
Kippt (YC S12) Takes Its Enterprise Tool For Sharing Useful Content Out Of Beta - jorde
http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/10/kippt-inc/
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guynamedloren
> _While there are products out there like Convo, Yammer and Evernote for
> Business, Saarinen said he views e-mail as the main competition._

Yes, they have that right. Email is definitely the competition, and I'm glad
this team is upfront about it. Lots of group chat platforms brush this off.

> _But these kinds of discussions are not best supported by long chains of
> e-mail._

Ah, you can't end on that TC! _Why_ are these kinds of discussions not good on
email? I've tried a bunch of group chat/discussion/collaboration platforms. I
use them for a while, and they're fun and exciting during that honeymoon
stage, but I _always_ end up going back to email. It's dependable, robust and
evergreen. And everyone has it. I don't know if it's ever _not worked_.
Seriously.

I want to believe that something is better than email, but I have yet to see
it. I had HUGE hopes for Google Wave, which was supposed to kill email. Didn't
work. Checking out Inc, and it feels a lot like Wave. I hope it doesn't suffer
a similar fate.

What's the huge problem with email?

~~~
swanson
It looks like you can email in content (there is special address in the
Settings) - so you could email Bob, Jon, and CC the Inc address and share a
link.

You can also get digest emails on new stuff/mentions. So it seems like you
could interact entirely via email and then only go to the web if you want to
search/see groups.

~~~
guynamedloren
That's interesting.

Header on their website: "Say no to email, build a better workplace"

When they say something like that and then build a service that is dependent
on email (at least somewhat), and even go as far as allowing the service to be
used _in it 's entirety_ via email, I have to wonder if they genuinely believe
email is broken. If they really believed in the "say no to email" matra, they
would have simply said no to email themselves.

Apologies for the bluntness. My skepticism stems from personal experiences
working on a project that was designed to 'kill email' (rather, a subset of
email, not group chat like this). The same thing happened: primary interaction
mechanism with the platform was ... _email_. That project failed.

~~~
Raphael
They know everyone can't be convinced to give up email, so email users are
appeased in order to allow others to use the app as intended.

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tannerc
We've been using Inc over here for a while now.

The addition of being able to "like" things your co-workers post, categorize
topics into groups, and carry lengthy conversations right on the page, are
features that have really sold us on the idea.

Before Inc we tried email groups (so messy), Google+ groups (again, messy, and
not everyone wants to get on there for discussing/sharing interesting things),
etc.

Kudos to Karri and the team on creating something that's beautiful and
functions well.

~~~
enra
Thanks and glad to have you onboard.

You can always reach us by email if there is something you think should be
fixed or working hello@sendtoinc.com (it comes to founders directly).

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kirillzubovsky
We use this tool at Scoutzie all the time and we love it. It's a great
addition to email. Very often, when say sharing technical insights or design-
related links, or even interesting Ted talks among our team, putting those
things on email does not make sense, since it just creates clutter. Putting
those links on Hipchat also doesn't work, since they are lost and forgotten
within 20 minutes. But with [https://sendtoinc.com](https://sendtoinc.com) ,
that problem is solved! We've all installed their desktop proxy and everyone
knows where to look for new stuff. We all get to see what's been shared, but
we do it on our own schedule and without impacting our productivity. Love it.
Give it a try.

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jokull
The truth about these tools is that they appease to our OCD side. There is a
honeymoon period during the which you find various reasons to use the tool.
After a while you realize tools only help with organization during that first
burst of excitement. At this point you either have to confront the fact that
getting organized isn’t a technical problem or you find a new tool to get
excited about.

What makes these tools succeed at least for the short term, is they fuck with
the organizational habits of people. Their landing pages are huge cues to get
more organized, which people love. People love the idea of getting their shit
together and becoming organized once and for all.

The challenge these apps are facing is creating a habit loop. You need a cue
and a reward, but more specifically when replacing a habit (email) with
something new, you need to replace either the cue or the reward. In between
those you have your tool. Without this change people just go back to their old
habits. In the case of Inc the reward is "thanks for sharing that link, you’re
awesome!" and the cue is "I need to send this to my whole team". Currently
everybody immediately reaches an internal mailing list or enters in a few
autocompleted emails when they encounter this cue, the urge to share with team
members.

Now what Kippt, their original product did, which was clever, was creating new
cues. They heavily pushed their Chrome extensions which inserted "Kippt"
buttons and links to loads of websites with potentially interesting links.
There’s even one for all hacker news links. This created new cues for people
to respond to.

For Inc to succeed it needs to cleverly introduce more cues because email
works fine for this particulare habit loop and will be hard to replace.

~~~
enra
Thanks for the ideas.

You're right, that's why we still constantly working / talking with our
customers/users, to find if things are working or not.

I think mobile app, better notifications, doing email and other integration,
and improving the daily digest emails will help to create those habits.

We want people to use the app everyday at work, understand that people also
need to work, give them enough cues, but not to bother them.

One thing that have noticed that even chats are pretty intensive, and some
teams so it a lot, it also requires you to be present at the same time, to
effectively join the discussion.

With Inc, discussions is more like in a forum or email, where people comment
when they have time / something to say.

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thomasd
Basically, private Hacker News for organizations to share and discuss online
articles. This is awesome. Something that I didn't know I need but now I just
can't wait to try!

One of my biggest pet peeves is endless emails sent to everyone in the
organization by someone who just wanted to share an article that he/she
thought was interesting. Then someone replies all with a comment, another
person replies all, and soon, my email client just kept on buzzing even if the
topic doesn't concern or interest me.

And the most frustrating thing is there's no rule that I can create to filter
out those kind of emails.

This is very, very useful. Kudos to the Kippt team.

~~~
jorde
Thanks! This is actually very interesting comparison which we haven't thought
about earlier

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voxmatt
I paid for Kippt early on because I thought it was such a nicely designed and
well thought out tool. I'm really happy to see them pivoting like this because
they're such a talented team. This seems like a potentially useful
reorganization of their core strengths.

On the consumer side, I've since cancelled my subscription for two primary
reasons: (1) it wasn't fast enough for my core use case (saving links and
finding them later); and (2) none of the other features provided me with any
value (indeed, they often distracted from the core case). There are simply
other tools that do this better. The pivot to enterprise provides a much more
unique value proposition.

~~~
zackfern
Having spent the last couple years developing a bookmarking / archiving
service which is somewhat similar to Kippt (as well as Historious and Pinboard
+ Archiving) I'd be interested in knowing what other tools you've found that
provide a valuable core feature set?

Shameless self plug: The site is called
[http://preserve.io](http://preserve.io) and if you're interested we'd love
your feedback on our pre-beta which has now been actively used for over a year

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jasonlotito
So, a bit of Trivia. From what I remember, Kippt came out of Forrst's first
(and only) app contest.

[http://forrst.com/posts/Kippt-y39](http://forrst.com/posts/Kippt-y39)

~~~
jorde
You are true, it was our one day hack for that contest. It's weird how things
have evolved in three years

~~~
jasonlotito
I just remember because I took second, so every time I see Kippt, I'm happy
you guys won. =)

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miket
These guys having an amazing sense for design and product. Early paid user of
Kippt and looking forward to this pivot.

~~~
vilpponen
I used to work on ArcticStartup with Karri Saarinen for several years. Grew to
respect his views on simplicity, beauty and function.

Congrats gents on the latest developments!

~~~
enra
Thanks guys for the support and the kind words! :)

