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Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

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Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#291

Post by tabbott »

jdormit wrote: post #139
callahad wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People I respect¹ seem to like Zulip ( https://zulipchat.com/ ), though I haven't used it myself. ¹: https://twitter.com/b0rk/status/986444234365521920

Zulip on the desktop is a great experience. Unfortunately their Android app is pretty much unusable, which is a non-starter for me.

(I lead the Zulip project)

When did you last try Zulip on Android? I agree it was pretty much unusable in 2017, but everyone who actively uses it agrees it's improved a lot in recent months (I use it every single day, and have a good experience using it to get my work done). The mobile apps remain our top engineering focus area, since they're certainly far behind the desktop experience's level of polish, but we've generally stopped hearing new users describe them as "unusable".

I should also mention that Zulip's threading model makes the experience of replying to a conversation when you get back to your computer feel great, which isn't true for any other chat tool. You don't have to be glued to your keyboard/phone in order to communicate effectively or avoid missing out on participating in important conversations, and I can't emphasize enough how much better this makes life.

That doesn't eliminate the value of mobile (as I said, this is our top focus area right now), but it's a big part of why people love Zulip today, despite the mobile experience being way behind the desktop experience.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#292

Post by hrktb »

briandear wrote: post #282
wuliwong wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I've ever used HipChat. What don't you guys like about it?

Sync. I have three computers and an iPhone. If I check a message on one device, it still shows unread on the other devices. It's total crap.

That’s the best case.

It often fails to notify of new direct messages, I suspect thinking one device was active when it was received.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#293

Post by laumars »

ellyagg wrote: post #207
ironjunkie wrote: post #165

When is this overhype for Slack going to stop? It is a chat application with a slightly improved UI like it existed 30 years ago. This is a step in corporate IT that I really cannot fully understand. It seems that every company//startup has to use slack nowadays to pretend to be cool again. Everytime I have a serious conversation about the productivity gains or losses of Slack though, it is pretty clear to me that it…

You write and borrow plug-ins for Slack. With plug-ins, Slack becomes an extensible, configurable, fine-grained company alerts system. You adapt it to alert you about your latest website traffic, analytics goals, customer support requests, and bug tickets to triage. When Slack is down for a few hours, I know start-ups that feel it in the gut. As a social tool, Slack is one among many, but social tools for work are be…

What you've described is just as applicable to nearly every other popular communications platform whether it's Slack, IRC, Skype, Twitter or even email.

Slack didn't invent those qualities. It's not unique in that regard.

What Slack does do better than most is provide a half decent interface for real time chat amongst groups of people. Personally I'd prefer vanilla IRC because I'd then get to chose my chat client but in terms of official clients go by, Slack is better than most (though that's really more of a criticism about Skype, email, etc than a compliment to Slack. I mean how is it that so many collaborative tools have such poorly designed UIs?)

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#294

Post by emodendroket »

wuliwong wrote: post #265
karlkatzke wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use HipChat. It’s terrible, and it has been a frequent comment that having Slack would help us build better communication culture, because people avoid using hipchat (and use Skype or other platforms instead).

I don't think I've ever used HipChat. What don't you guys like about it?

I worked at a place where employees lobbied for Slack endlessly until we got rid of HipChat because -- and I am being completely serious here -- you can't upload as many custom smilies in HipChat.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#297

Post by eldavido »

ironjunkie wrote: post #165

When is this overhype for Slack going to stop? It is a chat application with a slightly improved UI like it existed 30 years ago. This is a step in corporate IT that I really cannot fully understand. It seems that every company//startup has to use slack nowadays to pretend to be cool again. Everytime I have a serious conversation about the productivity gains or losses of Slack though, it is pretty clear to me that it…

I think you've gotta acknowledge that a lot of this stuff is just fashion.

Anyone can buy a pair of pants. Look beyond the functionality to understand why people do things. It can be social signaling, wanting to be part of a crowd, or dozens of other reasons.

My wife is an architect. She made me see this.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#298

Post by dylz »

ceruleanscott wrote: post #205
dawhizkid wrote: post #85

Interesting. I worked at a healthcare tech startup last year and the reason why we had to use Hipchat is because the self-hosted Hipchat Server was HIPAA-compliant and Slack does not have a HIPAA-compliant self-hosted option. Have no idea what they're going to do (or anyone who needs to comply with stricter regulatory guidelines that prevents use of cloud-based messaging apps).

Shameless self-promotion: We (Trillian) just received HITRUST certification, provide a BAA, and offer both a SaaS variant and the self-hosted Trillian Server product, both of which run over our own open IM protocol. We're not exactly a Slack/Hipchat clone (having been around for 18+ years, we're more of a traditional IM and group chat solution with some modern stuff like an API, chat bots, and federation capabilities…

Whoa, that's a name I haven't heard in a while.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#299

Post by [deleted] »

emodendroket wrote: post #287
tomnipotent wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s too bad most of those workflows don’t apply to business use cases. Which is totally why Slack isn't popular with businesses. /s Just because you personally haven't found it useful, doesn't mean hundreds of thousands of other business users haven't.

Businesses pay for a lot of stuff that doesn't work. Simply saying everyone else is doing it is not necessarily convincing.

[deleted]

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#300

Post by quickthrower2 »

solatic wrote: post #107

Huge problem for on-prem Hipchat customers. Plenty of customers out there not willing to put all their internal communications on the other side of their firewall, and now have to migrate. Slack doesn't have an on-prem option. Microsoft Teams doesn't have an on-prem option. What are enterprises supposed to use, RocketChat? Matrix? With no clear migration path? Really poor move on Atlassian's part. It would be one thi…

We might have to revert to talking. Aahhhhh!
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