[phumbe]

I shipped an MVP of an instant messaging app that re-imagines the dynamics of chat. Your conversation is no longer limited to the vertical direction. It can expand in the horizontal direction to separate different but simultaneous topics!

https://xpanxn.com

I also did a couple of Show HN posts for it. Didn't get much traction with either, but it's ok because I think my next steps are to revise the landing page and get a more proper UI.

Feedback is very welcome!

[godelski]

> Feedback is very welcome!

I don't get it. Are you threading but just making threads side by side? The demo isn't making much sense because logically they could be all vertical.

And if you're just placing threads to the side, doesn't this require the main thread to be squeezed? I can't imagine this would look good on a phone except in landscape. But I haven't used landscape since I had a physical keyboard. Everything you have tells me this is what you're doing: a style change.

I think the demo needs a more clear example. What does it look like? The demo should make it abundantly clear what's happening and what your product solves. That's your 1 minute to get me hooked and read more. To get me to try it. New styles, even if more efficient, have more friction, because it is new and things aren't where you expect. Your demo needs to show that it is worth the friction.

[phumbe]

Thanks for the feedback -- definitely agree on the demo! Based on some feedback from one of the Show HNs, I'm planning to make some fake little chat bot, so users have something to interact with (albeit in a very scripted/formulaic way) instead of sending a link to a friend. The chat bot will replace the static demo entirely.

It's definitely a style change first and foremost. I got sick of this pattern: friend sends message1, message2, message3; I respond reply1, reply2, reply3. And then they probably reply to some (if not all) of my replies. Usually it's pretty clear which message corresponds to which topic, but it's always messy. With XpanXn, it's explicit and visually obvious.

Each topic column is a fixed width. You can pan around the chat canvas and zoom in/out exactly as you'd expect! In fact, another motivator was knowing that a lot of people like really small font sizes on their phones. This way, you tailor font size just by zooming in/out. There's definitely some opportunity to improve that, but for now, I think the ability to pan tends to most of that concern.

[dhalp]

Whats the main differentiator between this and traditional threads in a service like slack?

[phumbe]

I think the differentiator is two-fold.

1. Threads aren't secondary. There's no secondary window, and threads don't get lost in the amalgamation of main window messages. All threads are presented equally, which brings me to...

2. It's visual. You see the entire graph -- how the conversation flows -- and you directly interact with the chat canvas.