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The biggest difference is that HipChat is primarily about "rooms" and less about messaging individual people (although you can do that too). It makes for much b
by ryanbrunner 14y ago
The biggest difference is that HipChat is primarily about "rooms" and less about messaging individual people (although you can do that too). It makes for much better team workflow, because it enables a lot more passive information sharing. Most people in a room don't want to be actively involved in everything, but they would like to passively just see what's going on.
Secondly, it's centralized around a company, so you know that everyone has everyone else on HipChat, unlike Skype, where everyone needs to manage their contact list separately.
Finally, the notification features are really nice. I can just @mention someone's name, and it's like summoning them into the room to answer a question for me. It's way smoother than adding someone to a Skype conversation, since they'll be able to trace back the history of the conversation.
- pbreit 14y agoGood summary. HipChat is simply very tuned to the needs of a workgroup, not just simple IMing. I especially found that it was good at notifying via email about a missed chat you likely want to have a look at.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- timedoctor 14y agoRooms can be created on Skype, that's the way we use skype in our business, we create a group chat between all the relevant people and then favorite it and it's the same as a room. The contact list issue is good I think for larger companies especially in the beginning. I'm wondering about how the integrations could be used in our business, and I'm also wondering if we can integrate our software with HipChat
- ryanbrunner 14y agoI think the difference is that rooms are a focus of HipChat, and an afterthought / hack in Skype. Similar to how individual, "not in a room" conversation is an afterthought in HipChat. In both cases you can technically do it, but the app doesn't go out of it's way to make it easy or well-supported. If you find you're using your favorited lists to chat more than one-on-one conversations, I'd really recommend trying out HipChat. For what it's worth, we regularly use Skype at our office as well as HipChat. They both excel at what they were designed to do, and we don't necessarily see a problem with using two tools if it means you don't have to shove a round peg into a square hole.