
Hum - jonkratz
https://letshum.com
======
peteforde
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.

~~~
mjackson
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.

~~~
peteforde
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.

~~~
jackmaney
Wait....there's a myth that "teens don't have email"? Who are the jackasses
that perpetuate this garbage?

~~~
teddyh
Well, _cui bono_? Facebook, who wants to replace email with Facebook.

~~~
prawn
I think Facebook have just abandoned that original strategy, though it's
probably related to the WhatsApp pick-up.

------
zyxley
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.

------
mjackson
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.

~~~
mxpxpx
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?

~~~
mjackson
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.

~~~
thaweatherman
This didn't address the question of how Hum will be different than any other
chat program

~~~
1stop
Yeah, it kind of did.

Which chat program do you know can send a message as an email? And receive
chat messages via an email address?

It seems the idea behind this, is that it's a "persistent chat".

~~~
User8712
Doesn't Facebook chat integrate with email in the exact same way?

~~~
1stop
No, because it only works with facebook... ?

~~~
User8712
Correct me if I'm wrong, but can't I open Gmail, send someone a message
(@letshum.com or @facebook.com), and they receive it as a Hum or Facebook chat
message? Then, they can reply to the message in their chat client as if it
were a text, and it goes to my Gmail? That seems quite similar, and in both
cases I can communicate using email, while my friend uses chat. This seems to
be the underlying reason why both services give every user an email address,
so I fail to see how this sets Hum apart from other chat apps.

~~~
mst
Facebook has announced their intention to retire @facebook.com addresses,
forwarding mail sent to them to the user's primary email address and making
all chats involving @facebook.com addresses read only.

~~~
pomaldn
If I may, linkedin does allow users to correspond with each other using both
mail clients or directly through their platforms. The part that I am not too
sure about is how does Hum solve user problems that whatsapp/wechat can't. The
gap I find as a user is that unless there are ways for Hum to integrate with
the fragmented contact databases we have across the various social networks
(i.e. my gmail, 1k+ linkedin contacts, facebook friends, twitter
correspondence etc) and make my life easier, I may not venture and try yet
another chat platform.

------
fournm
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.

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

------
pazimzadeh
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."

~~~
eps
> _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
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.

------
gavinpc
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.

------
nickjackson
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
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_johnson
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.

~~~
e12e
And google talk and facebook chat both used xmpp, and are both(?) avoiding
federation -- and both(?) phasing out even supporting xmpp clients.

For a little while I actually bothered using IM, as I actually had someone to
talk to (most of my friends had facebook or gtalk -- and I could talk to them
in the same interface I used for xmpp at work) -- and I could keep all the
logs in one place (if I needed them) -- and it all supported secure texts
(OTR).

Now all my friends have access to crappy html5 chat silos that I'd rather not
touch with a stick if I can help it. The things are all but impossible to use
in a sane way without having to use a mouse -- and even if I could use them, I
can't aggregate the logs, keep them independently of whether or not I keep the
account(s) and I can't have access to everything in one application.

Why would anyone use this or slack.com rather than setting up a jabber server?
If you desperately want to restrict your choice of interface, you could always
deploy a html5 jabber client, and pretend there aren't good native clients out
there. I'm not sure why anyone would do that, though.

~~~
lobster_johnson
HipChat actually supports XMPP, if you don't want to use the native apps.
Doubt it's popular enough that services like Slack will do it too.

------
coldtea
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
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
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?

~~~
saraid216
I don't know how they do it, but I'd populate the ring with frequency, not
quantity. Keydown Events per Second is probably pretty easy to track.

~~~
pikachu_is_cool
I'd bet it's the latter (with a character limit), since this really isn't that
groundbreaking of an app...

------
eaurouge
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.

~~~
sixQuarks
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".

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

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

------
grej
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
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.

~~~
grej
I hope you're wrong but fear you're right. I think this site:
[http://threeringfocus.com/](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.

------
dak123
Why are startups always out to redefine stuff that is working fine? Stop
inventing solutions to problems that don't exist.

~~~
prottmann
You mean the problem doesn't exist for YOU !

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

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

~~~
jswanson
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](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave)

------
schainks
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.

------
ilyanep
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
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.

------
rafifyalda
There's some elements that remind me of Moped
([http://blog.moped.com](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.

------
dalek2point3
Google Wave 2.0?

~~~
jitl
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
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"?

------
eyko
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.

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

------
rrradical
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.

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

www.flowdock.com

------
manish_gill
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?

------
huhtenberg
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?

------
jackmaney
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.

------
ianbicking
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.

------
timbonicus
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.

------
comrh
Am I missing the differences between this and HipChat?

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

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

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

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

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

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

------
frade33
Bam! I got a solution.

Hey! you too, it's cool.

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

------
hmans
I don't understand what this is.

------
conradk
What's the business model?

------
ishi
Ho hum. Another chat app.

~~~
chebert
this is my favorite comment

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

It's web 3.0's blink tag.

------
elf25
Looks like another closed communication system that won't work for me until
all my friends DL the app - and they won't.

