Product (4)

Telemedicine is booming, but it's not all smooth sailing. January 2023 saw a jump in telehealth use, up to 5.9% from 5.5% the month before. It sounds promising, but the industry faces hurdles behind the scenes: think regulatory red tape, tech headaches, and privacy worries. For providers and patients alike, navigating this evolving landscape is

What do Google and Microsoft have in common? They use the same framework to align their team, focus on their goals, and measure their progress: Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). Implementing OKRs can be a game-changer for your team’s performance by turning abstract goals into measurable achievements and increasing alignment throughout your organization. What Are

Mobile app adoption is at an all-time high. New app downloads reached 255 billion in 2023 — up 11% from the year prior. This translates to more than 485,000 apps downloaded per minute in 2022. But despite such impressive app downloads and usage metrics, the majority of apps struggle with retention rate --- a key

We are thrilled to announce a new tool within the Stream Chat Dashboard: Chat Explorer. This page of the dashboard is an effective way to visualize the resources that make up your application all in one place. Come here to search specific users, messages, or channels, and click to edit parameters like name or email.

The more you understand your customer’s user journey, the better you can tailor your product to fit their needs. However, that often feels easier said than done. Many product managers still use outdated single-list product backlogs—which are just to-do lists—that don’t help PMs prioritize work according to what the customer wants. If you want to

As a product manager, your schedule is limited, and you can’t drive your SaaS company’s success by doing everything on your own. According to Gallup, leaders who know how to delegate tasks to their team effectively drive 33% more revenue for their business. But you can’t become an effective product manager without the right task

In many social networking and dating applications, in-app chat and messaging functionality accompanies complex relationships between individual users. These apps need to support open-ended communications, like a friend request that may or may not be accepted or a dating match that may or may not spark a conversation. For software teams integrating a chat API

According to research by Product School, one of the top three reasons product managers quit is lack of clarity in their role. With so many tasks at hand but no clear direction on where to go, it’s not easy for product managers to find the best way to lead their team. To build a successful

There are many resources such as books, webinars, blogs, and online courses that can help product managers improve their skills. But for time-pressed PMs, listening to podcasts is a key way to develop new ideas, learn tips from experienced product managers at top tech organizations, internalize product feature best practices, and stay motivated through stressful

Businesses face unique challenges when it comes to scaling enterprise live chat. While building basic messaging functionality with just a couple hundred users may be relatively straightforward for nimble startups, as apps acquire thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even millions of users, live chat performance suffers without the right tech stack. Even minor performance issues

Human beings have told stories for almost as long as we’ve been able to communicate. They connect us, create shared narratives, share complex information, and build understanding between otherwise disparate groups. That’s why storytelling is still one of the best ways to build empathy with other people. Stories are also a tool. They create a

Product managers have one of the most critical roles in a SaaS company, with a lot of weight on their shoulders. On top of keeping customers satisfied with their company’s product, they’ll also be in charge of cross-collaboration between different departments. Product managers therefore need various skills across different areas. It’s vital for building a

Updating and building a product that customers will love can be a fulfilling experience. But all your hard work will go to waste if you have no clue how to promote your upcoming product to your target customer. That’s why you must follow a product launch checklist to ensure you’re not missing any essential steps

Productivity and getting tasks done in a timely matter are common issues among product managers. According to a report by Product Management Festival, product managers struggle with three things: achieving goals (56%), lack of time (50%), and lack of clarity in their role (35%). With an effective product experience management process, product managers can overcome

Stream now has over 100 employees around the globe, but we started small, with co-founders Thierry Schellenbach and Tommaso Barbugli cranking code in cafes. Stream couldn’t have become the multinational company it is today without the guidance of dedicated mentors, seed investors, and the many generous third-party tech providers who made free versions of their

Today, we are incredibly excited to announce the beta release of Stream’s Feeds SDK for Flutter 🥳. Stream’s Activity Feed API was built by developers, for developers to make their lives easier by not having to worry about scalability, maintenance, and reliability of a complex feed infrastructure. By leveraging Stream’s API or integrating our libraries

Recent updates to Stream Chat’s rate limiting behavior give dev teams greater flexibility and control to debug applications, combat malicious traffic, and monitor API usage for account billing purposes. These changes make it easier to avoid hitting rate limits in the first place, easier to recover if you do hit them, and easier to isolate

We know that at the end of the day, avoiding unexpected overages and understanding your bill is necessary for a successful chat integration. Therefore, we have created a new page in your dashboard to visualize historical usage over time, with charts displaying monthly active users and concurrent connections. Additional charts are on the way to

Who owns product at your company? When so much of your success relies on your ability to deliver continual value to customers through the product experience, it's important to have someone guide the team. The product manager vs. product owner conundrum makes determining ownership even more complex because the line between a product manager and

Dating app usage is at an all-time high. In 2019, half of Americans ages 18-29 and 38% ages 30-49 used a dating app at least once. To meet growing demand, over the past two decades dating app companies expanded from just a few early options, such as Match.com and eHarmony, to over 1,500 dating apps

There's only such much work you can accomplish in one day. Setting boundaries for yourself and your team goes a long way toward building effective workflows, but there will always be bleed-through between job descriptions. The most susceptible positions to this crossover are product manager vs. project manager. It makes sense. Product managers and project

Product managers connect with almost every team over the course of a day—with the goal of streamlining how everyone works together. Developers need feature requirements. Marketers need a positioning statement. And customer support needs education on how that feature solves an existing problem for your audience. It’s no wonder 31.6% of product managers cite these

Explosive growth in India’s digital economy creates a promising opportunity there for app developers, with some reports estimating the sector’s value at over $1 trillion by 2025. It’s a particularly exciting market for those working to deliver the next generation of great in-app messaging and chat experiences — as of the third quarter of 2019,

Likely one of your company’s most valuable resources, your engineering team works hard to bring your product vision to life by building new features, adding crucial functionality, improving UX/UI, and more. Understanding, respecting, and prioritizing your engineers’ time is paramount to keeping your product progressing. But it can be challenging to juggle your team, map

Guiding your team through each step of the product development life cycle requires a clear sense of direction, consistent communication, and well-defined objectives. If any of these aspects are lacking, that causes unnecessary confusion and makes it almost impossible to hit your overarching project goals. That’s why, according to a 2019 Gartner survey, “only 11%

Product growth doesn’t just depend on acquiring new users; it also depends on engaging the ones you have and delivering an exceptional experience. Companies with fully engaged customers have a 55% higher share of revenue and 63% lower customer churn. You can optimize your user engagement with a better product experience. A good product experience

New product launches have to move the needle for a number of objectives—they need to add value for current customers, entice interested leads to learn more about your brand, and make a positive impact on high-level company goals. The ability to nail these objectives with a single product launch is what sets successful businesses apart

To drive the best results for your company, it’s not enough to just develop an amazing product. How you plan to launch the product and get it out to your audience matters just as much. A product release plan is what could make or break the success of your product. It’s what helps you better

We are excited to announce that our newest version of Stream's React SDK has been fully converted to TypeScript. Therefore, you can find guaranteed type-safety for code throughout this SDK, making it easier to read and debug. Additionally, these recent upgrades allow the use of a versatile and valuable tool for creating reusable components, also

Even if you think metrics are boring, you know that they’re essential. Product metrics are your window into all the critical touch points along the customer lifecycle. They help you contextualize the customer experience for your team and provide insight into how your products impact both customers and your business. Understanding which product metrics to

Stream is excited to announce a major performance boost for customers in the Asia-Pacific area, with our newest region now live in Mumbai, India. That brings us to five regions across the globe as we work to extend an extremely low-latency experience to Stream Chat users everywhere. App developers around the world choose to integrate

We ask a lot of our fitness and wellness apps. While some of them log our meals’ macronutrients to keep diets on track, other apps track the pace of our weekend hike. Fitness and wellness apps keep us motivated, connect us with people who share similar fitness goals, and provide us with data such as

The Stream Chat API now supports deeper channel-level settings, adding flexibility and customization options that can be especially helpful for use cases like livestream chat. In most cases, Stream recommends defining channel settings and features at the higher channel type level, causing all channels of the same type to inherit the same settings. In certain

How can you really know what a customer needs? So much of their experience happens behind closed doors, internalized and influenced by their own perceptions of value. It’s a little easier when you have a group of people together who share a similar experience or have similar needs. But you’re always working with imperfect data.

When you’re working to trace the origin of a bug that delays launch for your chat integration — or worse, affects your end users — every minute counts. That’s why we’re excited to announce an update that brings Stream Chat API event logging and error reporting into the Stream Chat Dashboard. The new Chat Logs

With Twilio Programmable Chat’s end of life approaching, product and engineering teams that rely on this popular API face a difficult decision. Twilio’s official guidance indicates that Programmable Chat’s web and in-app chat functionality will roll into the omnichannel Conversations API — but the transition will require app developers to make manual code updates, and

This is the work-in-progress technical guide on how to migrate to Stream Chat from Twilio Programmable Chat. If you need assistance or want to discuss your migration privately with a technical expert, please get in touch with us at support@getstream.io. Twilio Programmable Chat EOL Notice Twilio has scheduled its Programmable Chat API end of life

React Native is known today to be one of the highest performing cross-platform frameworks, saving developers time and money by using a single source code to support multiple operating systems. This framework will play a significant role in the future of hybrid mobile apps, which is why Stream did a major revamp of its React

With Flutter’s growing popularity for efficient cross-platform app development, Stream is excited to announce the release of our completely overhauled Flutter SDK for Stream Chat. The new SDK version and sample apps are designed to make it easier than ever to explore, integrate, and customize the Stream Chat SDK components available to you and your

Customer relationships are the foundation of your business. When it really comes down to it, they're more than just a source of revenue or a sounding board for feedback—solving customers' problems is the primary reason your business even exists. Their loyalty and support are how you thrive. That’s what makes the product experience so powerful.

What does the motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson and the bicycle clothes manufacturer Rapha have in common? It’s not that both brands make products involving two wheels. The commonality is that both companies cultivate strong communities through a combination of in-person events, community-member perks, and apps that foster authentic connections among like-minded enthusiasts. Why are communities so

Dozens of new virtual event platforms launched at breakneck speed in 2020 to support the many events transitioning in-person gatherings to digital. Even established virtual event platforms geared into development mode in early 2020 to add competitive features and functionality (think: live streaming, in-app messaging, activity feeds, polls, dynamic networking, and more) to stand out

A lot of moving parts need to come together to bring a new product or feature to market. There are individual components to build, schedules to align, marketing campaigns to create — each requiring a considerable amount of work from your team. That’s why it’s no surprise that only 46% of product managers were able

Since the introduction of first-gen consumer messaging apps like AIM in the 1990s, chat has solidified its role as a mainstream method of communication. In many situations, users choose chat or instant messaging apps over other ways of contacting each other. Chat’s asynchronous nature eliminates the urgency and pressure of a phone call, but it

Product management is one of the most effective strategies you have for building better products in the new year. Learn more in the article! What drives innovation? That question plagues product teams and product-driven organizations in every market. And the answer is never as straightforward as we would like. But one thing is clear: Having

Messaging, whether it be through SMS/MMS text messages, email, or a messaging app, is a core way humans communicate with each other worldwide. According to CTIA, a trade association for the U.S. wireless communications industry, Americans sent 2.1 trillion SMS text messages in 2019, up 52 billion from the year prior; WhatsApp was delivering 100

SDK Updates & New UI Components 2021 is off to an exciting start here at Stream — we've been busy incorporating your feedback to provide the best Stream Chat experience possible. We think you’ll love building with our newly-reworked chat SDKs for Android and iOS, with major improvements designed to make your life easier and

People interact with your brand across a number of different channels—each one its own unique kind of experience. As channel preferences shift and evolve, the customer journey gets more complex. To refine that experience, you need to adopt a customer lifecycle management strategy. Customer lifecycle management is the process of building an understanding of consumer

What drives customers to make a purchase? Is it their perception of your product’s value, your marketing and branding, your price? Or is there more to it than that? More than any other factor, convincing someone to hand over their hard-earned income is a matter of trust. And according to the Edelman Trust Barometer, trust

It’s a difficult statistic to read: 70% of upstart tech companies fail. There are many reasons why tech companies shutter their doors, ranging from mismanagement to lack of funds. Sometimes, tech failures are inevitable. But having a great product that serves the unique needs of your customers and stands out from market competitors is a

Photo: Pixar Whether you are presenting your three-year product vision to investors or writing a product requirement document (PRD) for your company’s engineering team, a significant part of a product manager’s role is outlining the “what,” “why,” “how,” and “so what?” of product development. In addition to being researchers, interviewers, market analysts, and strategists, successful

According to a 2019 Roadmap.com survey, 50.3% of product managers think their company’s overall strategy lacks clarity. Which makes sense — top-down directives, even those with merit, are often too nebulous to provide the kind of guidance teams need to drive results. So, how do you add in the necessary level of clarity and direction

The Stream design team is spread out across the world. We reside in every U.S. time zone along with a presence in Amsterdam. From brainstorms to product launches, our geographical arrangement requires that we are committed to over-communicating with each other and sharing not only our work but also the thinking and reasoning behind many

Timing is everything. When you spend so much time conceptualizing, planning, and building new products for your customers, nailing the launch date is crucial. Release too early, and your product might not be ready for full customer engagement; release it too late, and someone else will beat you to market. Then why, according to a

Learning management systems are a type of education technology designed to enable educators to organize and distribute curriculum and coursework. Increasingly more school systems, teachers, universities, students, and parents use learning management systems (LMS) and similar platforms to power in-classroom, hybrid, or remote learning models. With increased public focus on learning management systems, product managers

A chat app generates many events throughout the day. Messages are sent and deleted, channels are created, users join them, and so on. Sometimes, it's essential to respond to these events automatically, for example, by triggering a bot message, billing a credit card, or calling a cab. Responding to these events through webhooks is one

As the landscape of virtual events evolves, organizers of trade shows, conferences, expositions, summits, keynotes, fundraising events, and even wedding planners grapple with choosing the best virtual event platform for their specific use case. Also called online venues, virtual event platforms help recreate or replicate in-person events in a digital setting. Arguably as (or more)

We are happy to announce the public v1.0 release of our React Native SDK for Activity Feeds. This release provides support for the latest Expo 40 and React Native 0.63. Quick links React Native Activity Feeds Tutorial Activity Feed Mobile App Highlights We decided to move away from Flow types due to the challenges we

Talking finance with a robot is about as complicated as it sounds — unlike the basic live chat experience you might find on a retail website, a good fintech chatbot requires advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning technology for both conversation (natural language processing) and meaningful financial analysis. Driven by these requirements, chatbots in banking

Quoted replies is a useful feature when you want to reply to a specific message in 1:1 chats or when you want to quote someone on your replies in group chats. The ability to quote and reply to specific messages in a conversation makes it easier to keep track of things, especially in larger group

To understand the future of technology in education, we need to know what’s happening now. We’ve seen recent changes in the industry that seem to be paving the way for a new wave of online learning for entrepreneurs, edtech developers, instructors, and learners alike. A deep dive into these changes can show what we might

Today’s internet landscape is practically unrecognizable compared to the 1990s, when AOL, MSN, GeoCities, Hotmail, and other long-gone services reigned supreme. But if you look underneath modern user experiences and the compact, high-tech devices that deliver them, you might be surprised to find that some core backend functions remain relatively unchanged. One constant across all

When you have important messages that you want to be able to see quickly, you can use the pinned messages feature. Pinned messages are flagged as special and can be set up so that you see them at the top of your folder, channel, conversation, etc. Pinned messages are used to share information and resources

A great customer experience sets your company apart. Good CX increases customer satisfaction, retention rates, and the potential for upsells. But a key part of the customer experience is the product experience. A user may feel like they made a good connection with your sales team, but if their experience with the product itself is

According to a 2018 survey by PMI, approximately 52% of projects are completed on time. When you don’t deliver on time, you lose out on any potential revenue that could be gained from a new product. If time and scope creep have a negative impact on your bottom line, why do so many projects fall

Learning management systems (LMS) are edtech tools designed to organize, store, and distribute online curriculum content to learners. They are extensively used by schools, teachers, administrators, universities, online education websites, and students to organize classwork and track course progress, and by businesses to guide employees through onboarding, training, or professional development. Learning management systems are

When Macromedia launched the Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) in the 1990s as the backbone of Flash, it established what would become the near-universal standard for multimedia streaming over the internet for more than 20 years. And although newer streaming protocols like HLS and MPEG-DASH are now used for the content distribution stages of the streaming

Few industries experienced such recent meteoric growth as virtual events. Defined as an organized meet-up that takes place online rather than in a physical location, virtual events are a vital tool for event organizers in 2021 and beyond. According to a report by the Professional Convention Management Association, 70% of event organizers moved either all

Message Markup Language (MML) enables you to build an interactive message experience. MML supports embedding elements as simple as a button to your message or as complex as date pickers and custom forms within your chat experience. MML also supports images, icons, and tables out of the box. The goal for MML is to provide

Live chat solutions have proven themselves key to boosting engagement, sales, and satisfaction across industries as diverse as retail ecommerce and B2B software. They help companies of all sizes extend their sales and support teams’ capacity to provide personalized assistance in near real time. And it’s not just businesses enjoying the increased efficiency — live

Children are going online earlier in life than ever. While they may be able to effortlessly drag, drop, and post updates on social networking sites, they haven’t yet acquired the emotional maturity to use the internet mindfully. Technological ability without wisdom is one reason social media use is associated with an increased risk of depression,

And to ensure you deliver the best value to your customers — start by evaluating the internal infrastructure your team uses. A software development kit (SDK) is a helpful toolbox for improving the value of your product offer for customers and improving the software development process for your team. The software development kit is one

In 2017, start-up darling OfferUp, fresh off a $130 million round of funding that set the company’s valuation over $1 billion, was moving into a new 70,000-square-foot office near Seattle to accommodate a rapidly growing employee headcount. And the company needed some new furniture. Luckily, it knew just the place to look, eventually outfitting the

Reactions are a fun way to interact in chat apps quickly and are featured in almost all of them. However, some apps handle reactions slightly differently than others. For example, Slack allows a user to add several different reactions to a message. On the other hand, iMessage only allows a single reaction per message. That

The core subjects of mathematics, science, English, and history are critical to academic success. However, many institutions fail to teach essential skills for career development, such as effective email and video chat communication, managing client relations, and more. Danny Rubin, founder of Rubin Education, identified this learning gap while working as a broadcast journalist in

Tech stack decisions are unique to each edtech messaging solution, and it is up to product managers and developers to understand their specific requirements. Leveraging technology providers to support app development and user growth is key to building a scalable, reliable, and cost-effective tool for school systems, teachers, parents, and students. Recent edtech industry growth

Delivering continual value to customers is the key to a winning product experience. But when there's so much that goes into building these experiences, how do you make it easier for your team to create that value at scale? This question is a crucial part of what makes the build vs. buy decision so difficult. Choosing whether

“Live chat,” as Stream recently wrote, “lets participants skip formalities and get right to the point.” In keeping with this spirit, we’ll do just that. But, first, some quick scene-setting: as a follow-up to our best practices overview for Sales & Customer Service (and what better time than now, the holiday season?) we sat down

There are a lot of ways your product can fail. When your job as a product owner is to ensure that doesn’t happen, it’s important to verify that every part of your organization understands product development inside and out. That understanding is the key to creating a winning product experience for your customers. But taking

According to a 2018 Stack Overflow survey, 85.4% of respondents said they use some form of the agile methodology to keep their teams on track. But what does it mean to be agile? There are a number of different frameworks, techniques, and processes that make up the agile methodology. With so many people adopting the

When building a chat application, real-time events are crucial to providing an engaging user experience and adding custom functionality or behaviors specific to your use-case. With Stream Chat webhooks, you can provide endpoints on your server to receive events as they happen, allowing you to consume the requests using domain-specific logic, handle custom chat commands,

When buying or selling used items online, where is the first place people turn? Ask six people, and you may get six different answers. But a common option, or at least consideration, remains Craigslist. Perhaps because of its first-to-the-party status (est. 1995) and subsequent success, the company’s brand remains sturdy decades later, maintaining an undeniable

To put it mildly, higher education institutions contend with many moving parts. With hundreds of faculty members, thousands of students, and many millions of dollars at stake, systems, and procedures can become complicated and confusing, sometimes dimming the experience for those involved. Enter Tower Education Technologies. Led by CEO Debra Siler, Tower aims to simplify

Not all chat apps are the same. Some may need interactions other than the regular sending of messages, reactions, typing indicators, etc. Delivery apps, for example, may require a "delivery completed" event. Dating apps, a "match" event. That is why you must use an underlying chat technology that is flexible enough and lets you build

Not long ago, it was common for businesses to develop their own proprietary software solutions. Even companies whose core product or service wasn’t software would write their own programs — retail chains built point of sale and inventory management systems, for example, and hospitality giants like Hilton built their own reservation and property management systems.

In most chat apps, it's essential to be able to tell the difference between users. Though the user ids are always different, by default Stream Chat allows users to have the same name for display. This can be an issue since a user could impersonate another or choose the same name by coincidence, causing confusion.

A chat app generates a lot of data based on user interactions. In some cases, such as when you need to provide chat transcripts of a livestream event to the event organizer, it's essential to have easy access to that data in a flexible format. You can then transform the data into your preferred format

Follow these tips to create a user-friendly live chat experience that drives customer satisfaction without feeling intrusive.

If edtech tools were important to school systems and educators before 2020, they are now essential to engage students in remote or hybrid learning models. A new era of technology-dependent education calls for improved solutions and virtual classrooms to manage exponential user growth. This guide is a comprehensive roadmap of how to build an effective

For nearly two decades, Stephen Green has played a major role in reimagining the scope and direction of higher education among U.S. colleges and universities. Green currently serves as Chief Program Officer at Noodle Partners, the country's leading provider of online program management, where he develops innovative strategies to assist colleges and universities in providing

It's common in chat apps to encounter users who engage in disruptive behavior such as trolling or even scamming, especially as the chat community grows in user count. Stream Chat already provides many moderation tools to help you deal with these problematic users in specific ways. Stream Chat recently gained a new moderation tool to

Even before you enjoy your morning cup of coffee, apps likely influence your day. From guided meditation (cue the soothing voice of Headspace’s Andy Puddicombe) to incrementally learning how to speak Spanish, modern life is tightly intertwined with apps. They have the potential to make you healthier, happier, and more productive (OK, and sometimes less

Telemedicine is now the preferred channel for patients needing prescriptions and to treat minor illnesses; 80% of consumers have used a telemedicine app at least once. According to research by McKinsey, telemedicine app usage is 38 times higher than pre-COVID pandemic usage. People are realizing the benefits and convenience that come with virtual healthcare, and

Americans send and receive an average of 94 text messages per day. If we’re awake for 16 hours each day, that comes to 5.8 texts an hour, or just less than one every ten waking minutes. And though these text messages stats don’t include in-app chat — communication among people on third-party apps, such as

If you’ve ever taken an entry-level course at a public university, you know lectures can contain upwards of 500 students, making it next to impossible to get one-on-one time with your professor. Recognizing the communication challenges in higher education, entrepreneur Tade Oyerinde founded Campuswire, an intuitive website and app designed to connect professors with their

What if we told you there was a way to do more with less? Sounds suspect, but for product teams, resource and time management are a vital part of the process. Lean product development is built on the idea that reducing waste is the key to building high-quality products faster. Lean product development is also

In-app chat has quietly revolutionized the way users communicate. Chat is now integral to daily life, building communities, connecting patients with doctors, selling products, solving customers’ problems, helping fans rally around their teams, and giving students the tools they need to learn. As consumers, we hardly even notice it. Instead, we notice when chat isn’t

We tend to think of a product launch as the end of the development process. But the product development life cycle doesn’t end with the release. Once your new product or feature is on the market, there’s still a lot of work to do. Markets mature and your customers’ needs change — great products evolve

Releasing a new product or feature to market is a big deal. That single event is the culmination of a significant amount of work across every part of your team. With so much riding on that initial product experience, why are 45% of product launches delayed by at least a month, according to a 2019

There are thousands of apps and online tools designed to help students learn mathematics, but for math teacher and software developer Rob Percival, they all failed in one critical way: While most tools grade students after they complete a problem, few have the ability to indicate where they made a mistake in their work. Recognizing