

QuicklyChat (YC S12) Brings Push-To-Talk Video To Small, Remote Teams - jmharvey
http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/13/quicklychat-brings-push-to-talk-video-to-small-remote-teams/

======
biot
The protocol that seems to have emerged with the people I collaborate with is
to use Skype and ping the person you want to talk to with a message like "Do
you have a few minutes to chat?". If they're busy, Skype just shows they have
a new unread message and they can answer it whenever they choose. If they're
not busy, the person calls you back. If a long time has elapsed since the
initial message, they reply with "Sure, call me if you're free now". This is
actually less obtrusive than being in an office because if someone comes to
your door and asks "Do you have a few minutes?" it's impolite to ignore them
whereas an ignored Skype message just means you're busy or unavailable.

I'm not really seeing the huge benefit here. If you work with others who don't
follow such a protocol, set your Skype status to busy and you can't get calls.
They'll then have to message you and you can initiate the callback if you're
free. And is it really that much of an issue for people to establish calls
immediately that there's a compelling need to auto-answer in a mannner that's
different from Skype's auto-answer?

There's also the chicken and egg issue... nobody uses QuicklyChat and I can't
see anybody I know jumping to use it given that everybody is already on Skype
and it's 99% good enough with screensharing, full mobile support, forwarding
to a phone number when unavailable, and so on. Plus, potential cross-talk
issues: Facebook is likely preconfigured with a "green/ping me" setting but
you may be in a Facebook video chat with someone when an auto-answer
QuicklyChat session starts from their buddy... now your buddy is an unwanted
third party in your Facebook chat. Awkward.

~~~
ernestipark
I don't think chicken and egg necessarily applies here. It's not a general
consumer app in the sense that it's more likely to be adopted by teams. If I
manage a small 10 person remote dev team, I may just tell my employees to all
get on it and use it.

~~~
jmharvey
Exactly, the use pattern we've been seeing is teams adopting it all at once.

With respect to biot's comment, a lot of teams have found effective ways to
work remotely, but a lot of teams are still looking for more fluid
communication channels. QuicklyChat isn't going to appeal to everyone,
especially not at first, but it definitely seems like we've struck a chord
with a fair number of people.

~~~
biot
Fair enough. It actually reminds me of this push-to-talk cell networks that I
first saw advertised 15 years ago:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_(cellular_network)>

That technology definitely struck a chord with a niche audience. I think the
product's name of MiKE was chosen to appeal to male-dominated industries such
as construction where it essentially functioned as a walkie talkie with
unlimited range.

------
timedoctor
Seems like a pretty light innovation to me. I think a more important chat
innovation is to know (for sure) if the person is actually online and working
versus, online and not working, versus not online at all. Just noticing if the
person is browsing the web versus on email is not enough information to know
this. For example you can be on a word document creating your wedding
invitations or for work. The app will have no clue. It needs to be an accurate
record if the person is working or now. Then if you have that accurate record
you can do a whole lot more with it as well (know exact times that you start
and stop working).

The other potential chat innovation for business is having the teams
configured ONE time by the company admin and then all team members are
instantly in the correct teams and each person doesn't have to configure their
teams.

Also better search of previous team discussions.

I'm guessing the business model will evolve :)

------
kyro
Really nice and simple product. I'm going to give it a try for more personal
reasons as Skype has become the bane of my existence.

I've had a similar idea to your automatic status updates: Some sort of
contact/buddy list for your smartphone that tells you the best way to reach a
particular person at that time. So if a friend is at work/class/gym, the app
knows that and sets their status accordingly, displaying that the best and
most immediate way to reach them would be text/work phone/gChat/etc.

------
hnwh
remote worker with majority of team elsewhere... I was just thinking of
something EXACTLY like this... looking forward to see where it goes

------
yukuan
I think what's great about QuicklyChat is I can skip the initial IM-tag of
"you there?" "free now?" kind of back and forth. While it's relatively quick,
it does break my attention and when multiplied by every member of the team it
does tend to add up. And I think it's great how it's so simple - that's
actually a plus, not a minus, to me.

------
endlessvoid94
I LOVE the concept.

