Meta Tech Podcast

39: White Labeling Messenger for iOS with Amy

Mar 11, 2022

Amy, an experienced iOS developer at Facebook, shares her journey of joining the company. She discusses developing a separate work chat app for Workplace, challenges of inheriting code from Messenger, and white labeling the app. Other topics include origins and growth, open sourcing plans for Lexical, and challenges with data model.

38:01

Creator website

Episode guests

Amy

AI Summary

AI Chapters

Episode notes

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

Amy and her team developed a white-labeled version of Messenger for Workplace, customizing it for a different context.

After spending several years on the Workplace team, Amy transitioned to work on the unified editor and lexical, aiming to build an open-source library for rich text editing with extensibility and customizability.

Deep dives

Creating a White Labeled Messenger for Workplace

Amy and her team developed a white-labeled version of Messenger for Workplace, which involved practically customizing Messenger for a different context.

Introduction

2min

Amy's Background and Experience at Facebook

2min

Developing a Separate Work Chat App

20min

Origins and Growth

9min

Open Sourcing Plans and Challenges in Building Lexical for iOS

2min

Challenges with Data Model and Excitement about Open Source Release

2min

When Amy joined the Workplace team nearly seven years ago (back then still under the name Facebook for Work), it became clear that it would require a messaging service. While there were already a few options available, none of them was designed to be plugged into a new app. That's when Amy and her team decided to take on white labeling Messenger for iOS to turn it into what would become Workplace Chat. Amy and Pascal discuss the challenges of taking a huge app that is under constant development and adding your own functionality on top.

After many years on Workplace, Amy recently switched teams and now works on Lexical, "an extensible text editor library that does things differently". To find out why you should get excited about the upcoming open source release of the library, tune in!

Got feedback? Send it to us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/metatechpod), Instagram (https://instagram.com/metatechpod) and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (https://twitter.com/passy). Fancy working with us? Check out https://www.metacareers.com/.

Links:

Lexical: https://lexical.dev/
Workplace: https://www.workplace.com/

Timestamps:

Intro 0:06
Introducing Amy 1:54
Joining Workplace 3:54
Early Days at Facebook for Work iOS 6:38
Whitelabeling Messenger 8:10
Project Workspeed 10:23
msys 14:39
End-to-End Encryption 17:50
Workplace Chat for Desktop 19:33
Unified Editor 24:27
Lexical 28:01
Text Rendering Models 34:16
Outro 37:02

Remember Everything You Learn from Podcasts

Save insights instantly, chat with episodes, and build lasting knowledge - all powered by AI.

Meta Tech Podcast

39: White Labeling Messenger for iOS with Amy

Episode guests

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

Deep dives

Creating a White Labeled Messenger for Workplace

Building a Separate Messaging App for Workplace

The Evolution of Workplace and the Challenges Faced

The Journey from Workplace Chat to Unified Editor and Lexical

Remember Everything You Learn from Podcasts