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Twist – Mindful Team Communication
- Jaruzel 9y agoAlso: https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/21/twist-is-slack-without-the-annoying-distractions/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/21/twist-is-slack-without-the...
- hfauq 9y agoWhy Doist is betting against group chat: https://blog.doist.com/why-were-betting-against-real-time-team-messaging-521804a3da09 https://blog.doist.com/why-were-betting-against-real-time-te...
- eddyg 9y agoHN discussion on this blog post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14586390 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14586390
- eggie5 9y agojust when I have everything migrated to slack...
- gzapico 9y agoJust onboard, seems stylish, team oriented and not as stressful as Slack.
- mmbleh 9y agoGoogle Wave came out a few years too early...
- sametmax 9y agoNa the reason Google wave failed was that the idea was great but the realization sucked. Most of my friend were unable to understand the UI. The thing was sloooooow. Trying to do anything meaningful would require a lot of tinkering.
- dkersten 9y agoThis was my problem with Wave. I found the UI really confusing (and the value prop not high enough to get over the learning curve) and incredibly slow. I tried it a few times and decided I didn't care for it.
- bgentry 9y agoHere's their official launch blog post: https://blog.doist.com/twist-mindful-team-communication-28e83e661e69 https://blog.doist.com/twist-mindful-team-communication-28e8...
- tehabe 9y agoLooks nice, sadly I can't use it because I'm not sure all in my team are fine with an English UI. Also still a lot of worries about the cloud. So it is still sending back and forth Word documents and the hope you didn't miss any because people didn't pay attention to whom they sent the emails.
- tarr11 9y agoIs there an API? One of the main values as a Dev is all the integrations we use and build.
- beberlei 9y agoyes had the same question: https://www.gitbook.com/book/doist/twist-api https://www.gitbook.com/book/doist/twist-api it looks a bit more complicated than the Slack one, because of the thread/comment difference, but the "Automatic URL Report" and "Loop in" email based input looks very powerful as well.
- beberlei 9y agoI will try this out with our company, because this is exactly how I wanted Slack to have threading. But Twists API to create either thread/comment in an integration will be more complicated to do than Slack and their attachments are not very powerful (yet?), migrating our existing Slack related code might proof difficult.
- dyeje 9y agoEh, looks like a proprietary email system to me.
- devrandomguy 9y agoRight off the bat, this has much better performance on my laptop than Slack; Slack really spins the fans. Also, that extra layer of organization provided by the thread column was needed badly. I personally was hoping for tags and tag-groups in Slack, but this should also do nicely. We have been using Slack as a UI for our backend services, for example, and it is a great way to present reports and alerts, and offer basic controls to the relevant person. For me, whether or not I actually adopt Twist will depend on how easily I can interact with it from my own software. I would suggest making the integrations page easier to find - I had to troll through the Zendesk archive to find it, even though it is a core feature. Also, a link to the API docs on the help page would be nice. (Edit: Didn't realize until now that integrations are at the channel level, not the top level.) API docs: https://doist.gitbooks.io/twist-api/content/ https://doist.gitbooks.io/twist-api/content/
- Diederich 9y agoCurious: I've always used slack from a web browser rather than their native app. What, if anything, do you personally miss from the web app in slack?
- devrandomguy 9y agoWell, the native Slack app is just an Electron wrapper around their web app, as far as I can tell. The performance feels roughly the same for both web and desktop. The main reason I kept the desktop app, is so that I don't need to "download" the app every time my browser's cached copy is invalidated or expires. But being able to start the app with a couple keystrokes from my OS's quick launch menu is also nice.
- Diederich 9y agoInteresting. So you're saying that it really 'spins the fans' when you run slack as a pure web app as well? It seems quite lightweight to me, on latest chrome in Ubuntu on a late 2016 macbook pro.
- 9y ago
- mistaken 9y agoHmm. It seems that these chat applications are more and more becoming like a polished webmail system. Now they've introduced threads, it's searchable forever, you can mail erm. I mean send messages to individuals or even groups. This new technology is amazing. Seriously there is nothing wrong with using e-mail (apart from the dated protocol) and for knowledge sharing your team is better of with some kind of wiki with organized information.
- amix 9y agoWhy not just use email? This was asked by a ton of people and we have addressed it here: https://help.twistapp.com/hc/articles/115003654589 https://help.twistapp.com/hc/articles/115003654589 Email is great and we are fans of it, but not for internal team communication.
- mdekkers 9y agoallright, let´s play this game, from your help page: > An email inbox is unorganized Mine isn´t. Between folders and labels, my inbox is clean and organised. > Email chains easily become long and difficult to read, and can splinter off into multiple chains The multiple threads/chains is a feature. I want to be able to splinter off a discussion. Also, if you frequently have massive email chains, you might want to just call a webex. > when someone goes on vacation or leaves your team, progress grinds to a halt That is an organisational problem, not a communications-tool problem. > your email inbox is just one of many places where your team communicates. And twist is going to be yet another place to look. [rehash of email is bad] > On top of that, Twist gives your team the space to get deep work done by allowing you to snooze all notifications. So, like slack, snoozed, but looks like email? When I need to put my head down to get stuff done I switch stuff off, which appears to be the easier option.
- dkersten 9y agoI'll add to your last point with: Email never interrupts me. I have all audible and popup notifications turned off and generally check if I have new email only when it suits me. I make this super fast and simple by checking if my email icon on my phone has a little red number. Takes two seconds. If I have email, I can read them, if I don't, great. Like you, I use filters and labels to keep my inbox clean. Automated emails and mailing lists get filtered away right away (and I check them manually when I feel like it). My inbox itself then takes a few seconds to clean leaving only stuff I have to act on. I use the Spark mail client which is very similar to google inbox in that I can quickly deal wia h messages or "snooze" those I can't deal with right now. This way, I have zero unread messages in my inbox most of the time. (And I get OCD when I see other peopl ea phones or screenshots with 30k unread messages... wtf is wrong with people!)
- alexkavon 9y ago<insert "so this is just like X communication software" comment here>
- amix 9y agoWe are also launching an integration with Zapier today: https://zapier.com/zapbook/twist/ https://zapier.com/zapbook/twist/ And we also have a very powerful API: https://api.twistapp.com/ https://api.twistapp.com/ And we are working on a lot more integrations.
- boundlessdreamz 9y agoDo you have support for webhooks. Couldn't find any information about that
- amix 9y agoYes, we do. We implement the Resthooks spec. Please see this: https://api.twistapp.com/#integrations-rest-hooks https://api.twistapp.com/#integrations-rest-hooks
- boundlessdreamz 9y agoI meant incoming webhooks. These are outgoing webhooks.
- jameslk 9y agoHow is this different from Google Wave, besides being less clunky? How will it overcome the adoption issues that Google Wave had?
- nbrempel 9y agoThis is the exact thought that I had. What were the issues that Google Wave had? Why didn't it succeed?
- MikeKusold 9y agoMarketing. Google was unable to properly explain to people what wave did and why they should use it, then killed it after 2 years citing adoption numbers.
- goshx 9y agoSource code still available here: http://incubator.apache.org/wave/source-code.html http://incubator.apache.org/wave/source-code.html
- desireco42 9y agoSlack makes hard for companies to charge money for these apps. I think it is cool but probably not enough reason to make people to move. One thing that would make me consider it, if I could open multiple windows at the same time for example.
- bgentry 9y agoYou can open multiple windows at the same time: https://cl.ly/1C0q0C022o1X/Screen%20Shot%202017-06-21%20at%2010.16.31%20AM.png https://cl.ly/1C0q0C022o1X/Screen%20Shot%202017-06-21%20at%2...
- desireco42 9y agoThat is useful. Thanks.
- bgentry 9y agoI'm really impressed by the attention to detail for a brand new product. I know they spent a couple years getting to this point, but I can really appreciate the quick, well-designed iOS app, and the native, non-Chromium / non-Electron Mac app that only uses 35MB of RAM and has no noticeable idle CPU draw. It's such a stark contrast with Slack and most of today's pseudo-native apps. Impressive launch!
- mdekkers 9y agoagain? this was on HN just recently, but now it is "mindful" - said it then, and will say it again, it looks like email, and find that the hassle of yet another communications tool not worth it in this case (basically email with a default "reply-to-all" permanently jammed in place).
- azinman2 9y agoThey keep saying it’s not email, but it looks a lot like email with preconfigured filters. What am I missing? What’s so mindful about this?
- gtirloni 9y agoIt's way better organized than email. You can edit things together following the same format (not the dozen different ways people will reply to emails), you can edit, know things will look the same for everybody, know for sure everybody has access to everything and can search, everybody sees the same categories (not your own special way of organizing things while other coworkers are lost in the their mess). It's more a mix of wiki+email+chat.
- hex13 9y agoTL;DR: they just invented internet forum/message board but with nicer GUI. And it's good. I think internet went wrong way to ditch traditional internet forums/discussion groups/ and internet communication started to be based on real time chats (Slack, Messenger, Skype etc.), but I'm glad that we're returning to the oldschool (I'm waiting for Facebook to introduce "threads/topics" on its groups, because now Facebook groups are less functional than plain old phpBB.
- alfra 9y agoThe problem they claim to address is real. However, the product not really addresses it. It's too close to email and existing messengers. [ Problem ] - Meetings have the potential to really keep a team together - Teams are distributed throughout geography, time zones or daily life patterns - So how to bring GOOD meetings online, and perhaps even make them asynchronous? "Meetings" come in different flavors, for example - Weekly or monthly meetings to look back, learn, and discuss how to move on - Daily scrum / daily standup to get a shared view of the day - Ad hoc meetings to address a smaller but immediate issue - Water cooler meetings which allow for serendipity ... So for meetings in person, the real challenge is to get everyone attending, even if there is lot of urgent / important work to do. On the flip side: Keep the signal / noise ratio of the meeting so everyone feels it's time well spent. [ Solution ] So my vision for a better tool would include: - Separation of reading mode and writing mode. You should be able to write in the sense of offloading thoughts without the need / option to read through everyone else's notes at the same time - Asynchronous default. Stuff you write should be considered a draft until intentionally "published" (exception: urgent stuff / water cooler stuff). That would allow revising bigger thoughts before a "meeting". - Even asynchronous, virtual meetings should have schedules. So for "daily" meetings, there should be a function that makes sure that everyone reads and writes at least once a day. For "monthly" at least once a month, but without that becoming a continuous "monthly meeting", which wouldn't allow to really focus on it.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jpolitz 9y agoI think this has lots of potential. I have thought before that if I could make two changes to Slack (which I already think is pretty great), they would be: 1. Hitting "Enter" doesn't send the message. This encourages writing actual paragraphs in response, rather than sending fragments of sentences that can be interrupted across multiple lines because you're not really sure if you've finished your sentence just yet oh and you thought of one more thing so everyone else please take this line into consideration as well Of course, you might say "train your team to not do that." Sure. But I'd rather use a tool that doesn't require breaking (perhaps reasonable) habits. And if communication shouldn't be through short bursty chunks by default, why make that the easiest thing to do? 2. Make threads more of a default way to respond, and make thread comments first-class citizens. Presented with the UX of Slack, it's really hard to move yourself towards using threads because the easiest way to respond to things is to type and hit enter. Also, threads live in their own "All threads" space, not organized by channel. Thread comments aren't first-class citizens like regular chat is because they can't have files attached, be posts or snippets, etc, so sometimes it feels like I actually _lose_ functionality by starting a thread. Twist looks like it has what I love about Slack – good for newbies to join in and see organized, curated history (I can't show new folks _my_ inbox labels and organization, or spin up a new channel on a mailing list for each topic we want to discuss), good for lurking on projects that aren't your own but are related, and has emoji responses for celebration, quick feedback, and commiseration.
- twobyfour 9y agoThreads are pretty awful. It's really easy for messages and discussions to get lost in them and for participants not to realize that more has been said.
- ghthor 9y agoThis is a UI/UX problem. You can make the same argument about an unorganized spew tube that I now have to spend 50% of my cognitive ability to organize into a threaded conversation manually in my head.
- 9y ago
- dangero 9y agoI've actually been working on a similarly focused product but specifically for enterprise: http://www.progresschat.com http://www.progresschat.com
- noodlesUK 9y agoThis almost exactly replicates the workflow my team uses with discourse. I don't see the advantage this has over plain old message boards... Perhaps there's a feature I'm missing
- klancaster 9y agoIt has instant messaging as well, so I think that is the difference.
- hergin 9y agoMaybe Google Wave arrived too early to the scene. These new generation chat apps all reminds me the features of Wave.
- maitrik 9y agoI have actually thought about this idea before and really like what they are trying to do. But I do not like the idea of installing one more app and adopting one more platform. Why not just use existing infrastructure of emails and integrate with that nicely? The channels on Twist could be folders on gmails (with google integration at first) and users could reply to threads from their favorite email client. If they want to use a dedicated app they could easily install the app. I think this would help them with growth a lot more since it would use the existing infrastructure of emails. Of course, it doesn't solve the notifications problem that they are trying to solve but that's what the app is for.
- erikpukinskis 9y agoWhat does this add to the space over Basecamp? They also provide a pretty good message board-like system. Also with the benefit of many many many years of refinement, and similar values to the Twist folks. https://basecamp.com/how-it-works https://basecamp.com/how-it-works
- kwoff 9y agojust a twist in my sobriety
- mrmondo 9y agoHi, is there an offline / self hosted version available? Like many ops teams we wouldn't want a lot of our conversations and attachments etc on public / shared hosting.