Disrupting messaging ?
Our attempt to create a new, yet familiar messaging experience.
We live in the era of self-driving cars, rockets flying to Mars and Artificial Intelligence. Many of us live in our messaging apps, and the experience that we have there is really out of date. That is why, 18 months ago, we decided to change that and built Dikalo.
The why
My own experience with messaging apps was bad. Hundreds of people I know felt the same. Most messaging apps always force you to give away a piece of private information in order to use them. This model is fine if the person I want to connect with is someone I know. But the truth is, this is not always the case.
In real life we connect with people we dont know (selling/buying something online ), we connect with people we just met (at a conference, in the train ), we connect with people just for a short period of time(a business transaction). And for those occasions we dont necessary want to have those people as “contacts”. In fact sometimes we just want to message someone without having to sign up anywhere.
Would’nt it be nice if we had a messaging app for all these occasions. An app that I could use with family and friends, but also with people not close to me ? With people I just met ?
Would’nt it be nice if I could decide what information I give to whom and not being forced to give out anything before even being able to send the first message ?
The challenge
Without a doubt, this was the most challenging project we’ve ever worked on. But, it allowed us to grow so much at the same time.
Messaging is an incredibly hard problem to solve: both technologically and from the user experience perspective. Specially in 2016 with big names like WhatApp, Facebook, Google, WeChat, Line in the space with billions and billions in the bank, creating a new messaging app might not be the best idea.
Yet, it was this challenge that we accepted. Even though we are a team of 3 people with very very very very little resources. No funding.
Elom, Cedric and I talked to over 300 people on how they use messaging. We were shocked! Almost everyone worked with messaging in a very different way. Some people would use messaging only for close friends and family because it’s too tied to their private phone number. Some others have 2,3 different numbers for different groups of people. Others will simply share their phone number hoping that “everything goes well”. Others would setup fake emails, fake accounts, fake phone numbers for their online transactions.
How do you create a product for such a broad audience? Moreover, when we were saying that “we want to fix messaging” to most of “influentials” people , they just laughed at us, saying “yeah right, good luck”.
That was hard to hear, but gave us even more motivation to prove that we can do it!
What problem did we solve and for who?
When we talked with people in forums or at conferences, we tried to understand the main issues they have with messaging. Because, once you know what’s broken , you can come up with a solution.
The main problem we identified was giving up personal informations in order to connect. See we cant talk on WhatsApp for example unless I have your phone number. Moreover people didn’t always want to be connected on all apps that have their phone number. Which means assuming I give you my phone number to connect on WhatsApp, and all of the sudden, we are also connected in other messaging apps, because they all share the same number. So if I ever wanted to block you. I will have to remember to block you on all others apps also. What a mess.
What we are building is a messaging platform you can use on all occasions. With family and friends, but also with people on the go. In fact a messaging app you can use without even signing up. No emails, no phone number, no sign up required. Ever.
Messaging done right
Dikalo is a messaging platform that gives you total control on what you share with whom. You could simple visit the website or launch the app on your mobile device, create a conversation and use it forever for free. No email, no phone number, no registration required.
Because Dikalo is not tied to anything personal about users. It can be used everywhere and on all occasions. You can have a list of friends like on any other messenger. But also create temporary conversations for people you just met for the first time, or connections that wont last for a long period of time.
Where is Dikalo today ?
We just launched Dikalo in beta on the web and for Mac OS, Window and Linux. We plan to release native mobile apps for Android and iOS mid January 2017.
Since our first beta release thousands and thousands of messages have been send through Dikalo.
But that’s just the beginning.
The future
With Dikalo we want to create a messaging platform that you can use for everything. From communication with friends, to communication with your customers on your website, blog, social media.
Either you are doing customer support for your small business or you are selling/buying stuff on Amazon, either you are dating someone online or you just met someone at a conference.
For all this occasions you should not need different apps. Dikalo want to be your messaging of choice.
What’s next
Please visit https://www.dklo.co or download one of our native clients and start creating conversations with people that matters to you.
Connect with us
We’d love to hear your feedback, questions, ideas, and suggestions. We’re on a mission to create the best messaging platform for everyone, so feel free to send us an email anytime at: hello@dklo.co , to follow Dikalo on twitter @iamdikalo or to directly chat with us on our Dikalo group for feedbacks.
Note: We are working hard to make Dikalo a great experience and as good as any other messaging app. But we are a small startup (3 people actually) with very little resources and no funding. So bear with us if you find any bug or things that are not working the way you expected. We are constantly improving the platform and are always open to feedback and critics.
