I think DEV's chat feature is super cool, but I'm coming up on my two-year badge in a few weeks and I've still got enough fingers for each conversation I've had. I get the sense that some people communicate this way more often, but I'm curious to get an overall temperature!
Photo by Mihai Surdu on Unsplash
WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT ? a DEV chat, I didn't know that
There's a whole paper airplane for it:
Ouch my bad, I didn't notice it.
I'm not, you know, trying to be a jerk or anything. But there's also a button:
You just gotta stalk folks.
imma start with you tomorrow for sure :D!
Vaguely ominous. I'm in.
Our chat, called DEV Connect, has for most of its existence been not quite where we want it to be to really do a promotional push to drive awareness. But we've been patient building it out and we're just getting into the phase where we will be leaning into driving awareness.
Edited, thanks!
The problem is we can only talk to people, whom I follow, and they should follow me too.
I've 12000 followers, but I'm just following 70.
I want to follow all the 12000, so anyone can talk to me but how should I do it, there is no bulk action 😕
You really don't want to follow 12000 people! That wouldn't be something you could manage, and it wouldn't help anyone.
What you want is to allow anyone to talk to you, regardless of whether they follow you or not, and you can set that under Settings -> Misc -> Connect.
I did not know this existed!!
Can we embed gifs in the chat?
Didn't notice either haha. I think the icon is not the best to explain the purpose.
🙄 seriously
For me, it seems to be "if I have no other way of contacting ".
But that, like, requires socializing
I used it once to reply to an ad, but not sure how open others would be to a random message. Any way you guys can promote this? On a scale of Twitter to LinkedIn, how camaraderie do you want to generate?
I wasn't even aware that feature exists..
I use it for saying things to people in general if it's not worth making a post.
I'm in two minds about it. One one hand, cool, it encourages socialisation more than a DM system like Twitter or Quora or such - on those places I feel like they're intrusive ways of talking to people, but a general channel is a great way to make friends.
On the other hand, it's never going to replace any of the 9000+ other chat systems people already use, and (as these comments demonstrate) people aren't going to use it.
If it was linked to IRC, say, or Slack by a bot so you could use the chat on the website or through your regular client, that'd be better.
If there were more signposts or certain things (like, say, mini AMA sessions) were held on chat, that might drive people there.
I'm sure there used to be some kind of "event" or "session" feature here for things like livestreams, which could have their chat linked to a chat channel too.
Additional additional: Dev Connect hasn't had any activity on it since last November according to my PC... but I remember there was a period where everything I typed appeared for me but nobody else (the perils of javascript!).
So who knows, it might be enbroeked.
I'm afraid the idea of "chatting with only those whom you mutually follow" is very prohibitive.
Chatting and following is quite orthogonal so it won't occur to me to wait for mutual following if I just want to send to person some private notes about some comment (e.g. name of the company discussed etc).
So unless there is feature like "send request for chat" to user whom you are not following (mutually!) - the thing is still-born.
There are general channels, and if your profile is set up that way (Settings -> Misc -> Connect) then you can get messages from anyone.
i seen that but i didn't chat with anyone... over here.. because i doesn't have any topics to do that.
😄
if your find any topics to discuss with me just do it please. atleast i can use that features through it. 😂
I had no one to talk with :(
I am here bro 🤗
Oh yes
Never used it, I usually just comment.
I use it occasionally, but I think awareness of it is pretty low.
So there was a chat here huh
this whole time. You have to mutually follow.
The notifications system seems to be still under development so haven't been using it that much. Hope it becomes more developed and widely used in the future though.
I never initiate these, but I have received more than one, in the form of help requests.
Can't say I've ever felt the need to use it. I'd love to set up some sort of group chat for people who have a goal of posting every week though!
I've used it once
Damn.. the option is so close to writing a post and I never tried. Glad I read your post. :P
Agreed, I don't use it. Not sure what to talk about. But I do want friends and pen palls.
Hi Ben L.,
I had no idea there was a chat feature on Dev. Only thing I knew of was being able to message someone.
never knew about it ! never used it !
A couple of times, I just noticed it maybe 3-4 weeks ago??
Does the person have to follow you or vice-versa?
Yes, but it will work anyway if the user has a Open Connect (See Miscellaneous Settings)