Spectrum fills in a void between Github and Slack.
One-liner:
> Spectrum is a new platform for you to join, start and build online communities.
Pain:
> I’ve (@mxstbr) been running large communities for my open source projects on these platforms for years, and have personally felt the pain of managing discussions with hundreds and thousands of people who contribute from all around the world.
Solution:
> Every conversation on Spectrum starts as a thread, its own place to provide rich context for the conversation ahead. Once a thread is published others can join the conversation.
Explore their launch communities: https://spectrum.chat/explore including React, Sketch, and Product Design.
@mxstbr@yvoschaap Hey Yvo, thanks for adding us here 😀
We originally started Spectrum because we were continually frustrated by the lack of community support from running a large (9k+ members) Slack team for designers and developers. As soon as we started working on Spectrum as a replacement for our own Slack team, we started hearing from a bunch of other companies and organizations who were all feeling the same pains as us, and were looking for something better.
Some of the things I'm most excited about that Spectrum offers are:
- open platform first: as a member of many communities, I'm able to view all of the conversations across all of my communities in one unified feed, to avoid the annoying time it takes to navigate between Slack teams or individual forums around the web. As a result, I also have a unified set of direct messages and notifications, which means I don't have to play whackamole with navigating between different community sites or Slack teams to keep up.
- communities are public by default: this means that content is more accessible, doesn't necessarily have to be hidden behind an authorization wall, and lets threads get indexed on search engines to make content more easily discovered on the internet. We also allow communities to have unlimited conversations + messages, which means that even communities who can't afford to pay will not have to worry about a continuous churn of information and discussions getting lost.
- threads first: all conversations on Spectrum are thread based, which means you can follow discrete topics within a community, easily save or link directly to a conversation, and resurface a conversation at any point in time when there's something new to say.
Spectrum is still in beta, which means we're really focused on gathering as much feedback as we can - so if anyone here has any questions at all just let me know and I'll be happy to answer!
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@brian_lovin any moderation features coming? Ban users, spam prevention etc?
@tamedo hey Tony, right now we support thread freezing, deletion, and message deletion. For paying communities you can have multiple moderators with these permissions. As far as moderation features - yes, we're working towards blocking users, thread approval, member approval, spam detection...the whole thing! It's just going to be an iterative process as we tackle these things one by one :)
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@brian_lovin Thanks for the reply. Looking forward to these features. Loving the product, keep up the good work!
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@mxstbr@brian_lovin Amazing product, congrats! Do you consider translating it into other languages?
@yvoschaap thanks for hunting us!
Hey folks! 👋
To elaborate a bit on why I'm personally excited about Spectrum, it all comes back to my open source projects. They're used by lots of people worldwide, but no matter what app I tried there was no way to sustainably create a community around them. Existing platforms quickly break down when you have more than a couple of dozen folks talking. (especially when it's deep, technical discussions)
Brian and Bryn, who had a Slack team for their SpecFM podcast network with 9,000+ members, ran into the same issue. No matter which platform they looked at, none of them really work for this use case.
That's why we tailor-made Spectrum for ourselves. By forcing conversations to be threaded, there can be one, five, ten or a hundred of them going on at the same time but they'll never interfere with each other! Contrary to a forum though, they're still real-time, making them feel more present and active. It's also a single login to get to all of your favorite communities—no more juggling tons of passwords and notfication settings and all that annoying jazz. 💯
To get a feel for what Spectrum is about I'd recommend you head right to the explore page (https://spectrum.chat/explore) to find and join a community that interests you or to create a new one! (for example, what about the ProductHunt community? https://spectrum.chat/product-hunt 😉)
While this might sound like we've got it all figured out, there's still lots to do. (which is why Spectrum is still in public beta) We're constantly experimenting and trying out new things, so we'd love to get your feedback: What do you think we should tackle next?
@yvoschaap@mxstbr I like how you experiment with new features, techniques and even new user interfaces!
Startup founders that themselves are the in the focus of the demographic can really understand the product and users needs, so that's why I recommend Spectrum to every community I know, although as you said there are some polishing and features. Features can be added as we go but what matters are founders that understand the problem and the love of users.
I'll try as much as I can to help with new features or reporting bugs.
@adithya everything is subject to change right now, but:
- custom urls: likely
- self-hosting: not likely
- mobile apps: definitely.
It’s a good question. We did a lot of research with teams who use Discourse. The main issue - as with other forum software - is that there are no “warm bodies”. It never feels like you’re together. People pop in, ask a question (or answer a couple) and leave and wait for an email. Spectrum is meant to be more social and casual so that people can just be around each other (which was a big benefit of public slack teams, but they had a lot of other issues)
Anyway, hope that answers your question!
@adithya That's good feedback! We definitely considered a la carte pricing, but we're not in a hurry to make changes to optimize pricing just yet as we're still very early and working on meeting higher-order product needs. This was basically just the fastest option for us to ship 😁
@adithya@uberbryn Good thoughts on pricing - as Bryn mentioned we're probably not at a point where we can easily build out an a la carte system for specific features like one additional moderator. If you're interested in trialing some of the Standard features (private channels, multiple admins, analytics) just let me know and we can get that set up :)
I've used this to join styled components and Figma communities and It's been much better than alternatives. Only it needs to polish the product a bit more.
Pros:
It's so organized - One feed, one account, one inbox - Indexable for future readers - Conversations are alive for ever
Cons:
Do better with notifications - Edit messages - Suggest other similar threads both when creating a new one and when you've chatted in one
Hey, thanks for the review! We're doing our best to stay on top of everything posted in https://spectrum.chat/spectrum/h... and https://spectrum.chat/spectrum/f..., just in case there's anything specific we can help with :) Otherwise - I definitely hear you about notifications, and that's something we're tweaking pretty regularly to try and find a good system that is clear and high signal for people.
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This looks really cool. I'll be signing up, checking this out, and contributing to some discussions where I feel I have the expertise to do so!
I've been using Spectrum for several months now, since Alpha. The team has really taken the time to listen to what these early users have had to say and improve the platform as a whole.
I think this truly solves a big issue for those people trying to manage a community. It also makes participating in community discussions a way more intuitive and user-friendly process. One account, one inbox.
Pros:
The organization of it all is top class. The team has really put thought into these interactions, & the pain points of managing a community.
Cons:
Mobile could be better. Notifications can be a little confusing at time. Both of these things I'm confident the team will address in time.
@lorikarikari that's a great idea, we don't currently have an embed but we're going to look into it! 💯
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I've been running the Sketch community on Spectrum (previously on Slack), and can't speak highly enough of it. The team is genuinely interested in creating the best product for communities! Go check it out!
@jdunsterville It's been amazing to see your community flourish on Spectrum, we're excited to have you! This is it in case you wanna take a quick peek: https://spectrum.chat/sketch
Mobile experience is a bit rough, I know 😓 We're doing our best with a web app, but native mobile is probably our most-requested feature, so it's top of mind right now. Thanks for the review :)
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I've used this to join styled components and Figma communities and It's been much better than alternatives. Only it needs to polish the product a bit more.
Pros:It's so organized - One feed, one account, one inbox - Indexable for future readers - Conversations are alive for ever
Cons:Do better with notifications - Edit messages - Suggest other similar threads both when creating a new one and when you've chatted in one
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I've been using Spectrum for several months now, since Alpha. The team has really taken the time to listen to what these early users have had to say and improve the platform as a whole.
I think this truly solves a big issue for those people trying to manage a community. It also makes participating in community discussions a way more intuitive and user-friendly process. One account, one inbox.
Pros:The organization of it all is top class. The team has really put thought into these interactions, & the pain points of managing a community.
Cons:Mobile could be better. Notifications can be a little confusing at time. Both of these things I'm confident the team will address in time.
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I'm using Spectrum since few months now and love the friendly community there are on it. Threads are well organized and design is simple
Pros:Design, friendly community
Cons:Mobile version can be better
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