We’re not like Yammer or Chatter, and we don’t want to be | Hacker News Reader

We’re not like Yammer or Chatter, and we don’t want to be

blog.hipchat.com

37 pointscurlep22 comments

If people are comparing you to Yammer maybe you are pitching to the wrong audience? When I see your video I'm comparing you to Campire! Are you like Campfire?

On a side note: I tested you product a couple of months ago for my startup (campfire was too expensive for our use) and we finally choosed jaconda.im because they have the gtalk/jabber integration and it was a killer feature for us! We dont need to have a special tab or install another program. We keep our current workflow with one more contact in our list. My 2cents

Edit: i wrote basecamp instead of campfire

I think you mean 37Signals Campfire. Basecamp is their project management tool. We're working on XMPP support but it doesn't make group chat easy (or pretty). It's even more complicated when you're trying to get companies of 60+ people set up.

You are right thank you :)

This may be so, but your homepage is strikingly similar to Yammer's... (above the fold)

.edit 1) http://www.hipchat.com/ 2) https://www.yammer.com/

And both of them look pretty close to one of the SaaS themes.

This is not one of my favorite critiques of startups. If you're selling to businesses, the only thing that matters is that you look competent. So what if there's an idiom people are falling into with their websites? That's a good thing; one less thing to worry about.

I met one of the founders at a Twilio event not long ago, and when he told me about his product the first thing I said was "So it's kinda like Yammer?"

At least they are starting to address this marketing problem directly.

So, you're like IRC with embeddable images?

... and large-paste support.

... and backlog replay when you go offline.

... and searchable history.

... and (like most IRC clients, but unlike Campfire) built-in notification support.

You can get some of these with IRC, if you have a server to run bip on or leave irssi running on, but it's worth having an integrated package that Just Works.

(Hipchat: you're welcome for the endorsement, now how about that IRC gateway? http://help.hipchat.com/hipchat/topics/irc_compatibility?fro... :)

Our inspiration definitely came from IRC, but the learning curve is just too sharp for most employees. If you can dedicate resources to teaching the sales team how to connect to your server and DCC files, that's great. I'd rather have them drag-and-drop with HipChat.

So a bit like http://talkerapp.com/? (the UI is along similar lines, though there are only so many ways to cut a chatroom, I guess!) Talker has some interesting Ruby-based plugin support as well, though I found it too expensive to use long-term.

Except I think one of their USPs is that they have a desktop app

Please dump Adobe AIR as soon as you can and make native apps, I (and most likely others) hate AIR apps. That's one of my biggest complaints with Yammer is their desktop app. If you don't want to be like Yammer don't use AIR ;)

So, you're like AIM/MSN Messenger/Yahoo Messenger/Google Talk/ICQ...?

Except we actually do group chat well. We designed it specifically for companies and teams.

after watching the video I don't see anything you do that google chat doesn't and quite a lot of the reverse. I wish you all the best but the reason you're having difficulty in differentiation perception is because the products are all very similar.

Having build a chat system, the real problems don't start until you have scale. I'd hate to be using this in a real work environment only to have it fall over when there's a lot of users. Chat is the only time I've ever had to write Erlang code.

Campfire?

Maybe, but campfire is far from perfect. E.g. I can't even see all my starred messages in a room in one short list, I have to scroll through the whole chat and actually look for stars.

[Repost from our blog comments]

We're definitely competing with Campfire. They were one of the first tools to focus on providing group chat to businesses but unfortunately didn't go much further. It's only group chat and it's only in the browser. We have desktop applications with real popup notifications, one-to-one chat support and voice/video calling. HipChat is a tool you use all day and love, not a barebones group chat site you run alongside AIM.

A more in depth feature comparison is here: http://www.hipchat.com/compare

Convore?

The design of your chat stream looks like an almost direct rip off of Campfire. If you want people to believe you're doing something different, you have to make it so your product isn't confused with the competition with a glance.

Why are you charging so much money?

Convore is free.

So that we have a successful business. This is a tool for business productivity. It helps companies be more productive and they have no problem paying for it. In fact, they all say we should charge more. :)

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