11 ms·
Hum
- dalek2point3 13y agoGoogle Wave 2.0?
- rll 13y agoThat was my first thought as well. Not sure about the 2.0 part though.
- t0 13y agoIt's like IM/texting with the exact layout of Twitter. Are we at a point where it's almost impossible to innovate anymore? Is anything created in this space going to be only slightly different than _______?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- jitl 13y agoIt's got a lot more focus than Wave had at launch. Wave's big problem was that it introduced so many new features at once, in one product. No one could figure out what to do with it, and it was very confusing. This looks much more focused, although its unclear what it offers over Hangouts or FB messenger. The only feature it seems to add over facebook's product is a focus on conversation subjects versus social groups.
- wpietri 13y agoWas that Wave's issue? I thought it was that it was a solution in search of a problem. Which does make me wonder what problem Hum is solving. What group is saying, "X is really painful for us"?
- peteforde 13y agoPutting aside my own aversion to yet another opportunity to ramp up my continuous partial attention deficit, this strikes me as a solution looking for a problem. One of my smartest friends noticed that when his support team answered emails quickly, the customer would treat this as an implicit invitation to shift the support thread into a support chat, via email. They added a 3-hour delay before support sees any email, specifically to prevent threads from becoming chats. Note that phone support is also available; people with time-critical issues are encouraged to call in for immediate help. The delay has been a huge success because people correctly assign priority to their concerns by selecting the medium. The back-and-forth is more focused and does not get off-track. An unexpected bonus is that before the delay was introduced, people would often remember how one particular support rep helped them in the past and would hit reply on an old thread to pose a new question, unrelated to the original request. This was confusing (support people leave) and would mess up their issue tracking and happiness metrics. After the delay, this behaviour went away almost completely and they didn't experience a statistically significant drop in incident satisfaction. In conclusion, use email for email and use chat for chat. Email starts to feel like chat if you reply too quickly, and that's not a good thing.
- tmikaeld 13y agoI completely agree, not because of opinion but because of experience! For six months i answered all of my e-mails within minutes, because i thought that superb support was the way to go. But it only took a couple of months before i saw the negative effects - both employees and bosses started asking questions about every little problem that they encountered! This distracted me in the middle of all other work, and billing for it was impossible because they implied it only "took 2 minutes" to reply to. At the end of the sixth month, i got a large job and couldn't reply quickly any longer, now, client's only ask things of real value (billable value) and often they solve the problem themselves.
- mhb 13y agoSimilar to HMOs vs catastrophic insurance.
- 13y ago
- dak123 13y agoWhy are startups always out to redefine stuff that is working fine? Stop inventing solutions to problems that don't exist.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- prottmann 13y agoYou mean the problem doesn't exist for YOU ! If everybody thinks like you, than an iPhone was never invented ;-)
- mjackson 13y agoHey all! Co-founder of HUM here, and happy to answer any questions you may have about it. We've been cranking away on this product for the better part of the past year and are very excited to be rolling it out over the coming weeks.
- jstreebin 13y agoNice work!
- mxpxpx 13y agoWhat's Hum's relationship with Email? Will it be integrated in any capacity? Also, not in a technical manner, but how will Hum be different than any other chat program?
- mjackson 13y agoHum is able to both send and receive emails. People who receive stuff you send over email will be able to reply using the usual reply button, but it's not a full-fledged email client. The email integration is there to make it easy for folks who'd like to use it with their existing network of email contacts. In addition, every Hum user gets an email address at letshum.com that they can use for incoming email.
- thaweatherman 13y agoThis didn't address the question of how Hum will be different than any other chat program
- 1stop 13y agoYeah, it kind of did. Which chat program do you know can send a message as an email? And receive chat messages via an email address? It seems the idea behind this, is that it's a "persistent chat".
- 13y ago
- grej 13y agoThe application is quite nice looking, and I really like the @ integration/notification. That said, I really hope 11MB splash videos on home pages doesn't become a trend.
- fiblye 13y agoUnfortunately, the video background trend is definitely a thing. Paypal's been doing it for at least a couple weeks and I've seen at least one other site doing the same. This might even be worse than the old autoplaying music embedded on every page fad. Hell, at least you could mute it.
- grej 13y agoI hope you're wrong but fear you're right. I think this site: http://threeringfocus.com/ http://threeringfocus.com/ is an good example of a way to create a cool animated splash without forcing an 11MB download on the site visitor.
- exadeci 13y agoAt first I didn't get what you were saying because I just had a black background I took like 5 to 10 seconds to load on this connection: http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3344597847 http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3344597847 .... Well Hum no thanks :) I prefer Hangout for friends and Hipchat for work
- pazimzadeh 13y agoWhy announce the product before shipping? I added my email to the list, but I probably won't remember what the product is when you finally release it. The copy could use some work, you should be able to pare down a lot of the text. Also, you could increase the font size for maximum comfort. Why is the product name capitalized? When I see HUM I think "H. U. M."
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Goopplesoft 13y ago> I added my email to the list, but I probably won't remember what the product is when you finally release it. I'm sure the email you receive when it launches will give you all the information you need to remember what it is.
- eps 13y ago> you could increase the font size for maximum comfort Oh, god, no. It is very well sized as it is. Increase your display DPI instead.
- arrrg 13y agoOh, god, no?! That font size is absolutely tiny and my display has a low logical resolution (1440×900 on a 15.4 inch screen, that’s pretty abysmal as logical resolutions go). It should be double the size at least. Way too tiny.
- prawn 13y agoThis isn't the first time I've seen this on HN either. Pretty sure it's been mentioned before some time ago.
- comrh 13y agoAm I missing the differences between this and HipChat?
- rquantz 13y agoI accidentally upvoted this with my big fingers. Now, having seen the video, I wish I could take that upvote back.
- fournm 13y agoIn Firefox, scrolling down the page below the cover image causes a Youtube embed of what I assume is the trailer to get stuck blocking a large portion of the content of the page.
- rrradical 13y agoI don't get the need for a subject line. You're always going to read a message from friends. They can screen the first line of the first message if they want. If I want to start up a new conversation with a friend group, it should just tack onto the last conversation with that friend group.
- zyxley 13y agoGiven that I started using Slack (slack.com) last week, what in Hum would tempt me away from it? Slack fits pretty much everything I would want in team communication (being more or less private IRC with persistent history, full history searching, file uploads, etc), and has straightforward APIs and preexisting integration with assorted software and services. The only thing I'm seeing Hum offer that Slack doesn't have any equivalent to is the email integration, and if I'm emailing somebody external to my team or company I'm not going to want to treat it like a chat anyway.
- gavinpc 13y agoSometimes I wonder if dogfooding has gone too far. With respect to the OP, I see so many... products like this which seem very oriented towards the teams building them. Witness the example page. I'm trying to imagine another field where co-workers could conceivably feel unsatisfied with the level of real-time connectivity they have now. Ranchers? Astronauts? I can't think of one. But I guess I'm something of a Luddite, with my flip phone.
- ishi 13y agoHo hum. Another chat app.
- chebert 13y agothis is my favorite comment
- verelo 13y agoSounds like Google wave, but a little less intense and a lot more lean.
- jswanson 13y agoI had the same thought. Team i was on at the time made a concerted effort to use wave, and we were just starting to be pretty productive on it when google axed it. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave
- eaurouge 13y agoWhy are there so many negative comments? And most of these aren't even constructive criticisms. Do you have any suggestions to give the founding team? Any constructive criticism to offer? I'm sure they'd like to hear it. On the other hand, snide remarks provide hardly any value to anyone.
- sixQuarks 13y agoLooks like you're new around here. Welcome to HN, where the top comment for DropBox's launch was something along the lines of "this will never work".
- mst 13y agoPresumably the second highest rated comment was "less space than a nomad - lame" ...
- paulrademacher 13y agoTo read the atom.io threads. Plenty of positivity around here when a new product strikes a chord.
- anonymoushn 13y agoI would like to suggest that the founding team finds a problem to solve.
- jamesbritt 13y agoOn the other hand, snide remarks provide hardly any value to anyone. Sure. Does the same apply to single-sentence "This is great!" comments? Is a new business helped by people who cheer them on with vague support without also confirming that the product solves a real problem for them? It brings to mind some of the ideas behind having an MVP. It's almost meaningless to have people say your business idea is great. What matters is will they part with their money for it. Empty naysayers don't contribute much, but neither do empty cheerleaders. They're just less irksome.
- 13y ago
- muppetman 13y agoAre there any startups these days that don't include words "features a beautiful, simple design"? It's web 3.0's blink tag.
- jackmaney 13y agoHere's an idea: when I visit your website, let me choose whether or not I want to watch a video. Don't just play a god damn video in the background. Too much emphasis on flashiness over substance.
- huhtenberg 13y agoI wonder if the same idea can be adapted for online forums. Think - something like standard PhpBB, but with each thread being its own IRC channel with full archive. Has anyone seen anything like this done already?
- kelmop 13y agoWhy to use this over Flowdock? Flowdock: Group chat for teams. Integrates with GitHub, Jira, Trello. www.flowdock.com
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- conradk 13y agoWhat's the business model?
- ilyanep 13y agoIt appears that you're targeting corporate users, am I right? I would guess that individuals would probably just use something like Google Hangout or e-mail or some other chat client. For many corporations, I think one of the biggest issues is having their internal chats hosted in the "cloud". Maybe I'm assuming too much here, but i'm guessing all of this is happening on your servers. I'd highly recommend allowing people to deploy this service on one of their own servers and also providing some sort of security guarantee. Then some of the bigger companies might be willing to move to it, and I could see how this would be a joy to use over IM/e-mail/IRC/maybe even HipChat? Anyway, good luck on your product. Hope your launch goes well! :)
- lukeschlather 13y agoWell, the main 100-pound competitors are Google and Microsoft. Google is cloud-only, Microsoft offers self-hosted and cloud solutions. I would generally agree that the biggest market is probably for self-hosted solutions. I'm sure there's a big market here, but companies have been reinventing the wheel here since the days of AOL. What the world really needs is for something like XMPP to gain traction and actually work in a federated way with email addresses.
- hmans 13y agoI don't understand what this is.
- schainks 13y agoThis reminds me of google hangout featureset. Better UI on top of it, though. Nice work, Hum! IMO, the fundamental challenge of feature-based "utility" apps like this is that big players will eventually implement the most useful pieces of it, and slowly erode your market share until you are worthless to the average consumer. The best play for these guys long term is to get acquired before the OS people take their features.
- manish_gill 13y agoI honestly can't understand what this app is trying to do. Is it an email client that uses @mentions to involve other people in the conversation? Is the "chat" part of the app here just a UI feature? Or maybe other protocols are supported as well?
- nickjackson 13y agoWhile the app looks pretty cool and I have no beef with the app specifically, introducing yet another IM app is just going to fragment the market further and cause more issues than it solves. There are so many different ways to communicate currently, that soon we aren't going to be sure what app to best contact a particular person with. You've got Email, SMS, iMessage, Facebook (Chat), WhatsApp, Twitter, and those are just are some of the top ways. Everyone has their favourites and because of this, communication is getting more annoying and difficult purely because of the diversity of choice. Its not helped by large companies vendor locking their customers into a specific way of messaging, fully knowing that not all of the people they contact are there. I have a strong opinion on this yet I have no real solution. Whats the chances of the top tech companies coming together to create and implement a secure open protocol and/or app allowing end users to message anyone regardless of platform? I guess its pretty bonkers.
- catfoods 13y agoYeah, that exact thing already exists, it's called XMPP/Jabber but hardly anyone uses it. It's a shame. There is a federated chat protocol just like federated email, but it's businesses trying to lock in customers that is causing all of these communication problems. In a perfect world Google, Apple, Mozilla, etc would just contribute new features to the codebase, and everyone could have their own client interfaces and do unique team apps etc *Bonus points: Jabber chat protocol addresses are the same as email addresses, they are interchangeable. One less thing to list on your business card. Socially, this mindset would potentially shift into just being called an 'address' instead of assuming it's only for email. I have noticed we're running into this right now with iMessage, Facetime etc in giving out an 'email address' to do connect doing something other than emailing.
- lobster_johnson 13y agoIronically, Whatsapp started out by using ejabberd — the XMPP server written in Erlang — as their main chat infrastructure, and then modified it to the point where it no longer implements XMPP.
- eyko 13y agoI've decided to ignore all messaging "apps" unless they're based on open standards. If they believe current open protocols (email, jabber/xmpp, etc) are insufficient for their needs, they can propose a new one, but please, make it open. Otherwise, I doubt they will become the next email.
- zacinbusiness 13y agoI'd like to see an organizational com platform built around App.Net. Or maybe there already is one.
- swatkat 13y agoWhat about security? Are chats encrypted over the wire, and in storage? What's the underlying protocol - XMPP/Jabber?
- mark_l_watson 13y agoA little off topic, but I wonder if Hum was developed using Meteor.js?
- T_T 13y agoi don't feel like this is significantly different from whatsapp. at least not yet
- timbonicus 13y agoMinor tip when embedding YouTube videos, as with the 'Watch the HUM Trailer' video - add rel=0 to the URL to prevent 'Related videos' from appearing at the end.
- frade33 13y agoBam! I got a solution. Hey! you too, it's cool. Hmm! come over, now let us find a problem.
- coldtea 13y agoGeneric chat UI, check. Generic marketing copy, check. Generic video with uplifting folky music and hipsters dressed like hipsters doing hipstery stuff, from sitting at a minimal wooden desk to surfing, check. So what exactly does this bring to the table that we don't already have or does better?
- prawks 13y agoI like the ring-shaped indicator around people's avatars to indicate not only that they're typing, but how much they're typing. Interesting, but might be a little creepy in practice, I'm not sure.
- uptown 13y agoI'm curious about the ring. How do you know how much of the ring to "populate" unless you know how much they're going to type?
- saraid216 13y agoI don't know how they do it, but I'd populate the ring with frequency, not quantity. Keydown Events per Second is probably pretty easy to track.
- pikachu_is_cool 13y agoI'd bet it's the latter (with a character limit), since this really isn't that groundbreaking of an app...
- pikachu_is_cool 13y agoYou can use it to collaborate on shitty startup ideas.
- brownkun 13y agoHey Hum team, I've been waiting for months. Any Exact launch date to announce to the audience?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- rafifyalda 13y agoThere's some elements that remind me of Moped (http://blog.moped.com http://blog.moped.com), which has since been bought and shut-down. It's actually quite more enjoyable to keep this stuff out of your inbox, and if you really wanted to, you could use Moped as your email client. I don't use Hangouts, but doesn't that require other people you send messages to to also have Hangouts etc? Disclaimer: I wrote the Mac client for Moped.
- elf25 13y agoLooks like another closed communication system that won't work for me until all my friends DL the app - and they won't.
- ianbicking 13y agoFeels a lot like what Google+ should have been - the mishmash of Google+ features point to some of the ideas in Hum, but lack any "here's how you should use it" sense.