Tag: Sendbird

New Flutter SDK for Sendbird Chat enables cross-platform development of chat with a single codebase 

Open source UIKit lets developers build elegant and customizable in-app chat

SAN MATEO, Calif. — April 22, 2021– Sendbird, the leading mobile engagement and communication company across in-app chat, voice, and video, today unveiled its latest tools for developers to bring industry-leading chat capabilities into their applications. Sendbird’s new Flutter SDK makes it easy for developers to build chat in Flutter applications. Because Flutter apps can extend across multiple platforms with a single code base, time to market to launch Sendbird Chat can be dramatically decreased. Additionally, Sendbird’s new open source version of its UIKit makes it easy to fully customize and extend the UIKit so that applications are designed with and can incorporate their own branded look and feel.

“Sendbird was founded by developers for developers so we want our technology to be as open and easy to use as possible,” said John Kim, founder and CEO of Sendbird. “Developers will grow the next generation of unicorns, and Sendbird is doing everything we can to empower them by making it very simple to integrate compelling interactive experiences into modern apps.”

The announcement of new developer tools comes on the heels of Sendbird’s recent $100 million Series C round of funding; the company seeks to help businesses in any industry, anywhere in the world to integrate chat into their applications for outstanding user engagement and better business outcomes.

Today, billions of users engage in real-time mobile conversations on a monthly basis, making it the most popular way for users to communicate. As such, brands are making the conversation with the customer the center of the mobile experience. From within a chat thread, users can authorize a replacement item from a delivery provider, cancel a ride, make a payment to a friend, or check the status of an order– but in order to do this, developers need the right tools. Sendbird now extends even more flexibility for developers to make their apps social.

Flutter SDK: Easing Burdens for Cross Platform App Developers

With the Flutter SDK for Sendbird Chat, app developers can build full-featured chat in their Flutter applications and deploy it cross-platform with a single codebase. This framework makes it possible for developers to create and integrate their in-app chat implementations only once, apply it everywhere– Android, iOS, web, and desktop– instead of requiring them to build and port it multiple times.

Without a platform like Flutter, each time a change is made to an app it must be rewritten for each platform the app supports, which demands expertise and engineering resources per platform. This can be difficult for companies with constrained engineering resources and limited in-house mobile development expertise. By removing this hurdle, Sendbird enables digital interactions to become more easily accessible and pervasive to all.

Sendbird’s Flutter SDK comes with modern messenger features that enable chat at high scale and align with Sendbird’s other client-side SDK’s, including:

• Group Channels: Developers can build 1-to-1 or many-to-many private group chats in their app using Group Channels. Group Channels come with all the necessary messaging essential features that users have come to expect in modern messenger applications, like typing indicators, presence indicators, channel mentions, and message threading.
• Supergroup Channels: This allows developers to build private chat channels for up to 20,000 users in a single channel, which is useful in the case of large-scale community chat.
• Open Channels: For public chats, developers can use Open Channels to power chat with up to 60,000 users in a single channel to drive social engagement with live chat. Open Channels also come with support for Dynamic Partitioning which allows for a smoother user experience in large-scale public chats.
• Moderation: With user and channel moderation capabilities, developers are able to allow users to ban other users, mute users, and freeze a chat channel to keep conversations safe and on brand.

Open Source UIKit: Enabling Developers the Flexibility to Customize and Extend Sendbird’s UIKit

Sendbird also shared that it will open source Sendbird UIKit, its popular chat front end tool that allows developers to add the power of a modern messenger into their applications with just a few lines of code. This is part of Sendbird’s ongoing commitment to transparency and flexibility for the developer community – those who trust and rely on Sendbird to power their mobile experiences. Sendbird UIKit now becomes extensible and more flexible, allowing developers to now more fully customize the UIKit for their use cases and tailor the look and feel of UI components. They can build extensions to the UIKit for specific requirements and integration for any vertical or workflow they can imagine.

“We know developers love to tinker,” said Kim. “Developers want to open things, take them apart, and then fit the pieces together in a way that makes sense to them. As more and more companies are adopting our UIKit rather than building a chat UI from scratch, we wanted to put more power in the hands of developers while simultaneously increasing the transparency and flexibility of our front end components.”

 

Whether it’s a community application building social engagement, a payments wallet powering peer-to-peer interactions, a marketplace trying to leverage chat to increase conversions, Sendbird’s new UIKit can be easily adapted for custom user experiences. Developers get both a highly configurable and extensible front end, on top of a fully managed back end, allowing them to focus on the functionality that makes them unique.

 

Sendbird UIKit source code is now available in Sendbird’s GitHub UIKit repository. Sendbird UIKit design resources will also be also available as a Sketch file if teams need to customize or build on top of the designs.

 

About Sendbird

Sendbird is the leading mobile engagement and communication platform trusted by modern digital and mobile-first companies like Reddit, Delivery Hero, and Paytm. We allow any company to quickly and easily embed rich real-time chat, voice, and video into their app to build connections with their users and between their users. With Sendbird customers can get access to the benefits of chat, voice, video quickly and with significantly less development effort or risk if they were to build it or maintain it themselves.

 

Sendbird’s top global customers include Reddit, Yahoo! Sports, Careem, OLA, Rally Health, Carousell, Virgin Mobile UAE, Dream11, Paytm, Grand Rounds, Teladoc, Nexon, Accolade, Hinge, and Kookmin Bank. It is backed by ICONIQ Growth, Tiger Global Management, STEADFAST Capital Ventures, Meritech Capital, Emergence Capital, Shasta Ventures, August Capital, Funders Club, World Innovation Lab, and Y Combinator. Sendbird is headquartered in San Mateo, California.

Please visit https://sendbird.com for more information.

 

 

Company raises $100 million in Series C at $1.05 billion valuation. 

 

Monthly active users and applications powered by Sendbird jump 3x

 

 

San Mateo, California and Seoul, Korea– April 6, 2021 — Sendbird, the leading mobile engagement & communication company across in-app chat, voice and video, today announced that it closed $100 million in Series C funding in an oversubscribed round led by STEADFAST Capital Ventures. STEADFAST Managing Director and Head of Venture Capital Karan Mehandru will join Sendbird’s board of directors. Emergence Capital, Softbank Vision Fund 2*, and World Innovation Lab also participated in the round, as well as previous investors, ICONIQ Growth, Tiger Global Management, and Meritech Capital.

 

Funding comes as Sendbird has achieved new milestones. Now valued at $1.05 billion, it becomes one of only 12 current unicorns founded out of Korea and the first in the B2B enterprise software space. Sendbird has also grown its monthly active users (MAU) and the number of applications powered by Sendbird by 3x since its Series B announcement. Over 150 million users interact on Sendbird’s chat and video platform every month through the apps of digital and mobile leaders including Reddit, Hinge, Paytm, Teladoc, Virgin Mobile UAE, and Delivery Hero.

 

Sendbird connects users with each other, and with the brands they care about through rich in-app conversations across chat, voice, and video. Driving Sendbird’s growth is the fact that billions of consumers across the globe now accomplish more and more tasks within mobile apps, across both their home and work lives. The COVID-19 pandemic only accelerated this trend. As the largest white-label mobile conversations platform that companies can integrate into their apps and brand experience with just a few lines of code, Sendbird has seen a heavy demand for its products across industries.

 

“From food delivery to healthcare, education, entertainment, shopping, and so much more, every business is looking to connect digitally with its customers,” said Sendbird co-founder and CEO, John S. Kim. “Users now expect to have meaningful conversations with each other, and with the brand, inside of the mobile app– and that’s where we come in. Whether it’s coordinating with a delivery provider, getting a question answered from a seller in an online marketplace, asking another user for advice in a hobby community, or talking to a doctor in a virtual video call, Sendbird helps hundreds of millions of users connect with the brands they love and get stuff done.”

 

Conversations as the center of the mobile experience

Billions of users now engage in real-time mobile conversations on a monthly basis making it the most popular way for users to communicate. Companies are increasingly harnessing the power of mobile conversations within their own apps both to drive better business outcomes, but also to not risk losing their users to other real-time channels owned by the technology giants. More and more, brands are making the conversation with the customer the center of the mobile experience. From within a chat thread, users can authorize a replacement item from a delivery provider, cancel a ride, make a payment to a friend, or check the status of an order.

 

“Modern brands in all verticals are increasingly adopting in-app chat to power digital, real-time, and authentic conversations with their customers to drive engagement and retention,” said Sendbird board member Karan Mehandru. “We believe Sendbird’s market leadership and product scalability puts them in pole position to capture these tailwinds and become the first choice for every brand in the world looking to communicate authentically with their audience. We are thrilled to lead this investment and partner with John and the team as the company defines and owns this next dominant channel of customer communications.”

 

Sendbird’s customer base currently spans communities such as Reddit and Yahoo Sports as well as two-sided marketplaces like Carousell, Handy, and Yell. It also includes food delivery and ride sharing leaders like Delivery Hero, Ola, and iFood, digital health innovators such as Rally Health, Teladoc, and DocPlanner, fintech companies like PayPay, Paytm, and Picpay, as well as enterprises including Virgin Mobile UAE, ServiceNow, and Kookmin Bank.

 

“We needed to quickly find new digital ways for our users to build meaningful connections, and Sendbird’s video calling and chat APIs do just that,” said Ben Celebicic, CTO of Hinge, one of the largest dating sites in the U.S, and a member of the Match Group. “With millions of daters looking for connection, we needed a partner that we could trust with our scale.“

 

New Money for a New World

Sendbird will use its latest influx of capital to aggressively accelerate its R&D efforts to help customers get more value out of both existing and new products. The company will continue to scale its workforce in its Silicon Valley headquarters, as well as in its other locations around the globe– New York, London, Munich, Singapore, Seoul, and Bengaluru to make this happen. In addition, Sendbird also plans to enter new markets as the world looks for ways to incorporate meaningful digital conversations over chat, voice, and video into their mobile applications.

 

“Our customers operate in highly dynamic and competitive environments,” said Kim. “Helping them launch new mobile experiences, quickly and see better business outcomes– that’s where our focus is. Last year we launched Sendbird Calls, APIs to embed voice and video experiences into mobile apps, and we’ve seen strong demand. The explosion of Clubhouse has shown that companies are just getting started on where to take voice and video. We’re excited to build the future of mobile experiences with our customers.”

 

About Sendbird

Sendbird is the leading mobile engagement and communication platform trusted by modern digital and mobile-first companies like Reddit, Delivery Hero, and Paytm. We allow any company to quickly and easily embed rich real-time chat, voice, and video into their app to build connections with their users and between their users. With Sendbird customers can get access to the benefits of chat, voice, video quickly and with significantly less development effort or risk if they were to build it or maintain it themselves.

Sendbird’s top global customers include Reddit, Yahoo! Sports, Careem, OLA, Rally Health, Carousell, Virgin Mobile UAE, Dream11, Paytm, Grand Rounds, Teladoc, Nexon, Accolade, Hinge, and Kookmin Bank. It is backed by ICONIQ Growth, Tiger Global Management, STEADFAST Capital Ventures, Meritech Capital, Emergence Capital, Shasta Ventures, August Capital, Funders Club, World Innovation Lab, and Y Combinator. Sendbird is headquartered in San Mateo, California.

Please visit https://sendbird.com for more information.

Product capabilities are designed to enable new forms of digital interaction and compelling, highly scalable user experiences

SAN MATEO, Calif. — December 17, 2020– Sendbird, the leading interaction API company across chat, voice and video for mobile, and web applications, today announced a number of impressive new capabilities uniquely developed to help people come together for outstanding digital chat experiences at large scale. They include new Open Channels with dynamic partitioning, as well as IP whitelisting, message threading and message search.

Sendbird developed the features in recognition that the ways people interact and connect with one another have fundamentally changed over the past year. This change has sparked a massive transformation in digital communications that touches everything from global interactions to how people form connections on a deeply personal level. With widespread adoption of new forms of communications, Sendbird has stepped up to power the world’s best chat experiences. Its latest features and enhancements allow users to engage with one another in environments ranging from just a few participants to groups with tens of thousands. The platform dynamically scales accordingly with no lapse in performance. This scaling capacity enables exciting new chat formats, such as virtual sporting events and concerts, to become active moments of interaction. Sendbird’s ability to connect the world in meaningful ways is more important than ever as marketplaces, on-demand and online communities, healthcare organizations and more continue to see explosive growth amid digital transformation.

“Chat plays a more important role in people’s lives than ever before, essentially becoming the central nervous system of the internet,” said Sendbird founder and CEO John Kim. “We are changing what is possible by designing all kinds of new experiences. Today, we unveiled a number of new features that represent engineering feats, but more importantly, they were built to enrich the ways people connect. Sendbird is ready to define the future of digital interaction.”

Taking Open Channel Chat to New Levels

Sendbird has long been devoted to creating the world’s best large-scale group chat experiences for both public and private communities. Building on Sendbird’s recent groundbreaking launch of Supergroups, which connect up to 20,000 people in a private channel, the company has now introduced its new Open Channels for Sendbird Chat with dynamic partitioning that can host up to 20,000 members in public chats. Open Channels can also host up to 60,000 members in public chats if a customer leverages a dedicated server, further shattering chat boundaries and extending the possibilities in both public and private environments.

Open Channels are ideal for hosting large public group chats with enthusiastic audience members in a live stream. It also works exceptionally well for large multiplayer gaming communities. What makes it extraordinary, however, is that Sendbird ensures an excellent, reliable experience, even at massive scale. By building dynamic partitioning into its open channels, Sendbird splits a large open channel into smaller sub-channels so that it’s easier to manage and for people to share and follow or participate in conversations. At the end of the chat session, the complete chat history across all the different sub-channels is made available to all participants in the open channel so that no one misses a thing.

Open channels also support moderation features that make sure conversations adhere to the channel owner’s brand standards. This includes features such as ban user, mute user, spam flood protection, profanity filters, domain filters, regex filters, share media and smart throttling.

Building on Layered Security Foundation to Extend Chat Security

Additionally, Sendbird has taken another step forward with its industry-leading chat security. It now offers IP whitelisting in addition to existing TLS encryption for chat messages, AES256 encryption for files and adherence to compliance standards such as ISO 27001, SOC2 Type 2, GDPR, HIPAA and options for hosting chat on AWS GovCloud. Sendbird’s IP whitelisting provides an extra layer of security by enabling customers to create lists of whitelisted IPs in the Sendbird Chat dashboard. Only servers residing on these whitelisted IPs can make calls to the Sendbird Chat Platform API.

IP whitelisting prevents bad actors from wreaking havoc if they somehow gain access to a customer’s API key. With IP whitelisting enabled, if a bad actor tries to make an API call from a server not listed with an approved IP address, the call would not go through and the agent would be restricted from accessing Sendbird applications. This feature is particularly important for businesses that handle sensitive user information– whether these are payments businesses, financial institutions, healthcare businesses or on-demand applications. It also continues to showcase Sendbird’s commitment to maintain the most stringent security in the industry so that organizations can confidently offer new, secure options to connect.

Message Threading for Better, Cleaner Discussions

Sendbird further differentiates its experience with the addition of message threading. Users now have the ability to start threads in their group chats. Threads can be created from any message to organize discussions and let users discuss topics in detail without adding clutter to a conversation’s main view. This ensures that channels stay readable and discussions become easier to keep track of.

Message threading is especially useful in workplace messengers, where threads can be used for organized discussions around specific messages, especially in busy channels; extended discussions can be contained in threads instead of the main channel. Communities also benefit from message threading. Most community users are already comfortable using threads in large forums. Now, they can get that same familiar experience in group chat, using them for deep discussions around a specific topic without clogging up the group chat with details.

Search – Find What You Want, When You Want

Sendbird is also excited to announce the availability of the much requested Message Search for Sendbird Chat. Users send hundreds of messages everyday in many different channels. With the new feature, users can search across any conversation they are a part of. It is particularly useful for marketplaces where buyers and sellers might need to find a conversation about a transaction or with workplaces messengers to reduce repetitive questions. It also makes it simple for healthcare providers and patients to find relevant information on symptoms, appointments and treatment plans.

Message search improves the overall user experience and increases user engagement. It also enables developers to build message search experiences in in-app chat. Additionally, developers can build capabilities for users to search for messages from within the channel, as well as outside the channel.

To learn more about all of the ways Sendbird elevates chat, please visit www.sendbird.com.

About Sendbird

 Sendbird is the leading interaction API platform trusted by modern digital-first and mobile-first apps like Reddit, Delivery Hero, and Hinge. The company allows any app or website to quickly and easily embed rich real-time chat, voice and video into their app to help build connections with and between their users. Sendbird powers in-app chat for the world’s leading companies in industries ranging from marketplaces, on-demand and online communities to gaming, live video streaming and healthcare. It has SDKs for popular platforms, including iOS, Android, Javascript, React Native, .NET and Unity.

Sendbird’s top global customers include Reddit, Yahoo! Sports, Gojek, Careem, OLA, Headspace, Carousell, Virgin Mobile UAE, YOLO, Dream11, Meetup, Paytm, Grand Rounds, Livongo, Nexon, TriNet, Accolade, Hinge and Kookmin Bank. It is backed by Shasta Ventures, August Capital, ICONIQ Capital, Tiger Global Management, Y Combinator and FundersClub. Sendbird is headquartered in San Mateo, California.

Please visit https://sendbird.com for more information

Now up to 20,000 people can interact in group chats, reinventing what’s possible for large online communities and live streams

New Advanced Analytics provide insight into users, channels and messages within Sendbird application 

SAN MATEO, Calif. — October 06, 2020– Sendbird, the leading interaction API company across chat, voice and video for mobile, and web applications, today announced powerful new capabilities that break chat boundaries. Sendbird’s Supergroup Channels, designed for the world’s largest and most active communities, now enables up to 20,000 users to engage in a real-time private group chat– an industry first at this scale. The company also introduced Dynamic Partitioning for open channels as well as Advanced Analytics, which analyzes user behavior and provides detailed insights into channels and messages within the Sendbird application.

Supergroup Channel Enables Large Scale Connection Designed for a New World

While open channels with limited chat functionality have been around for some time, creating a private group with all the richness and engagement features of a chat group has never been achieved at this scale. This new engineering feat for the industry comes as people worldwide seek ways to connect with others, sharing thoughts and perspectives amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Supergroup Channel is already being used by the world’s most prolific communities to facilitate large-scale dynamic and authentic conversations.

“Scale has been one of the biggest issues hindering new applications for chat and messaging, and we are thrilled to remove this barrier, particularly in the current environment where large in-person gatherings are limited at best,” said Sendbird CEO and Founder John Kim. “Supergroup Channel is the perfect feature for our brave new world, and we are excited to see how communities leverage it.”

Supergroups debuts as large communities are increasingly looking to deliver new types of human experiences, whether a live-streamed concert or other type of virtual event. Supergroup channels provide a unique option that makes connecting with thousands as compelling as communicating with friends in modern messenger applications. Supergroups are already being used as a destination for thousands who seek advice and tips from influencers and experts in large online communities, while gaming communities are using Supergroups to gather users, find players and exchange ideas to advance game play privately.

“With Supergroups, Dream11 can engage thousands of users in the same private group chat, letting large communities of fantasy sports enthusiasts bond over moments of play together and drive real-time engagement in the Dream11 app,” Rahul Mirchandani, Chief Product Officer at Dream11, India’s Biggest Fantasy Sports Platform.

The Power of Supergroups

Supergroups support standard group chat features, including sending and receiving messages between members, sharing media or file messages, indicating online presence, displaying the last message sent or received and counting unread messages up to 100. Additionally, Supergroup channel management capabilities allow for freezing the channel, banning or muting users and protecting groups from spam. Organizations can apply Sendbird’s industry-leading set of moderation tools to Supergroups as well.

Sendbird continues to innovate with a new kind of push notification called Smart push for use at Supergroup scale. These notifications keep users active or bring them back into conversations and help Supergroups achieve conversations at scale without compromising on engagement.

Supergroups further extend the power of Sendbird’s recently introduced Announcements API, which provides the mechanism to market or convey information to exceptionally large groups of active users at one time. Paired together, Supergroups and Announcements offer a powerful toolkit for engaging with and marketing to large audiences, be it a community, a live stream, or a remote workforce.

“Because Sendbird was built to support embedded chat at industry-first levels of scale, we are well positioned to continue driving the industry forward,” added Kim. “No one can compete with Sendbird’s ability to persistently provide compelling new chat experiences and opportunities to forge connections, nor can they offer the same level of insights into user behavior.”

In addition to Supergroups, Sendbird announced Dynamic Partitioning for open channels. Dynamic Partitioning can dynamically split large open channel group chats into virtual groups of smaller sizes so users can feel as if they are part of a large group chat, but receive messages at a pace that creates a pleasant experience. Dynamic Partitioning works in the background and has tremendous effects on ensuring an engaging experience at scale in live streaming group chats.

Advanced Analytics Help Sendbird Customers Understand and Better Serve Their Users

Sendbird also introduced its Advanced Analytics (AA), a premium feature that goes beyond previously available dashboard analytics. Advanced Analytics provides immediate access to all metrics aggregated since the launch of an application that is integrated with Sendbird Chat. This enables more relevant, meaningful and pragmatic insights to be gleaned from user data.

Sendbird’s Advanced Analytics depicts user behavior through metrics such as number of messages, messages per user, new users, deleted users, deactivated users, new channels, active channels, message senders and message viewers. With these more advanced, accurate and timely metrics, user behavior can be easily analyzed. Results then can be applied to inform decision making in ways that improve the overall user experience.

To learn more about how Sendbird is transforming interactive communications please visit www.sendbird.com.

About Sendbird

Sendbird is a fully customizable chat and messaging platform with a managed infrastructure for mobile and web applications. It provides the necessary Software Development Kits (SDK) and API, front- and back-end technology so that businesses can launch a customized in-app messaging experience quickly, efficiently and at scale. Sendbird powers in-app chat for the world’s leading companies in industries ranging from marketplaces, on-demand and online communities to gaming, live video streaming and healthcare. It has SDKs for popular platforms, including iOS, Android, Javascript, React Native, .NET and Unity.

Sendbird’s top global customers include Reddit, Yahoo! Sports, Gojek, Careem, OLA, Headspace, Carousell, Virgin Mobile UAE, YOLO, Dream11, Meetup, Paytm, Grand Rounds, Livongo, Nexon, TriNet, Accolade, Hinge, and Kookmin Bank. It is backed by Shasta Ventures, August Capital, ICONIQ Capital, Tiger Global Management, Y Combinator and FundersClub. Sendbird is headquartered in San Mateo, California.

Please visit https://sendbird.com for more information.