Hello everyone! In this week's post I am SO excited to share a very special sneak peek with you into our next huge feature here on Journaly – a feature that may alter the communicaty feeling on the platform more than any other so far, and one that might be an even bigger project than our In-App Notification System was (remember life on Journaly before in-app notifications!?)...
📱Direct Messaging on Journaly 💌
That's right! Now that we completed the Unsplash Integration and Spam Reporting features, along with launching 62 new custom Journaly badges, we're diving into an absolutely gigantic project that's been on my mind since the beginning of Journaly: we're going to build a complete Direct Messaging system and take the community aspect of life on Journaly to a whole new level. This will enable you to deepen the connections and relationships you build here tremendously, and Journaly's magical and unique twist to Direct Messaging will bring a new dimension to how Journaly enables you to improve your language skills through these interpersonal communications...
An important note: This is truly a huge project and so I cannot promise (1) a specific timeline or (2) that some details won't change; but I can tell you that we'll be working incredibly hard to get this done until it is finished, no matter how many long days and late nights it takes.
With that being said, I just completed the first iterations of Wireframes and turning those into High-Fidelity Mockups, and honestly I'm just so excited about this that I've decided to share that excitement wholeheartedly with all of you and show you those early designs.
The Details
As always on Journaly, we will provide the core/essential features of Direct Messaging on Journaly for free, along with a few really nice features for our loving Journaly Premium users/supporters:
- Standard messaging
- Search for a specific user to write to
- Reply directly to a message
- Send images
- Block and/or report users
Premium
- Submit "suggested edits" to the other user's messages to help them improve their language skills!
- Save messages
- Audio messages (to be launched later along with support for audio in posts)
Another very exciting thing about this project is that a lot of the things we need to build "unlock" a number of the remaining features across the app, so after this project is done you will see a whole series of very nice features launched as well!
🥁 The Designs!
Desktop
Mobile
Are you excited?
What do you think!? Are you excited about this new suite of features? How do you think this will change your Journaly User Experience and the way you use the platform? As always, I'd love to read your comments! Feedback is of course welcome and please know that your support, encouragement, and/or excitement really does make a big difference while we're working away behind the scenes, especially on projects of this magnitude and complexity.
Wishing all of you a happy new week ahead and happy Journaling ✍🏼☀️
This looks awesome! Please excuse the dumb question, but how do I access the mobile version? (Android) Thanks!
Great news! It's amazing, exciting and awesome ))
Wow! I was wishing for something like this, I'm quite excited about it. I'm not someone who can really learn much on writing a whole text on my own (I'm bad at journaling in general) therefore having the chance to chit-chat with others will be VERY beneficial, and the fact free users can also use that feature is even better! I love it!
Direct Messaging will be a welcome addition to this awesome site! Creating a whole new series of experiences, with secrets, confidences, and quality one-on-one time for Journalers! 😁 It makes me think... Will you be able to read all of this behind the scenes? 😅
@Aloittelija Thank you! I'm happy you think it looks awesome ☺️ And don't worry, it's not a dumb question. Currently, the mobile version of Journaly is simply accessed via the web browser on your phone, there aren't "native apps" at this time. I'm planning on creative native Journaly apps in the future once we've built the next set of major features (there's another HUGE one that will elevate the community experience on Journaly just as much as DMs will coming right after Direct Messaging ❤️). This way, the codebase will be a lot more stable and everyone can be enjoying the maximum community experience and benefits as soon as possible, because the project to get those native apps working properly will be a big one.
@Dora_Serge thanks so much Daria! I'm so happy to see that you're excited about this!
@Cami Yay it's so nice to see your enthusiasm for this, and it's also great to read more details about how Journaly could be more useful for you and the way you prefer to write with others. One of my big hopes for Direct Messaging is that it will open a whole new use case for Journaly where some people who don't like to write posts/journal entries can also be excited to come here and build meaningful connections with other learners or maybe even friends/loved ones who are already in their life so that they can leverage the DM correction/suggestion tools!
And thank you for highlighting that these core features will be available for free users! So many people have told me over the years that it's a bad business practice to give so much value away for free, and to have spent so much of my time building free stuff/not enough time building Premium features. I definitely need to put more time into making Journaly Premium more exciting so that the app can be financially sustainable and maybe one day this can be my job (❤️), but I have always believed that nobody should be excluded from the core educational and community-building value of Journaly and those features should be amazing. So that has always been my focus and it is really heartwarming to see Journalers like you who notice and appreciate that. Thank you!
@Lokus Woohoo, I'm happy to see that you feel this will be a welcome addition, and I couldn't have said it any better regarding the new series of experiences and possibilities opening up to Journalers 🌟 No, I will never, ever read or access the private messages of Journaly users.
@Robin - thanks for explaining! Even more things to look forward to! But the messaging is going to be the best. 😊🎉👍