Sending private messages within your community—coming soon
Good news. More and more people are discovering Socie, and more and more administrators are submitting feature requests. One of the most requested features in Socie is coming soon: Socie Chat.
Members can already communicate with each other via the bulletin board (comments and replies) and in groups (group chat). Soon, a new feature will be added: one-on-one chat.
With Socie Chat, members can connect with each other one-on-one within the community.
Why are we adding one-on-one chat?
From conversations with community managers, we’ve noticed that there’s a growing need for direct contact between members.
Within a community, there are often moments when members want to reach out to each other personally—for example, after an event, in response to a post, or because they share common interests.
Everything related to your community in one place
With one-on-one chat, communication within your community stays more organized. Members don’t have to search for each other through another channel first. After an event, they can easily find someone within the community and send a message.
This keeps communication organized and ensures the community remains the central hub for interaction among members.
Contact Without Sharing Phone Numbers
Socie Chat makes it easier to connect with others without immediately sharing personal information. Members can chat with each other without sharing their phone numbers. This makes personal contact more accessible and safer, especially when members don’t know each other very well yet.
This can be particularly useful, for example, in communities where doctors, specialists, public figures, or other professionals are active.
Safe Interaction Within the Community
Socie Chat is being developed to facilitate easy and secure communication between members. This feature is not intended to replace comprehensive chat apps such as WhatsApp or Signal.
The focus is on communication that fits within a community: connecting members with each other in a simple and secure way. That’s why we’re developing features that contribute to a safe social environment within the Socie app.
More to come soon
We’re currently working hard on developing Socie Chat. We’ll share more about its features and timeline soon.
Want to stay up to date on new features in the Socie app? Keep an eye on our website and social media.
FAQ - Socie Chat
In this first version of Socie Chat, we’ve intentionally kept the functionality simple and text-based. Currently, you can only send text messages to each other. We made this choice to ensure a safe and straightforward start within the community. We’ll be adding this functionality in a later version.
At this stage, Socie Chat is specifically designed for one-on-one communication. This makes it very easy to establish personal contact without immediately getting caught up in larger group dynamics. We plan to add this feature in a future version.
No. One of the major advantages of Socie Chat is that you can chat with each other without having to exchange phone numbers. This makes personal contact more accessible and safer. For Members: Privacy and Settings
By default, you must first accept a request from another community member before that person can chat with you. In your profile settings, you can choose whether you want to automatically accept incoming chat requests or if you’d rather approve them manually.
If you block a member, three restrictions immediately apply to that person:
- That person can no longer send you messages.
- That person can no longer tag you.
- That person can no longer view your profile.
Yes, you have complete control over your own chat experience:
- Mute a chat: When you mute a chat, you’ll no longer receive notifications about new messages in that conversation.
- Archive a chat: This moves the chat to your archived chats, causing it to disappear from your active list.
Socie Chat is fully integrated with the Socie platform. It allows members to connect with one another without having to share a phone number. Every chat app has its uses, as well as pros and cons. With Socie Chat, we want to give people the ability to easily connect for a variety of purposes. Socie Chat provides a safe and secure environment within your community.
The biggest difference is privacy:
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No phone number required: You can chat with other members without having to exchange private phone numbers.
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Take control: As a community moderator, you set the guidelines for communication, and as a member, you decide who to accept or reject.
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Focus: Socie Chat is ideal for making initial connections within the community. Once you’ve built a closer relationship, you can always switch to other platforms if both of you are comfortable with that.
Once you’ve opened the app, go to “Inbox” via the menu. Next to “Notifications,” you’ll find the “Chat Messages” tab.
There may be several reasons why you can’t chat with another member:
- The administrator has disabled chatting or restricted chat permissions between specific members.
- You have blocked that member, or the member has blocked you.
No, no one can just look at your chats—not even the administrator. Only when you report something, such as inappropriate content, are the most recent chat messages sent to the administrators for review.
The chat will disappear from your “Chat Messages” list. You can always find archived conversations using the “Archived Chats” option. If you send a new message in an archived chat, the conversation will automatically be reactivated.
No, it’s not possible to permanently delete a chat. However, you can archive a chat to keep your message list organized.
No, it’s not currently possible to reply to messages with an emoji. However, you can include an emoji in your message or reply.
No, it is not possible to reply to a specific post or to quote a post.
No, you can’t completely disable the chat feature. However, as a community member, you can turn off chat notifications and set it so that new chats aren’t automatically accepted. The community administrator can, however, disable the chat feature entirely.
