
Reading this title, you are either wondering what Chat API is or what value it adds to your product.
You are at the right place. These are the same questions; our team wondered while ago when we were developing
our first app Howdi.
Let's be honest here for a second. We are too damn spoiled by big technology companies like
Facebook and Google. We don't appreciate how much it takes to create a useful feature until we start to
develop our product or use a new product from another Startup. Let's use chat as an example. When it comes to
chatting, the golden standard you will think of right away, is maybe Facebook messenger, WhatsApp or Slack.
After you use those apps for a while and start to use other products with the chat feature on the market, you
will instantly feel something is lacking. Lagging, missing messages, notification error, you can name it.
As a project manager (PM), I can speak from personal experience. You are not wrong about feeling this way.
When our team was developing our first app, we didn't consider the chat feature until in the later
EPICS.
Although we always know the chat will help us keep our users engaged and active, we didn't have time to plan
out the feature. Because of the incorrect prioritization, our users could not connect right away and
slowly drifted away after the launch. Luckily, we caught the mistake very early on, so we moved our focus on
developing the best chat experience possible. When we launched chat in early 2020, we tripled our users
and increased active users' numbers in a few months.