chatlobby.
anonymous · ephemeral · instant
────────────────────── changelog ───────────────────────

what's new

v2.25

live now

draw without sending anything, and a store you can finally see before you buy from it.

  • nothing to post? spend sparks and draw a picture, a gif or a video straight from the pool — you get the kind you paid for, or you are not charged at all
  • the store shows every name colour, badge and effect wearing itself, shelved by price, so you know what you are buying before you buy it
  • a short ad pays sparks from level one — no level to reach first
  • levels arrive faster and pay more: each one hands you sparks, and the later ones open up the rest of the store
  • sparks have a home on your account now — what you earned, what you spent, and where it came from
  • clear a private thread off your list with the ×; it comes back on its own if they message again

v2.0

send a picture in, get one back from a stranger — and a name that stays yours.

  • swap: a picture goes in and someone else's comes back, picked at random. you find out what it is when you open it
  • like what you got and the person who sent it earns sparks. when someone likes yours, so do you
  • accounts are free — pick a name and a password and it stays yours, with everything you earn attached to it
  • talking moves you up: replies, threads that get going and busy rooms all count, and levels open the tagline under your name
  • a store for name colours, badges and tagline effects, paid for in sparks
  • watch a short ad when you run out of sparks

v1.7

there are ads now, and a membership is what turns them off — for less than it used to cost.

  • the site carries a few ads; a membership removes them
  • a pass comes in two lengths — 90 days, or a year at a better rate
  • a year costs less than it did
  • plain pages on privacy and copyright, saying what we keep and for how long

v1.6

chatlobby will sit on your home screen now, and there is finally a page that says what a membership is.

  • add chatlobby to your home screen — it opens full screen, with the browser out of the way
  • a page that says plainly what a membership costs and what it turns on
  • the site comes back faster when you return to it
  • pictures in chat can only ever load from our own servers, never anyone else's
  • the blog knows where it is — breadcrumbs, older and newer links, and related posts that are actually related

v1.5.25

send a handful of photos at once, and a few things that should have been quieter now are.

  • pick several photos at once — they arrive as one message, side by side
  • a group keeps an owner when the last one leaves, and empty groups clear themselves out
  • a thread stops looking unread once you have actually read it
  • long lists fold away instead of scrolling inside themselves

v1.5

the card behind a name is worth opening now, and members get photos on theirs.

  • say what you're here for and which languages you speak — everyone, not just members
  • members can put up to three photos on their card, gifs included
  • photos stay hidden until you tap to see them, one at a time
  • your own name opens your own card, so you can see how you look
  • report or block someone straight from their card
  • quieter lobby: people who wandered off fold away until you ask for them

v1.4

you stay in the lobby a lot longer, and the things a pass unlocks stopped being invisible.

  • stepping away no longer wipes you out — you keep your name and your threads for an hour
  • people who wandered off show as afk instead of quietly disappearing
  • names are tappable everywhere now: in a room, in the lobby, in a thread
  • the card behind a name has something in it, and says what a member would see
  • members see when someone looked at them, and who is still around
  • one straight answer about what a pass gives, wherever you run into a locked feature
  • light mode looks like someone meant it

v1.35

a pass over the whole site — faster, tidier, and a lot better on a phone.

  • gifs post as gifs now, and play where you see them
  • the message box got out of its own way — more room to type, everything else tucked inside it
  • reacting to a message works properly on a phone
  • pages load faster, and nothing about you leaves the site to fetch a font
  • less clutter in the lobby, and less of your screen spent on lists
  • chatlobby gets a real icon when you add it to your home screen
  • plenty of small fixes, and a good deal less traffic behind the scenes

v1.3

member passes got the perks they should have had, and the lobby stopped sitting still.

  • members can see who looked at them — everyone else sees how many
  • members get a line under their name saying what they’re here for
  • members sit at the top of the online list
  • a members-only room: quieter, and nobody selling you anything
  • members can stay in the lobby without appearing in the online list
  • the lobby moves now — you can see people arrive and threads reorder
  • double-tap a message to react
  • rush hour shows itself when it’s actually happening
  • a lot of work on how the site feels on a phone
  • this page, and the version number in the footer

the changelog starts at v1.3 — anything before that went out unannounced.

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