Chatrooms and Conferences

This has been in the top 3 positions (mostly on top) of the wishlist for 12 months now. Digsby is first and foremost and IM client and Conversation/Chat is a bread-and-butter component of an IM client, and just about every other IM client has this feature. It's the only thing stopping me implementing Digsby as the standard IM client for our enterprise. We use Conference/Chat extensively for trouble tickets and collaboration.

Facebook Chat - Votes 449 (Implemented)
LinkedIn Support - Votes 314 (Implemented)
Twitter Support - Votes 93 (Implemented)
vkontakte.ru - Votes 11 (Implemented)
Multi-person conversations - Votes 2790 (Not implemented)
Most companies (and probably individuals if you believe the wishlist votes) don't care about MySpace, Facebook, Twitter or various Email account integration and yet these have been implemented before the Conference feature. What gives?

Is there a time line for when this feature will be added?
Is this even being actively worked on?

Some feedback from the Developers about why this continually slips down the priority list when it remains at the top of the wishlist would be really appreciated..

Last edited by mkstalen (2009-03-31 19:15:29)

first, i (unfortunately) need to reiterate that we've been fixing bugs and not working on new features for quite a while. the "priority list" has had one thing at the top for over a year. BUGS.

occasionally we add a new feature like the ones you listed, but all of those are completely different from something like group chat. adding facebook chat took less than a week. ditto for twitter. 3 days for linkedin. those all fit within the existing architechture of the program. group chat does not. it's probably going to take a couple weeks to get a rough version, then we need to polish it and make sure it works right all the time. even after that, there will probably be bugs. altogether i wouldn't be surprised if it took 6 weeks to add group chat to digsby.

second, it should be noted that we don't base our decisions entirely on the wishlist. it's a tool to guide us, but not the only thing we use to figure out what to make next. additionally, we haven't actually added many new features suggested by users (there's what, 6 pages of requests on digsby.org? how many have we done... 5 maybe?). now that we're finally (almost) done with all the major known bugs, we can start adding features again. even though group chat is way above everything else in terms of number of requests and vote-ratings, we're not going to start off with that right away. this is simply because there's probably a few dozen tiny things we can knock out in a week or two that will add a lot of value and usability to the program - more than getting a half-assed version of something we haven't had for the entirety of the program's public lifetime.

mkstalen wrote:

vkontakte.ru - Votes 11 (Implemented)

ummm what?

mike wrote:

first, i (unfortunately) need to reiterate that we've been fixing bugs and not working on new features for quite a while. the "priority list" has had one thing at the top for over a year. BUGS.

I understand that 'bugs' will always be at the top of a development team's list, no-one likes their own code having bugs. But software will always have bugs. There is no software without bugs. Requested features need to be implemented as well as bug fix's. An IM client without group chat is like a word processor without a spellchecker, or a spreadsheet without a SUM() function.

mike wrote:

occasionally we add a new feature like the ones you listed, but all of those are completely different from something like group chat. adding facebook chat took less than a week. ditto for twitter. 3 days for linkedin. those all fit within the existing architechture of the program. group chat does not. it's probably going to take a couple weeks to get a rough version, then we need to polish it and make sure it works right all the time. even after that, there will probably be bugs. altogether i wouldn't be surprised if it took 6 weeks to add group chat to digsby.

If you added all the time together which was spent on all those things then group chat could have been developed in that time. Yes there will be bugs, people won't care. They can be sorted out one at a time.

mike wrote:

second, it should be noted that we don't base our decisions entirely on the wishlist....even though group chat is way above everything else in terms of number of requests and vote-ratings, we're not going to start off with that right away.

Has the wishlist been considered at all? Sometimes it seems like you only want to put in the "cool stuff", things which are the current fad (facebook, twitter etc) rather than the stuff people have been begging for, or which are possibly a little harder to implement.

mike wrote:

this is simply because there's probably a few dozen tiny things we can knock out in a week or two that will add a lot of value and usability to the program - more than getting a half-assed version of something we haven't had for the entirety of the program's public lifetime.

If the number of votes for those "few dozen tiny things" exceed the number of votes for the group chat, then I can understand you wanting to get them out of the way. But if they don't? According to your users the thing that will add the most value is group chat. Digsby may not have had group chat for the entirety of it's public life time, but people have been asking for it for the entirety of it's public life time. For 99% of your users even a half-assed buggy version of chat is better than none.

mike wrote:

mkstalen wrote:

vkontakte.ru - Votes 11 (Implemented)

ummm what?

http://digsbies.org/site/content/wishlist/vkontakteru

mkstalen wrote:

Requested features need to be implemented as well as bug fix's.

Yes, I'm sure many users would have been very happy to hear we were working on group chat despite the fact that they couldn't log into MSN, see their myspace information, send a file, or any of the other numerous issues we've fixed.

mkstalen wrote:

Yes there will be bugs, people won't care. They can be sorted out one at a time.

Yes, they will. And they will e-mail us and submit bug reports, even if we post a "Group Chat FAQ" that says x, y and z don't work properly, we'll still get people asking about those issues because many people don't read all available information before asking for help. they still need to be responded to, and that's just time that would be better spent on something else. why release something with known bugs when it's just going to cause problems for most people? keep in mind there is an alpha release process where users are more likely to read the change log, release notes, etc. and that's what it's used for (as well as finding previously unknown bugs).

mkstalen wrote:

Has the wishlist been considered at all? Sometimes it seems like you only want to put in the "cool stuff", things which are the current fad (facebook, twitter etc) rather than the stuff people have been begging for, or which are possibly a little harder to implement.

I suppose not, no. Twitter was added because it was clearly something that was taking off, and needs better tools to manage it than just the web interface. Fad or not, it certainly is popular (when your product has become a Jon Stewart punchline, you can't be doing too badly). Facebook chat was added because we had a chance to prove ourselves as capable of doing something new, and it paid off since we were the first third party facebook chat client. Facebook is hardly a fad either... 200 million users, and all that. Just because you don't use something doesn't make it a fad.

So, pretty much any substantial feature we've added so far has been internally generated. If it was on the wishlist (twitter was), that was coincidence. However, as stated in the most recent blog post, we're changing tracks for a little while and going to be paying a lot more attention to features than bugs since most of the show-stoppers are done with. We have a ticket in our project management system full of our ideas for features and we have the digsbies wishlist for user ideas. We're currently working on creating a merged (and pruned) list of what we're actually going to implement in the coming weeks.

mkstalen wrote:

If the number of votes for those "few dozen tiny things" exceed the number of votes for the group chat, then I can understand you wanting to get them out of the way. But if they don't? According to your users the thing that will add the most value is group chat.

mike wrote:

we don't base our decisions entirely on the wishlist

mkstalen wrote:

For 99% of your users even a half-assed buggy version of chat is better than none.

Intentionally releasing poor quality software is not part of our design philosophy.

mkstalen wrote:

http://digsbies.org/site/content/wishlist/vkontakteru

It says implemented, which is why I'm confused. It's clearly not part of the program.

I won't argue about priorities etc, but just wanted to voice my vote for xmpp group chat.  It's a requirement in my chat client choice.  I'd love to use only digsby, and understand the sort of technical implementation hurdles, but would urge the powers to be to break through them!  Even a beta with buggy support would be better than nothing for me.

is this coming out any time soon? could there be a guestimate on when this will come out? its the only thing that stops me from using this program every day rather than using the cruddy official aim client.

I'm guessing it's not happening any time soon.

Just wanted to throw this in. I turned on everyone here at my company to digsby. Total of 25 people over a year ago. Now? Still no group chat, the bosses here say install Trillan. I understand dev time, just wanted to let you know, you guys lost 25 people because of this.

I still use you guys at home, but its pretty sad this hasn't happened in over 1 year of requests.

dhan wrote:

Just wanted to throw this in. I turned on everyone here at my company to digsby. Total of 25 people over a year ago. Now? Still no group chat, the bosses here say install Trillan. I understand dev time, just wanted to let you know, you guys lost 25 people because of this.

I still use you guys at home, but its pretty sad this hasn't happened in over 1 year of requests.

Agreed. Here is another small company with another 47 people that moved over to Trillian as well (odd that we both started with same Digsby and - after a big fail - both went to Trillian).

Once Digsby becomes a real contender perhaps we'll see it, but right now it's the Opera to Trillian's Firefox.

AkujinD wrote:

This should have a high priority on the timeline.

when will this be implemented?

After waiting over 12 months for the Conference feature (which should be a standard feature) to appear I'm finally bailing on Digsby.
There's been no progress on this feature and no commitment from the developers to implement it.
I'm trading it in for Trillian Astra which covers most of what Digsby does, but more importantly it has all the features I require.

Good luck guys, maybe I'll check back in 6 months to see if you've gotten anywhere with this.

Came here looking to see if chat rooms were hidden away somewhere (Can't think of an IM client w/o this capability), alas you guys didn't include it as a feature.

People have been begging for this feature for about a year now. Installed yesterday. Uninstalling today. I hope your competitors are watching how not to alienate potential users.

I hate to have to quit using Digsby, but I haven't been able to uninstall Windows Live Messenger yet for this exact reason. There are circumstances when I must have more than one person in a chat, and so must switch from Digsby for that time. It's a real hassle, but other than that and a few minor, icing-on-the-cake issues, I really do love Digsby.

Basically once this Feature gets implemented... MANY users will stick to using Digsby as well as recommend it to other users...

I think it wise to implement it with whatever bugs it comes with and patch those up from users submitting bug reports...

Otherwise delaying it just sorta ruins it because when you implement it whenver you do... you'll still ahve to sort out the bugs then as well.

And I'm sure most would agree this is the ONE feature that is hindering Digby Users potential to stay.

I have to voice my opinion.  I have wanted this for so long in this app.  It just doesn't look like its ever going to happen.  Like the dev said above, none of the new features added were on the wishlist except one.  If this is the case, then why is there a wishlist?  If your not using it then don't get peoples hopes up.

I hate to say this but I have been considering moving back to trillion since it still has multi chat support.  And will in the next release along with everything that digsby currently has.

I understand that the multi chat will require a redo of the architecture and it will be buggy at first.  But you have to look at it this way.  People want it.  And if people don't get it they will go to something that will give it to them.  Yes bugs are important to squash, but enhancing a product is also as important.  Otherwise people leave. 

The addition of multi chat has been wanted for over a year and since it doesn't even look like you guys are considering it, you have not made people happy. Heck your development cycle of this is starting to look like trillion and how its handling astra.

Yes the product is currently free.  And yes its a great product.  But it doesn't have everything that it should have as a chat client.

To make a long story short, please oh please start on the this feature.  Otherwise I have no other option but to get another application that does support it.

You know what guys? I think they get it.

tehbishop wrote:

Once Digsby becomes a real contender perhaps we'll see it, but right now it's the Opera to Trillian's Firefox.

Wait, what? You have it backwards. Opera is the company that innovates. Firefox, Chrome, etc all steal features from Opera.

I'd also like to see group chat.  Our 50K ee company uses pidgin (arghhhh) as an IM standard.  There are a handful of us Digsby hold outs but it is hard to counter the standard w/out this feature.  My 2 cents.

I have to say it, although pidgin was flakey, looked nasty and didnt do social i can't work without the chat rooms. So, although it hurts me to say it, I'm going back to pidgin. Maybe i'll keep digsby for just the tweets, which is how i found it in the first place, just a shame its not an fully featured IM client too. anyone recommend a reasonable 'task-bar-resident-right-click-to-tweet' app?

Anyone know much about Streamy? http://www.streamy.com/