ScribbleChat Fills The Valley Between GIFS and Text using Twilio Programmable Chat

ScribbleChat Fills The Valley Between GIFS and Text using Twilio Programmable Chat

Your GIF game is pro-level. That’s a given. You are above using tired GIFs from The Office. Your replies are much more nuanced.  No-one needs another ham-fisted Michael Scott “NOO” GIF in their life.
 
Along the journey through group texts, Facebook messages, and Twitter replies, you’ll eventually hit a valley between text replies and GIF replies, where neither meets your needs. ScribbleChat hopes to fit right in that valley.
 
ScribbleChat is like Bitmoji for your texts. It aims to elevate the content of your text and your texting style as represented in handwriting. So that text conversation about that rooftop party pops off more than it would if you were limited to the confines of your typical keyboard.
 
Behind the scenes, ScribbleChat is using Twilio Programmable Chat to make sure your drawings, texts and GIFs reach your buddy who’s having that rooftop party.
 

Founding ScribbleChat — Right After You Deliver A Child Into The World
 
A countless number of startups are forged in garages. It’s become a trope, if not a cliche. ScribbleChat pretty much started in a hospital.
 
Shortly after his kid was born, Trey Stout, CTO and co-founder of ScribbleChat got the idea for the app in Lenox Hill Hospital. He started prototyping right then.
 
He had an idea to draw from, based on technology by Handwriting.io (the company behind ScribbleChat). Handwriting.io showed Stout the power of personalized communication. He equipped brands like Bloomingdale’s with the ability to send more personalized mail that looks like it was handwritten, at scale. This drastically increased Bloomingdale’s customer engagement via mail.
 
Launched today, Stout’s ScribbleChat, hopes to elevate those conversations that don’t take place in print. Twilio is a critical tool they use to make this happen.  “Twilio made it possible to keep a robust chat experience while still animating and dressing it up,” said Stout.
 
This is how the dressup works:
 
“The handoff to Twilio occurs at the Swift to JS layer. An incoming message goes through a few stages before it can be drawn to the screen.The Twilio client calls back our Swift code indicating there’s a new message on a joined channel. Our Swift code then looks through the attributes on the message, and figures out what the plaintext is, what user sent it, what graphical effects they wanted to write the message with,” says Stout.
 
Two developers on the ScribbleChat team built out the Twilio Programmable Chat integration in only three days. “The docs were clear, and the abstractions were familiar. The team didn’t have to learn a bunch of new jargon to make something useful,” said Stout.
 
That little “something useful” is now out in the world. Try out ScribbleChat here