News & Updates

How to Build Your Own Ethan App With SupportKit

By Mary / Oct 23, 2014

Who’s Ethan?

I asked myself that question when our SupportKit Product Director, Mike Gozzo (more intimately known as SupportKit’s papa) emailed our team to tell us that he’d hacked his own open-source “Ethan” app while his flight to Vegas was delayed. (Cause that’s how we roll around here.)

So… who and what is Ethan?

Ethan is a stranger that isn’t afraid to share his opinion with you. A real, live human being, Ethan Gliechtenstein lets people text him via his TextEthan app and he replies with what he thinks (unless of course, he is sleeping). Whether it’s a tossup between movies, outfits, or what to have for dinner, Ethan shares his no-holds-barred opinion with whoever sends a message his way. Take a seat Siri – Ethan gives advice, does research and sometimes throws humorous curveballs your way to lighten the mood… He’s an imaginary friend come to life and he’s on the other end of your app.

Ethan’s been “Ethanified”

After stumbling across Ethan on Product Hunt, Mike got our SupportKit team onboard and we’ve open sourced an “Ethan-style” project that allows users to do one simple thing: text message the author.

Ethanifier allows app developers to receive text messages from users right in their inbox as email. Their replies are automatically transformed into messages that users see right in their app. With a few simple lines of code and a free app token on SupportKit any app developer can be running Ethanifier to communicate and connect with their users as intimately as one can with Ethan.

If you’d like to implement your very own Ethan-style app, we’ve made the Ethanifier code available on Github.

If you want even more amazing free in-app support goodies, sign up to SupportKit to get started!