

Real-Time Yammer Competitor Hall Launches New Apps - timc
http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/07/real-time-yammer-competitor-hall-launches-new-apps-for-ios-and-mac-hits-10k-businesses-double-digit-growth/

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bambax
I read the article top to bottom and couldn't figure out what it is that Hall
does.

> _This startup is interested in building what comes next after the “social
> intranet.”_

I don't know what the social intranet is or was, I certainly have no idea
"what comes next" -- and the article doesn't say.

> _At Intuit, Hellman was the only person on his team at the Mountain View
> office, which led to the original inspiration that later became today’s
> Hall. “That’s where I learned we needed a better way to communicate,” he
> says._

What was that better way??!? Better than what? He doesn't say.

These "articles" don't try to inform, they just throw buzz words around; they
are instruments for companies to do PR, but the reader is the victim.

~~~
bretthellman
Hi bambax, I'm one of the founders here at Hall. Apologies for any
frustration... Does visiting our landing page help? <https://hall.com> . If
not, send me an email at brett @ hall-inc.com . I'd be happy to give you a
live demo.

~~~
darklajid
Help me with

    
    
      The Hall web app is 6 times faster than existing enterprise solutions
    

That's just as confusing? Can you explain that in a couple more sentences? My
CTO just raved about 'We need to give Yammer a try, someone just recommended
it'.

Why wouldn't we (ignoring my own 'what the hell is a social intranet'
questions)? Can you give me a pitch in three sentences?

~~~
ronadams
Hi darklajid, I'm CTO of Hall. Let me know if you have any additional
technical questions about the app. As Brett said, it's probably time to start
doing some more technical blog postings.

~~~
stokanic
Hi

I'm just wondering what did you use to package your webapp for desktops?

Thanks!

~~~
bretthellman
stokanic, we started with adobe air which was a quick way to test our
hypothesis early on that a desktop app would increase retention. We have since
moved on to building native experience w xcode.

~~~
stokanic
Ah, I see you've only done the desktop app for osx and not win. I was hoping
you'd use something like CEF[1] and that you'd blog about it

[1] <https://code.google.com/p/chromiumembedded/>

------
orangethirty
Your copy on the landing page (under the blue circle-ish images) is very hard
to read.

The logo has an issue with spacing between the letters. The "a" is too far
fromn the first "l".

The pricing page is not quite clear. What do I get with the free plan? Can I
"friend" my co-workers? A paragraph explaining it would be nice. Five dollars
seems like the wrong price for this sort of deal. Even the cheapest option on
github is seven dollars.

I would love to test your headline.

The top segment of the landing page says nothing. There are no testimonials,
no text explaining what you do, nothing. Just a signup box which does not seem
to fit in the whole context.

This copy has the wrong rhythm:

 _About Hall

Hall helps teams and companies communicate in real-time. Our all-in-one
unified communications app has everything your company needs to communicate
and get things done. There are thousands of companies using Hall, from small
businesses to the world's largest enterprises like Amazon and Nike.
Professionals love using Hall to communicate._

Sentence structure is way too long, and confusing. Let me take a quick stab at
it.

 _About us:

Hall aims to do one thing. Help your team communicate in real time. It
achieves that with a state-of-the-art status panel. You can easily keep track
of what your team is doing. Get things done by using our hassle-free
communication tools. Its your own intelligence network.

Who uses Hall to make their lives easier? Big Companies like Nike, Amazon to
smaller team like yours. They all have one thing in common: No matter the
size, everyone just loves Hall.

But don't take our word for it. Try Hall now. See what you have been missing.
Its free._

By the way, go ahead and use that if you want. :)

------
jorde
"Real-Time Yammer", social intranet... The enterprise jargon in this article
makes it almost impossible to understand that Hall seems to be just another
group chat tool for companies similar to Hipchat and Flowdock.

------
iusable
About time! Besides the hype & price of Yammer, it really sucks at real-time
comms for teams smaller than 5-6.

I have never had a chance to use it with a bigger team but at that size they
have abysmal state management - if you have more than 1 conversation && use
more than 1 device = notification_hell. Its just silly how badly they manage
this stuff.

Just discovered Hall earlier today and so far, so good! Good job @bretthellman
& team.

~~~
mnicole
I'm using it at a 100-person office but nobody wants to integrate yet-another-
step into their daily processes or have to hop around different places to get
different pieces of information (because naturally, John Doe will always want
to do it his way if there isn't a policy otherwise or when it becomes too
chaotic). It's the same 5-10 of us that make irregular posts and maybe an
additional 5 that will occasionally lurk when they remember to. I suspect
those people use the desktop client and just always have it running. No one
takes advantage of the chat, the secret groups (okay, maybe one team is that
I'm not aware of), or the file-sharing. That said, I've complained about the
shoddy design and the confusing interface here before, so I'm happy it didn't
take off internally.

This has led me to believe that if they're not able to use social features
from within the software they're already using (that's already connected to
our existing data), they probably won't use them to any effective capacity at
all. We run a homebrew CRM, but I don't think slapping a chat or a file system
into it will suddenly fix the problem. That said, I think company culture has
a lot to do with it too; getting up and talking to people and scheduling
meetings with them is highly encouraged here.

That all said, Jive's business enterprise stuff is probably the best in this
arena right now because of how much you can do with it and how extensible it
is, but I've been asking for us to switch for two years to no avail because
management doesn't see the value in constant, but passive, streams of
information.

------
aguynamedrich
The first comment is a self promoting alternative (daPulse) whose website
looks very similar and whose product, much like the one being promoted, just
looks like a slightly different Yammer. This seems to be an unnecessarily
crowded space.

EDIT: Not the first comment...just the top one at the time I read the article
(didn't realize comments on TC are sorted as newest first by default)

~~~
bretthellman
aguynamedrich, What Yammer did well is reinvent the social intranet for making
announcements inside the firewall. It allowed for one person inside a company
of 1000s to broadcast to the entire company.

What Yammer never had a chance to perfect before being purchased/killed was
how to be the place where people actually work... The way people work has
changed in the last few years. People are working 24/7, using multiple
devices, working in distributed teams, in teams that are cross-company etc...
These changes making communicating in real-time a necessity which is why Hall
is focused on real-time communications.

~~~
mindcrime
So how do you guys solve the issue of most "enterprise social software" being
nothing but a fairly shallow replacement for / complement to, email?

(Disclaimer: I'm the founder of a startup that's also playing in this space
(depending on how broadly you define "this space"), and I don't really know if
we're competitors or not!)

------
bitcrusher
So, I'm playing with this with my team... And I'm not so sure that I "get it".
How is this better than using Skype or IRC? What am I missing? I like the
clean interface, but I'm not sure what value I'm getting out of it. How does
this compare to Yammer or Jostle?

~~~
darklajid
Our company's using Lync internally (MS shop, everything is golden if it comes
from Redmond).

I'd like to understand as well what this would offer that Lync doesn't - and
that's from a guy that isn't a fan of Lync in the first place.

I guess a decent Android client would be nice.. What else?

~~~
bretthellman
darklajid Would love to discuss... Can you msg me at brett @ hall-inc.com or
if you're on hall, <https://hall.com/brett>

------
codenerdz
How is Hall's "real-time" real-timier than those of Yammer's or a number of
other enterprise activity-stream apps?

Its pretty much a given that an activity stream app will use an socketi.io-ish
messaging systme for real-time updates, some sort of APN service for mobile
notifications and a visual tool for in-web-app notifications.

What does Hall bring to the table that differentiates it from other Activity
stream[1] apps

*disclaimer: I work for Socialcast, VMWare's Social Enterprise App that has had these features for a while now.

#hint We have a Freemium model where 99% of features are provided for free to
companies with less than 50 users.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activity_stream>

~~~
ronadams
Hi codenerdz....I'm CTO and co-founder of Hall. Our entire application is a
single page application (no refreshing). That immediately makes our product
more realtime than Yammer. This includes one-on-one messaging, file sharing,
group chat, collaborative notepads, 3rd party integrations and
friendship/contact management in multiple rooms and multiple networks. While
Yammer may have elements that are RT, our entire world is RT.

------
cal5k
A few people at our company signed up for Hall and invited others, causing a
runaway chain of invitation reminders that drove our entire team nuts. Not a
great way to get introduced to a product.

~~~
ronadams
Hi cal5k....CTO of Hall here. We apologize for the inconvenience. We're
constantly trying to optimize the way we send network invitations. We're still
working out the kinks and finding the right balance for notifications. You can
contact me at ron @ hall-inc.com or if you're on hall, <https://hall.com/ron>
if you'd like us to take a look at your specific case.

------
halayli
How is this different than Skype?

* I can have permanent group chats in Skype

* 1-on-1 chat

* Skype is supported in all devices

* I can share files

Am I missing something?

