Hackathon winners sometimes flatter to deceive, but Hiboo, the messaging company that won the 2014 TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon in London, has launched its first completed product in the App Store.
Available since the end of January, its messaging app lets users see what their friends are typing while they’re typing, which the company says means they can communicate at the ‘speed of thought’. It also means that friends can’t edit their thoughts; you can see every word. It’s the end of ellipsis as we knew it.
In 2014, Hiboo won out of a field of more than 750 developers who took part in the TechCrunch hackathon. The beta version was launched at the Dublin Websummit in Nov 2015 and is now available for download. Its launch comes at a time when the messaging industry is becoming more niche and private (if reading through your friends’ thoughts can be described as private).
Other companies such as Palringo concentrate on games as a way of engaging their customer base while WeChat, Line, Kik, KakaoTalk, Reel Messenger and Wire are all interesting chat networks that are at various stages of development.
Hiboo is the newcomer on the block that will attempt to build user acquisition as quickly as possible and, like the companies mentioned above, will then leverage that user base to offer other integrated services. It will be interesting to see if they can do it; but the opposition is large and smart, it won’t be easy.
