. I think the fact that you are a tech company + an american service, brings a lot of Customer support through twitter. We run a mainstream eshop in France, and twitter is becoming less and less important I think. I'll try it though.
Kevan Lee
Maker
@joseph_ayoub Yes, great summary, Joseph. And I appreciate you sharing this fresh perspective about demographics -- this'll be very useful as we continue iterating on the product!
Brian Peters

We're able to use SocialChat by Buffer to connect with customers on social media (directly on our website!), which feels super natural and intuitive to them.

It's really easy to get set up, too - only taking us about 10 minutes to create the code, paste it on our website, and go live.

Excited to have a chat tool that doesn't require tons of setup or maintenance.

Looking forward to seeing how this improves the performance of our landing pages! :)

Pros:

Super easy to use, powerful, and allows us to connect to customers via social media.

Cons:

None

Dave Poly
ProWriter
Tough space. A lot of competition for that bottom right corner of your website. But awesome to see Buffer expanding it's offerings into new markets!
Michael Eckstein
Maker
@davepoly There's certainly a wide spectrum of options out there! Thanks for checking it out and for the encouragement, Dave.
Michael Eckstein
Maker
Heya Product Hunters, There's no shortage of chat widgets you can add your website these days. With SocialChat we decided to build something different – something simpler that does less. Our widget helps you start conversations on your website and keep them going on social. Your visitors can start a new Twitter DM or Facebook Message with a click. From there, you can reply from the native social apps or sites you already use everyday. No other software or tools needed. Our widget even comes with a nifty little customization tool. Add your Twitter and Facebook handles, a custom greeting, and pick a color to match your site. Then copy a small bit of code it generates and paste is on your website, blog, ecommerce store – wherever. There's also a super simple Javascript API that allows you to toggle the widget, dynamically update the greeting and more. See the "Extras" section. And of course it's totally free! We hope you find it useful and please do let us know if have any thoughts on how we could improve it. @twanlass was the main maker on this one and I know he'd especially love to hear from you! 😄 Cheers Mike
@Bernardamus
If we compare this Social Chat widget with products like @intercom or @freshchat , what are the options for targeting App users with specific CTA messages?
Kevan Lee
Maker
@bernardamus Good one. We chose not to include any targeting with SimpleChat. We wanted to keep this first version pretty lean. Could definitely be worth exploring on the roadmap, though!
Brian Peters
Great tool, super simple to set up, and allows us to connect with customers on social media. Over the past few years, we've seen a huge influx of customer support tickets come through on Facebook and Twitter and SocialChat by Buffer is a response to that trend. This super neat widget allows us to meet our customers where they spend the most time (social media) and tackle their questions and challenges - big or small - head on. No workflows, no complicated setup, no superfluous extras. Just a simple tool to connect with your customers and keep them happy. :)
Nagaraju Gajula
This is a great idea
@Bernardamus
Well, it's a cool simple idea, what a pity that the conversation it's opened in a new window. If only the APIs allowed to keep that conversation into an iFrame inside of the bubble widget ...
Michael Eckstein
Maker
@bernardamus Thanks for the great feedback! Keeping it on the page'd be neat for sure. :)
Stuart Arsenault
The chat widget builder / editor to actually going live on site is so cool. Such a good experience & on-boarding flow.
leonidas varnavas
Simple and useful. You guys are among the very few who keep doing that. Upvoted and testing!
Michael Eckstein
Maker
@leanshot Thank you so much!
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