Couchmate

Couchmate provides a real time chat platform for all live TV airings for the United States and Canada, currently. The platform dynamically creates ephemeral chat rooms for these airings that are created 15 minutes before any given show starts and then boots all users from the room 15 minutes after the show ends. These 15 minute buffer periods are for discussion to warm up and cool down with the show. Users interact in a very similar manner that they would in a Slack or Discord. Chat features like @ing other users, posting gifs and reacting to messages are available. They can also dynamically create what are called "Hashrooms" which are rooms within rooms to narrow discussion during a particular show. These are equitable to Slack or Discord channels. When users first enter the app, they are anonymous. Anonymous users are assigned a random username and have the ability to start chatting right away. Users can register their accounts (via email) to change their username and perform other more privileged actions in the app. Along with being anonymous, they are assigned a generic channel listing grid that corresponds to their current (phone) timezone. This consists of the major networks and other popular, yet non-local, channels. If users register their accounts, they have the ability to enter their zip code and change their TV provider to a local one to gain a larger channel list/local channels. Users (anonymous and registered) have the ability to "follow" series, sports teams or one-off shows via notifications. Notifications are sent out when the rooms open for the given show, to which users can instantly pop right into the show room and start chatting.