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Comment by tamimio | Hacker News Reader

Do you mean like calls?! Anyway, I see the focus on verbal communication, which has its uses, but it’s definitely not the main one. I prefer to hold someone accountable with written records, keep them in a CYA folder for easy and quick searches, or when I send someone an email, they can refer to it without bothering me in the future. This product might work to coordinate between a bunch of sales groups at an expo or something where quick, instant communication is needed, but for design engineers?! No thanks, I don’t need any extra distractions!

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> This product might work to coordinate between a bunch of sales groups at an expo or something where quick, instant communication is needed

You nailed it.

Initially I was taken in by the novelty of the idea, but when I started seeing features like Recorded Voice, Figma Integrations etc.. I quickly back tracked.

If this works, it would work for a very focussed scenario where instant communication for a short duration/event is required.

Maybe for things like "ship war rooms" for product launches, or during holiday sale event for e-commerce websites?

> Maybe for things like "ship war rooms" for product launches, or during holiday sale event for e-commerce websites?

That's interesting. If the use case is meant to be during one-off or exceptionally busy periods, do you anticipate team members having these on their desks the whole year round?

That's for the founder to figure out. I imagine that with a 'pivot' on the scenario that the product is being built for, there would be change in its form (both hardware and software).

But this comment makes me think, why this product cannot exist as a mobile walkie-talkie app?

When "war" comes, the "army" launches the app and are plugged into the dynamic war operations, using a headset. When the war is hopefully won, everyone goes back to their peace time apps - Email, Slack...

This market is pretty well covered by Zoom etc al.

Nextel used to eat well off the PTT feature of their phones. IIRC the stickiest users of that seemed to be more blue collar folks -- construction crews, tow truck drivers, etc. I assume this is because they tended to be in environments where typing was harder and hands were otherwise engaged? It was also before widespread deployment of touch screens, so it was more competing with T9 or a full phone call than a 2024-style text message.

One aspect of Slack/email is that it is searchable and async. If your team has good culture and uses channels as opposed to group DMs (a very, very big issue in Teams), it allows others who were not online at the time to catch up on what’s been discussed.

They can also decide to skip entire chunks of the conversation if it isn’t relevant anymore.

Neither is a possibility with this. How do you have a more in-depth discussion? At what point do you switch from sending voice notes to a full blown discussion. How do others catch up?

The sales groups will just call each other. Many salespeople are insanely old school; one of the most successful ones I knew used phone and SMS only. Hated Slack.

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