Wavelength is Shutting Down on July 31st, 2024

As a long-time reader of Daring Fireball I learned to be highly skeptical of the things that are promoted there. In the case of Wavelength, I thought and still think it’s a solid app, but as a product it’s ultimately hindered in its growth by the invite-only nature of the group chats it offered.

To be clear, these group chats are actually hidden from the public. You join by entering an invitation code or receiving a link. There is no way to discover group chats by browsing or searching for them.

So I was completely surprised by Daring Fireball recently hinting at [0] Wavelength’s goal of becoming a breakout hit as a social platform.

Say what?

Without a large marketing rocket to pull you into orbit, I’m not sure how you can achieve any kind of success as a social platform with unlisted and private group chats. In the case of WhatsApp the boost came from a gazillion people having the common pain point that sending text sucked and/or was expensive.

It’s also worrying that they only had enough gas in the tank to keep the lights on for little more than a year. A year less than their previous endeavor.

But my questions in the hope of learning from this situation are:

Why not make some groups more visible than others? Example: The Dithering podcast has a group. [1] Why not show that it exists and inform about the ways to get in?

Was there any work done towards tools to help group owners handle high volumes of user influx and chat moderation? Are those the pro features hinted at in the TechCrunch article? [2]

Again, only a year of runway?

[0]: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/06/26/wavelength-is-s... [1]: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2023/06/02/dithering [2]: https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/20/wavelength-is-a-new-app-tr...

Well, I'm sorry to hear this, even though I never tried it. I don't care about threads, I don't need multiple chats, I don't have any big groups, everything is E2EE, and I actively do not want an AI gimmick bot hanging around. But it was someone's dream, and it's always sad to see it end. Been there and got the scars.

Hope you try again guys. The scars fade.