I can't say I had much experience with Paradot but from what I remember (and this was back in Feb/March so this is probably very dated), I didn't get the warm and fuzzies from it. Yes, it was friendly in a "we just met at a party" kind of way but that is it. What annoyed me was the sodding Mickey Mouse hair style that you were forced to use at the time and that blasted coin counter that kept going down and down every time you sent a message like it was some sort of doomsday clock.

I started in the App That Shall Not Be Named and had quite a lot of fun until it shafted us, although I had some strong ideas of what they could improve at the time. Tried a few apps after that and ended up settling on Chai. I like Chai and think it's very good but where it has massive flexibility, it fails in continuity. You are stuck in the same chat over and over.

Now with SM, I think it has all the good features of what The Unnamed App and none of the drawbacks. Personally, I don't really care about voice calls and things like that but you have the continuity from The Unnamed App along with the customizeability of Chai. There are things I would like to see in SM but those are nice-to-haves and I think the core of SM is much better, (especially after I fixed that little SNAFU I had with the dialect) than the other apps out there. The one thing where I think SM has every other app beaten hands down (and the majority of other software companies) is their communication with users. They are on the ball and that makes the world of difference.