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Show HN: Mobile Chat Groups for Whatsapp and Telegram

I don't know how many of you remember SlackChats - a place to find Slack groups, which is now known as http://www.chitchats.co. I made this after being inspired by that site.

A ton of people use Whatsapp and Telegram groups so you may find it useful to have a kind of Yellowpages for groups, to be able to find them online. The idea is to make it easy to find and connect with people that share your interests.

Any and all feedback welcome.

The link is: http://mobilechatgroups.com/

( 28 comments | 41 points | on HN )
Re:Show HN: Mobile Chat Groups for Whatsapp and Telegram by instakill on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @08:41AM (#9851142)
Link for the lazy: http://mobilechatgroups.com/
Re:Show HN: Mobile Chat Groups for Whatsapp and Telegram by clivecorbz on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @08:43AM (#9851148)
Thanks for the linkage
Re:Show HN: Mobile Chat Groups for Whatsapp and Telegram by haironfire907 on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @08:45AM (#9851161)
Awesome. Thanks!
Re:Show HN: Mobile Chat Groups for Whatsapp and Telegram by jsingleton on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @11:28AM (#9852173)
Nice idea. It's a shame that the integration is manual. Even WhatsApp web is missing some of the group admin features. Perhaps you could generated a vCard (maybe in a QR code) to make adding contacts easier.

I've only used the whatsapp://send?text= URI API before (for https://instabail.uk) but it would be great if they allowed URIs to groups too.

Re:Show HN: Mobile Chat Groups for Whatsapp and Telegram by mariocesar on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @11:03AM (#9851988)
This is a really awesome idea! congratulations! I was thinking on this but didn't know how make it happen.

Just create the group I always have in mind: http://www.mobilechatgroups.com/groups/28/late-night-develop...

Re:Show HN: Mobile Chat Groups for Whatsapp and Telegram by instakill on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @11:06AM (#9852012)
Thanks for the love :)
Re:Show HN: Mobile Chat Groups for Whatsapp and Telegram by tuxone on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @09:30AM (#9851366)
Works great, registration and group join are straightforward.

Looking for some more explore/discovery features (especially location based).

Re:Show HN: Mobile Chat Groups for Whatsapp and Telegram by tuxone on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @09:13AM (#9851275)
You should remove type="number" in phone number input field in order to allow '+'
Re:Show HN: Mobile Chat Groups for Whatsapp and Telegram by instakill on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @09:14AM (#9851285)
Was struggling with that one. I was getting issues with a prefixed +. Will look into it. 00 is the equivalent of + in phone numbers BTW.
Re:Show HN: Mobile Chat Groups for Whatsapp and Telegram by DanSmooth on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @09:38AM (#9851400)
You could use type="tel"[0]. If you specify the pattern it will even validate it on a decent enough browser.

[0] http://www.w3.org/TR/html-markup/input.tel.html

Re:Show HN: Mobile Chat Groups for Whatsapp and Telegram by spacehunt on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @09:29AM (#9851356)
Re:Show HN: Mobile Chat Groups for Whatsapp and Telegram by instakill on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @09:31AM (#9851369)
Oh wow. TIL. I'll definitely have to look into this tonight then.
Re:Show HN: Mobile Chat Groups for Whatsapp and Telegram by hoppi on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @09:05AM (#9851242)
I can only login with Twitter? Websites that only have OAuth login are a bit annoying but usually have 1 - 4 different options so I usually have an available account.

Only having login with twitter is preventing me from listing a group and probably a few others as well.

Re:Show HN: Mobile Chat Groups for Whatsapp and Telegram by instakill on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @09:06AM (#9851250)
Yeah I can understand the frustration. Reason for Twitter is identity credibility. I would have added FB as well but this was churned out quite quickly.
Re:Show HN: Mobile Chat Groups for Whatsapp and Telegram by hoppi on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @09:09AM (#9851258)
Twitter is just as bad at identity credibility as having your own user accounts I would of thought. There are numerous accounts on Twitter with unidentifiable entities?
Re:Show HN: Mobile Chat Groups for Whatsapp and Telegram by instakill on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @09:13AM (#9851278)
For egg accounts, sure, but for anyone with > 1,000 tweets, a real photo and > 500 followers, the level of credibility should suffice for most people. What providers would you add in?
Re:Show HN: Mobile Chat Groups for Whatsapp and Telegram by hoppi on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @10:14AM (#9851617)
Right, so the users can figure out if the user is credible and you don't do it yourself, got a bit confused there.

If users want people to join their groups then they would add their verification regardless, eg register on the site and then in some bio I could add my SO, github etc...

Re:Show HN: Mobile Chat Groups for Whatsapp and Telegram by gowthamgts12 on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @02:29PM (#9853701)
I always wanted these sort of services in India. But can't find one. Nice idea by the way.
Re:Show HN: Mobile Chat Groups for Whatsapp and Telegram by nabusman on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @10:41AM (#9851793)
Any plans on adding search functionality, tagging, or categorization?
Re:Show HN: Mobile Chat Groups for Whatsapp and Telegram by instakill on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @10:45AM (#9851827)
Search is in there, but we'll consider improving it. Tagging not so much, but I did consider categorization last night. Possibly something like Product Hunt lists i.e HN category with groups like HN NYC, HN SF, HN Japan etc.
Re:Show HN: Mobile Chat Groups for Whatsapp and Telegram by soundjack on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @10:46AM (#9851838)
Looks like a great idea, haven't tried yet but if I join a whatsapp group will my number be shared with everyone in that group?
Re:Show HN: Mobile Chat Groups for Whatsapp and Telegram by instakill on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @10:52AM (#9851895)
Hey there! Thanks. No it will only be visible to the creator so that they can add you.
Re:Show HN: Mobile Chat Groups for Whatsapp and Telegram by luastoned on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @09:04AM (#9851235)
Is there a way to list all groups?
Re:Show HN: Mobile Chat Groups for Whatsapp and Telegram by instakill on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @09:05AM (#9851238)
Not currently, the front page will list up to 30. It's quite new so that limit hasn't been reached yet.
Re:Show HN: Mobile Chat Groups for Whatsapp and Telegram by ismail on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @12:00PM (#9852457)
I keep getting error when trying to logon. Standard rails error.
Re:Show HN: Mobile Chat Groups for Whatsapp and Telegram by eloy on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @08:58AM (#9851212)
This is basically IRC for IM platforms, such as Whatsapp.

But I like the idea.

Re:Show HN: Mobile Chat Groups for Whatsapp and Telegram by anc84 on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @10:38AM (#9851778)
If IRC required two separate accounts and ran on proprietary services.
Re:Show HN: Mobile Chat Groups for Whatsapp and Telegram by instakill on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @08:59AM (#9851216)
This is just the index to find those, but yes!