Hum

https://letshum.com

by jonkratz • 12 years ago

258 133 12 years ago

letshum.com

dalek2point3• 12 years ago

Google Wave 2.0?

rll• 12 years ago

That was my first thought as well. Not sure about the 2.0 part though.

t0• 12 years ago

It'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 _______?

jitl• 12 years ago

It'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• 12 years ago

Was 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"?

peteforde5• 12 years ago

Putting 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• 12 years ago

I 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• 12 years ago

Similar to HMOs vs catastrophic insurance.

mjackson6• 12 years ago

You make some excellent points about using email in a support organization. To be fair though, Hum isn't designed to be used by employees in a call center.

Instead, Hum addresses a much more fundamental shift in communication patterns that is already in full swing. Conversations are getting shorter and shorter, and more to the point. Most teens I know never check their email. Many of them don't even have email addresses.

Hum combines some of the core organization elements of email, like threads and subject lines, with features that many people have come to expect from their more modern IM/text/Twitter client like instant updates, presence, typing indicators, @mentions, etc. It strikes a balance between the two that helps bridge the gap from email to a much faster and more productive medium.

doesnt_know• 12 years ago

This is the first time I've ever seen anyone label the "instant updates" of IM/texts/Twitter as more productive than email.

peteforde5• 12 years ago

About a year ago I started making a point of sampling all of the teens I found myself in conversation with — family dinners, speaking at high schools, friends' siblings — and asking about their email usage patterns.

While it's true that they don't use email as a primary communication medium (yet) it seems likely that this is because they also don't have jobs (yet) and that it's currently easier to talk to their friends via Instagram, WhatsApp and Tumblr.

And yet they all have email addresses, because otherwise there's no way to access most of the stuff on the web. You have to sign up, and unless you're talking about a phone-centric app like WhatsApp, there's no practical way to avoid email.

Even if you can login with Facebook Connect, you still need email to use Facebook.

So, can we dispel the myth that "teens don't have email" please?

----

As for my referencing a support operation delaying email, I used it as an example because I wanted to demonstrate that it wasn't a half-baked notion based on anecdotal evidence from one guy.

Meanwhile, conversations are most certainly NOT getting shorter. Each message in an exchange might itself be quite short, but the conversation itself really never ends.

Ask yourself what is more distracting: a long email or a series of 80 individual "short, to the point" texts, where each one vibrates your pocket and you have no idea when the next one is coming. You already know the answer. Often times you give up trying to do anything else and just stare at the messaging interface, waiting for the next message/fix to arrive.

Don't get me wrong; I use iMessage constantly and vastly prefer texting to calling people for most trivial things. But I also gave up IRC and ICQ (dating myself) cold turkey because eventually I was forced to acknowledge that it was holding me back in life. It was not more productive; it was incredibly counter-productive.

fournm2• 12 years ago

It's rather hard to believe that any number of them wouldn't have an email address, considering everything they would use in place of it requires an email address to sign up for.

Are they mostly talking to friends via email? Probably not--I don't think that's ever been the case with teens--but I can't imagine that they just flat out do not have an account anywhere.

hu_me• 12 years ago

IM / text conversations are shorter but they also drift from one topic to the other. Generally chats are grouped based on people while emails are grouped based on topics. Categorizing them with subjects wouldnt really be practical.

unfamiliar• 12 years ago

Most teens I know never check their email. Many of them don't even have email addresses.

Because most teens don't have any need to be productive. This isn't a sign that the times are changing, this is a sign that the people you are using as a focus group have no need for the type of communication email facilitates.

pbreit3• 12 years ago

Heaven forbid that businesses might engage with customers...

peteforde5• 12 years ago

I don't think anyone is suggesting that businesses shouldn't/don't/won't engage with customers.

All this particular business did was tell people that if they have a time-sensitive problem, call them and get immediate help.

Delaying replies to emails solved a number of problems and streamlined the exchange. Everyone seems happy.

zacinbusiness5• 12 years ago

I think I up voted this comment, but I'm not 100% certain.

unclebucknasty• 12 years ago

It's funny to see someone rushing to the defense of the idea of customer engagement, as if it really needs additional promotion or protection. I mean, we only hear about how much companies need to be creating deep emotional connections with their customers and making sweet, sweet love to them 24/7.

As a customer, I want great service too. As a business owner, I understand that their are economics behind delivering such service, especially when customers also want low prices. There has to be a balance, and avoiding unnecessary interaction (or engagement) is an absolute key to providing better service overall.

nknighthb2• 12 years ago

people with time-critical issues are encouraged to call in for immediate help

This is a company that doesn't want my business. If I have to pick up a phone, you've already lost.

Email provides quick but asynchronous communication. Each side can take a few minutes to do research or investigation, find someone with more information, and try possible solutions, without heavy distraction.

Discarding this communications channel and demanding my attention be monopolized by a voice following a script is somewhere between disrespectful and outright inhumane.

jamesbritt4• 12 years ago

Discarding this communications channel and demanding my attention be monopolized by a voice following a script is somewhere between disrespectful and outright inhumane.

Why do you claim the OP would have the customer monopolized by a voice following a script? How much do you know about this particular company?

In my experience it is far easier for someone to follow a script in E-mail than on the phone. If a company wants to give users the runaround there are much better ways than a 3-hour hold on E-mail replies.

OP explained how E-mail was handled. It's not discarded, it's used in a way suitable for the medium.

Trying to have a real-time conversation in email is nowhere as good as an actual voice conversation. If that's what's needed then that's the better option and people should be encouraged in that direction.

coldtea3• 12 years ago

This is a company that doesn't want my business. If I have to pick up a phone, you've already lost.

Well, if "opportunity cost" estimates pan out, the only responce to that is "Don't let the door hit you on your way out".

coldtea3• 12 years ago

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.

Haha, had the same experience too! Started taking longer to respond and this stopped.

e12e2• 12 years ago

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.

Interesting observation (and "solution"). I'd say that model of dividing things is completely wrong, though. When I worked in support, I would much prefer to get everything via email. At the time we had a small user base (small office internal support) -- and this wasn't an issue -- we could educate our users (if needed).

But the general rule I've formulated, is don't let the user set the priority level. They'll be wrong. So for email, you might want to triage/prioritize every issue at once (and: eg group requests that have to do with a service being down/unreliable) -- adding a full 3 hours delay on top of every email sounds like the wrong approach for most help desks. If for no other reason than that it seems it would generate an increase in calls -- which are much harder to handle (scale) than email.

dak123• 12 years ago

Why are startups always out to redefine stuff that is working fine? Stop inventing solutions to problems that don't exist.

prottmann• 12 years ago

You mean the problem doesn't exist for YOU !

If everybody thinks like you, than an iPhone was never invented ;-)

mjackson6• 12 years ago

Hey 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• 12 years ago

Nice work!

mxpxpx• 12 years ago

What'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?

mjackson6• 12 years ago

Hum 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.

eps2• 12 years ago

You should mention this in your HN profile. Your other comment here was in gray because it looks like astroturfing.

mjackson6• 12 years ago

Thanks for the tip! Just updated by profile.

be5invis3• 12 years ago

Is it mac only? I am poor and I cannot afford a mac :(

mjackson6• 12 years ago

No. ;) There is a Mac desktop client but the app will be available on the web as well.

sixQuarks2• 12 years ago

That's a beautiful launch page. I like that you subtly get the user to scroll down.

nmodu• 12 years ago

Yea I noticed that too. You initially scroll down to see the rest of that sample chat inbox, which provides a smooth transition between the div with the background video and the div with the main content (since the first chat inbox spills into the second div). Looks good.

kibibu• 12 years ago

You mean to get rid of the annoyingly distracting video?

tudborg• 12 years ago

It looks (very much) like Google Hangouts in your trailer video. Right now, hangouts is pretty much installed on every new android phone, so i assume you have some kind of edge on hangouts to gain traction on Android?

sturmeh• 12 years ago

I have a few questions!

What does Hum offer that Google Hangouts doesn't? That just about every other alternative chat offering doesn't? (Keeping in mind that all sorts of people are already segregated by many of these services, including Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger which currently doesn't support any kind of annexing.)

Also where do you place 'security' in your list of priorities in regards to Hum. ('Secure, security, encryption, encrypted' are words that do not appear on your launch page.)

grej2• 12 years ago

The 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• 12 years ago

Unfortunately, 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.

grej2• 12 years ago

I hope you're wrong but fear you're right. I think this site: 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• 12 years ago

At 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

.... Well Hum no thanks :)

I prefer Hangout for friends and Hipchat for work

pazimzadeh• 12 years ago

Why 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."

Goopplesoft• 12 years 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.

eps2• 12 years 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• 12 years ago

Oh, 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.

prawn2• 12 years ago

This isn't the first time I've seen this on HN either. Pretty sure it's been mentioned before some time ago.

comrh2• 12 years ago

Am I missing the differences between this and HipChat?

pbreit3• 12 years ago

Even if it did resemble HipChat (not sure I agree), did you have a point?

comrh2• 12 years ago

No, I'm just looking for differences. After reading the features I was struck that each one reminded me of HipChat.

rquantz• 12 years ago

I accidentally upvoted this with my big fingers. Now, having seen the video, I wish I could take that upvote back.

fournm2• 12 years ago

In 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.

babby• 12 years ago

It even happens in chrome. I don't even compute how the developer could fuck this up this badly.

jakub_g• 12 years ago

Seems "we're not testing any platform except Chrome" is trendy those days <sigh>

rrradical• 12 years ago

I 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• 12 years ago

Given 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• 12 years ago

Sometimes 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• 12 years ago

Ho hum. Another chat app.

chebert• 12 years ago

this is my favorite comment

verelo• 12 years ago

Sounds like Google wave, but a little less intense and a lot more lean.

jswanson• 12 years ago

I 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

eaurouge2• 12 years ago

Why 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.

sixQuarks2• 12 years ago

Looks 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".

mst2• 12 years ago

Presumably the second highest rated comment was "less space than a nomad - lame" ...

paulrademacher• 12 years ago

To read the atom.io threads. Plenty of positivity around here when a new product strikes a chord.

anonymoushn• 12 years ago

I would like to suggest that the founding team finds a problem to solve.

jamesbritt4• 12 years ago

On 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.

emmett2• 12 years ago

In fact, no. The same is not true of empty positive comments. A good place to read about the HN philosophy on what makes a bad comment: http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html (scroll to the comment section)

As I write this though I realize I have a pretty fundamental disagreement. Going up to someone and telling them that they're an idiot or otherwise abusing them is totally unacceptable in most social settings. Congratulating someone is not. Why should HN be different?

eaurouge2• 12 years ago

Sure. Does the same apply to single-sentence "This is great!" comments?

Snide remarks can be valuable. If everyone you pitch says "your idea sucks!", then you know you're 'probably' not sitting on a billion dollar idea. That value (from snide remarks) starts to drop rapidly once you start to get a few positive responses. Why? Of course some people will hate your idea, that's fine. The key question is: can you gain enough users/customers to build a profitable company?

A "This is great, I would totally use this!" comment is much more valuable than a "Yet another chat app, count me out." comment.

muppetman• 12 years ago

Are there any startups these days that don't include words "features a beautiful, simple design"?

It's web 3.0's blink tag.

jackmaney2• 12 years ago

Here'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• 12 years ago

I 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• 12 years ago

Why to use this over Flowdock? Flowdock: Group chat for teams. Integrates with GitHub, Jira, Trello.

www.flowdock.com

conradk2• 12 years ago

What's the business model?

ilyanep• 12 years ago

It 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• 12 years ago

Well, 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• 12 years ago

I don't understand what this is.

schainks• 12 years ago

This 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• 12 years ago

I 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• 12 years ago

While 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• 12 years ago

Yeah, 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_johnson2• 12 years ago

Ironically, 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• 12 years ago

I'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.

zacinbusiness5• 12 years ago

I'd like to see an organizational com platform built around App.Net. Or maybe there already is one.

swatkat• 12 years ago

What about security? Are chats encrypted over the wire, and in storage? What's the underlying protocol - XMPP/Jabber?

mark_l_watson• 12 years ago

A little off topic, but I wonder if Hum was developed using Meteor.js?

T_T• 12 years ago

i don't feel like this is significantly different from whatsapp. at least not yet

timbonicus• 12 years ago

Minor 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• 12 years ago

Bam! I got a solution.

Hey! you too, it's cool.

Hmm! come over, now let us find a problem.

coldtea3• 12 years ago

Generic 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• 12 years ago

I 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• 12 years ago

I'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?

pikachu_is_cool2• 12 years ago

You can use it to collaborate on shitty startup ideas.

brownkun• 12 years ago

Hey Hum team, I've been waiting for months. Any Exact launch date to announce to the audience?

rafifyalda• 12 years ago

There's some elements that remind me of Moped (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• 12 years ago

Looks like another closed communication system that won't work for me until all my friends DL the app - and they won't.

ianbicking• 12 years ago

Feels 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.

Hum

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