Aww yeah! Congrats on the first Bebo app release, @ShaanVP and @FurqanR! I'm curious to hear @joshm and @libbybrittain (formerly Branch, created PhoneTag thoughts on this app and video messaging in general. @willydennis and @ogtfaber are also working on related apps. Shaan/Furqan - Knowing you guys, I'm sure you've brainstormed ridiculous ideas for Blab. Care to share the most absurd? :)

@ShaanVP - I love that idea. Also reminds me of the good old days of IRC bots. Can you share how the idea of Blab came about? I know you were experimenting with several different variations before landing on the "video walkie talkie."

Awww shucks, @ShaanVP. Btw, did you know they were going to release Vine Messenger today? ;)

Great Pando piece by @carmeldea. Here's the teaser: "Shaan Puri will never forget the day he bought Bebo back. He was going up against a small gathering of other bidders: Match.com and Tagged. The reps sat around a small circular table, surreptitiously eyeing each other up."

Most ridiculous idea for Blab..? Well - people seem to love sending Blabs to the Blab Bot (our designer, Brittany), so we thought it would be fun to make a variety of bots. For example - Magic 8Ball, which just replies with random answers like "hmmm seems unlikely" to your yes-or-no question. Joke Bot tells you a joke, Song Bot will just sing kareoke etc.. Would be fun for people to see if they can find all the bots too. Kind of like smarter child back in the AIM days!

Was looking for a new app to checkout and test... BLAB.IM was the focus of my show today.... Trust me you'll want to check this out.... 4 way live streaming made easy... GOODBYE G+ Hangouts from my use! It's easy to use, works great and the community and team is amazing in supporting the users!! This combined with Periscope & Meerkat is transforming how we use video, collaborate and have conversations!

@ShaanVP when you mention that it saturated groups of friends during the beta do you mean mostly the teams close friends? Or did you also do some initial marketing outside of the team for beta users

nice... have been getting a few snapchats from my son since he went overseas will persuade him to try it out.

Congrats, @shaanVP! Reminds me on first blush of @Unda_App (@500Startups portfolio company from a few batches ago). Looking forward to tracking your success with it!

thanks @bencera_ ! Was talking to @carmeldea yesterday about how much I liked the stuff you've been building.

We tried 3 different concepts before stumbling into Blab. We loved the idea of having a little dashboard of all your friend's faces (not a chronological feed). We were initially thinking photo.photo.photo but then @FurqanR just said "what if I held this down, and it would start recording...and if I let go - it sent." We thought it was interesting, because it made bold choices. Front facing camera only. Video only. And no reviewing/filtering/captioning steps required. The concept of 'push to talk' was very interesting. I had met with @nireyal a few months before that - and he had mentioned the rule of 10x easier to use, 10x more fun. We thought this had the potential to do it on both fronts. One action, and you've sent a quick video. As soon as we built a prototype and could feel the interaction- we loved it. Then when we noticed it saturate groups of friends in the beta test, and saw people sending 100+ blabs in their first week...we realized how big this might get. The whole thing from idea to market took 3 months.

Hey @anniekadavy - thank you! Smarterchild FTW When we were testing the app - we called it a Flappy Learning curve. The first Blab that we teach you to send (a practice one to Blab bot) is generally a mix of confusion and fear. However, most people get it the 2nd time and when they do - they think it's wicked cool. There's something delightful about the hold-->let go simplicity. Then there's the moment where people realize it's almost TOO easy. I think we need to do a better job showing people the "shake to destroy" feature. --- To your question of "how is it different" than things like Context/Frontback. Frontback isn't really a communication tool. I bucket it in the "sharing" category. It's a way to show your friends something. (like instagram). Blab is a way to SAY something to someone. It's for communication rather than sharing content. Context is similar in it's vision (correct me if I'm wrong @bencera_ ) in that it's trying to make a lightweight, fun way to communicate. However he's doing with text+photos, while we are video - so that's a fundamental difference.

@Anderson760 It started with our friends, but then spread from there into groups of people where we only know 1 person of the group of 8-10. They would use it regularly amongst themselves. Instead of only giving it to close friends - I first targeted acquaintances that are power texters/snapchatters to see what they think (would they switch, is it really different etc..) I tried to avoid testing it with techies at the beginning. (sorry @rrhoover !! )

@syedaliahmed I guess we didn't do a great job of not testing with techies after all :) Just kidding - thanks! let me know if you have any feedback after playing with it.

Can't decide if I'm more excited about being #1 on Product Hunt today, or #2 in Best New Apps in the iTunes store @rrhoover

Nope. Reminds me of when Instagram tried to launch "Direct" to compete with Snapchat. It's hard to add features that go counter to the nature of the app. (public mixing with private) It's like trying to build churches in Vegas ;)

@syedaliahmed thats a very interesting concept, especially video. I can see someone speaking to me and literally talking back (like facetime) so it almost feels natural even though it is on a message by message basis @shaanvp very smart choice :), would be interested in learning more on the business side too as you guys improve the product and start looking at marketing. Look forward to trying this out!

big congrats @ShaanVP! and the fact that you reference SmarterChild... I'm sold. that thing was awesome. curious to know how you've seen people learning to use it so far. do they understand the hold --> send concept? is that confusing/frustrating for some? how do you feel blab is different from other video/photo communication apps - thinking Context, FrontBack, etc. specifically?

@ShaanVP congrats on the launch. Played around with it a while back before it went live on the app store, great product. I very much believe that the future of messaging is all about making conversations more visual and expressive :) Best of luck!

Sure, I love the way that you guys are exploring the space between synchronous and asynchronous communication, which I think is going to be huge. It almost feels live, but isn't. This is something we're also excited about with our own product Click. Being as close to live without actually having a live synchronous chat is what we're striving to get to, since a live conversation often doesn't give people a choice when responding (and can sometimes be intrusive), while with asynchronous often you don't feel like it's a flowing real conversation happening in the moment. If you're also in London would be great to meet up for a coffee sometime, cheers!