Kiki Schirr

WeKiki - 4-person video chat platform where strangers become friends

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WeKiki is a safe space to meet new friends on the Internet.

The community is vibrant and talking with others face to face helps build lasting relationships--many of our users, though geographically distant, have traveled to meet each other!

Each "party" consists of four video spots that can be filled by any user, or there's a sidebar chat.

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Kiki Schirr
Hi Product Hunt! WeKiki is a simple Chrome video chat platform. There can be up to four participants in video, and more watching and in the sidebar chat. We are currently only on Chrome, and non-mobile. The four person format is intimate— I’ve found in Appear.in that groups larger than 4 either talk over each other and get chaotic, or the opposite. In groups of 6+ people will turn their cameras off for long periods of time, or play music, or otherwise lag the conversation. Thank you in advance to the community for your questions, comments, and suggestions! I look forward to hearing what you have to say!
Kiki Schirr
@bentossell haha, you struck the balance between patience and urging me to post very well, I would say! First, I would say that Blab was a magical product. I am a former Blab user and I, like many others, mourned its eventual demise, even if the writing had been on the wall for a while. I have remained in touch with many of the people I met on Blab, and even met or hosted several of the people I knew only from the Internet. So you might notice that this version of WeKiki looks rather familiar. We kept the 4-person format. There's an active sidebar chat. Many of the people are even the same, haha. But 2 major things separate us even now: 1. We took a different route with the technology, attempting more P2P connections 2. We intend to monetize (because we are bootstrapping!) And in the future we have plans to be very different--our monetization strategy is slotted to be private rooms. We will be offering private DMs. We will open our API to the addition of bots and other customizations. But for now, we're rather retro. Thanks for the question, Ben!
Jp Valery
@kikischirr Impressive! Congrats :)
Kiki Schirr
@jpvalery Thank you, JP!
Saul Fleischman
@kikischirr Congrats on launching quickly and on bootstrapping WeKiki - and for the nerve to name it after yourself. I put some time into building a product plan for a "better Blab" myself, and we decided against it. Assessing the competitive landscape for a product whose customers would financially sustain, it looked grim. I wish you success with that. I'm of the belief that people will pay for sex and will pay for a meeting product, if it beats competitors in some ways, but they will not pay to hang out. Find a couple people (or just Jaron) to bounce ideas off - people who are familiar with the competitive landscape and want you to win. The monetization: there's honesty in this. The user knows what you're up to, what you want from him. You are not toying with him just to press his buttons and see what he will do, or collecting data on which videocalls he joins/creates, so as to later build an AI or sell him to advertisers. To be clear, this is why I never trusted the creators of Blab. Coming from years of experience with videocalls, both party-type and meetings, when I encountered Blab, I found just two things that I continue to believe they did well: 1. allowing potentially more people in the videocall page (in the chat) than are in the videocall 2. they initially seeded the community well (as I heard, from Slack communities and Reddit) Unfortunately, they quickly ceased putting any time into seeding the community. Please keep in mind that few people will quit using the site for the inevitable influx of trolls - if there are plenty of worthwhile people to hang with (and especially if they find that it's like every other day that they're meeting someone new and worthwhile.) So please seed this from beyond those who remember you from Blab. tty soon, I'm sure.
Kiki Schirr
@osakasaul Wow, Saul thank you for sharing your insights. Maybe I'll catch you on WeKiki sometime to discuss them further, haha. :) I think seeding the community, as you said, will be vital and one of our biggest challenges--that's something I'd like to discuss with you. Thanks again!
Kristin Cheatwood
I love WeKiki! Kiki and her partner have done an AMAZING job of creating a platform that is for those of us who are in our 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s+ to connect! This platform is not full of hashtaging, seflie experting teenagers, but instead is full of real people wanting to make real connections with their peers!!! Kudos!
Kiki Schirr
@cheatwoodphoto hahhaha, no teens?--it's a feature! :P To be fair, Cheats, don't we have a few teens?
KerryBodle
@kikischirr you can count me as a teen. I'm constantly told to be less child like!
BobbY ShadoW
The Shadow has many friends and even more enemies. Blab was a place where they come to hang out with me and spend time sharing things from Bitcoin ATMs to what the weather is like in the UK. We had some amazing times and started shows and did some life changing things. We actually all became family and friends in a group that spanned the globe. We have an eclectic group of friends from all over the world, Sausage in New York, Gabe in the South going walking, Pretto inventing things, and of course JS Gilbert keeping it hilarious. I made some amazing friends and always look forward to whatever insanity they are going to come up with next. From shows to social support and hangouts, the entire experience was transformative. Unfortunately, all good things come to an end, and blab went away after a year. A lot of people stayed in touch and we kept things going, but it was not the same. Along came WeKiki and really brought it all back. Kiki brought us back smiles, laughs and a platform to let the good times roll, and I cant wait for things to get back to the way they were, amazing times with amazing friends. I love the WeKiki platform, still in its infancy, because this is a place where we can hang out with old friends and make some new ones. Looking forward to hanging out with you and really excited about the platform!
Andrea Hill
As others have said, would love if this were to fill the gap blab left. However, they really struggled with the monetization piece - I'm a bit skeptical that paid private chat rooms will fill that void (because at that point, aren't you just video chat like zoom?) but I hope you can make it work!
Kiki Schirr
@afhill My big fear regarding private rooms is not that we will appear just like the competition, but that it will kill the urge to make new friends. So we'll have to approach it carefully. I'm considering making the rooms need to be ephemeral also, like the main rooms currently are. What do you think? Would that help?
Andrea Hill
@kikischirr could help.. and actually, I should apologize, I was being very "feature-focused" there. If your use case is "people come here to have great convos with smart people they don't know yet", it's really a very different problem you're solving than video conferencing. People probably wouldnt see them as competitiors.. but you COULD benefit from "I already use Wekiki to help me find new friends, why would I want to go off and use something else once I've found them?"
Kiki Schirr
@afhill No need to apologize, you had an excellent point--didn't mean to divert the conversation, it's just that this has worried me for a bit. You're very right that the use case for the private premium rooms might not be apparent... Hm.
Andrea Hill
@kikischirr ya never know - think about all the sub-services that launched private twitter channels, etc. I always felt like blab had more of a chance to compete as a marketing/ brand awareness platform; maybe bring in some analytics, etc. If it could be used for marketers, you'd hit some legit budgets there!
Ryan Hoover
Super awesome that you built your own Blab after it shut down, @kikischirr. 💯
Kunal Bhatia
You have so many evangelists on Twitter! Connected with a few over the past couple of days. I'll certainly have to try WeKiki. Coming from someone who missed his chance to Blab 😁
Angie
@kunalslab I'm a self proclaimed Wekiki ambassador. Hope to connect with you on Wekiki :)
Kiki Schirr
@kunalslab thank you! See you soon! :)
Kunal Bhatia
@angeliqueangiea @kikischirr definitely after this blizzard in Boston! Can't see anything in front of my feet! 🌨 ⛄ 🌬 💨
Bruno Winck
I tried too, on Chrome, Windows and it works well. Now it's time to grab a few more friends and start some parties. I like that @kikischirr is fully dedicated to it, this only makes a huge difference with blab.
Kiki Schirr
@brunowinck Par-ty! Par-ty! Par-ty! :D
Angie
I love how @kikischirr listens to our early suggestions :D
Kiki Schirr
@angeliqueangiea Angie, I owe you for all the outreach you've done on WeKiki. I will listen to your suggestions any day!
Danny McDonald
Never used Blab, so looking at this with a fresh perspective. I played with Wekiki a little bit in the last week. It's definitely a lot of fun and runs really smooth. Love the idea of creating a room and calling it 'focus group for XYZ' and get immediate responses. I could see this platform being huge for people doing some ideation or even Startup Weekend competitions with surveying. Personally, I would love to see some private chat rooms as I found it easier to set this up and it seemed to use less battery than a google hang outs. I see more use cases for 'entrepreneurs only' product hunters' ect. I would like to see this integrated with a Reddit AMA as I see the set up just sooo much easier than other applications. Overall, great job Kiki with Wekiki! I like it a lot and hope to use it for bouncing off ideas and getting some customer surveys in!
Kiki Schirr
@danny_mcdonald You know, I had never thought of it for quick product focus groups but that does make perfect sense. We should idea-jam sometime, Danny. I'd love your opinion on a few other things, too! Thank you!
Lisa Dziuba
Can WeKiki be used by non-native speakers?
Kiki Schirr
@lisadziuba We have a large population of people whose second or third language is English. I think it might be Jane's fifth language. We also have rooms that crop up in Arabic quite often--mostly a very friendly group of Moroccans. So if you're looking to practice Arabic or English, WeKiki is ideal. I'm hoping to gather more languages in time. Great question, thank you!
Lisa Dziuba
@kikischirr thanks for answering! I'm just feeling a bit shy, because my English isn't fluent and that might be an issue when talking to strangers. You know, it's very difficult to make jokes in not native language :)
Kiki Schirr
@lisadziuba I can't wait to see you around WeKiki. :)
Mubashar Iqbal
Congrats on the launch, excited to see where this goes. I liked Blab a lot too, and I love the changes you've made to try and build something that will (hopefully) be more sustainable.
Kiki Schirr
@mubashariqbal Thank you for the encouragement, Mubs. It means quite a lot from a skilled developer like you! :D
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