

Dropbox Acquires Zulip, A Stealthy Workplace Chat Solution Still In Private Beta - dctrwatson
http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/17/dropbox-acquires-zulip-a-stealthy-workplace-chat-solution-still-in-private-beta/

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woah
I'd like to see an open source node-webkit app, like Light Table or Popcorn
Time take over this market. Time to move away from proprietary chat networks.
It could hook into IRC and let people chat as God intended.

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hunvreus
The thing is, pulling off a distributed chat network isn't easy. Having a
centralized infrastructure is way easier on so many levels. This means that
ultimately you need to host something on a server, and if you're ready to do
that there are plenty of options; XMPP or IRC are pretty straightforward,
OpenFire is actually damn easy to setup.

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woah
I just haven't really found a decent IRC app, tbh. I mean, I use them fine for
my developer-ey needs, but pretty much the only reason that these proprietary
apps exist is because the UX is kinda crappy on IRC. No one wants to
constantly troubleshoot dumb stuff for the business person or the designer on
the team, so, Hipchat. I think you could limit some functionality and sand the
rough edges off of IRC, like Popcorn Time does for movie torrents, and have
something pretty sweet.

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fallenhitokiri
We used Zulip for some time. Overall it's pretty good - the clients could
really need a bit more love though.

What I always found amazing was their support. No matter when I contacted them
I got a response immediately and my issue was either taken care of or I got an
explanation that it is intended to work this way.

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rspeer
I've used Zulip. It's a cool idea, though it turned out to be still too beta
to replace HipChat at my company.

The key feature is having multiple threads of conversation in one room. When
you find yourself saying "Wait, was that in response to me or to Alice?"
"Neither, I was talking to Bob", or just waiting for a conversation to finish
so you're not interrupting and causing confusion, it's the kind of thing you
wish for.

It was also pretty good at letting coders talk about code, with Markdown and
syntax highlighting, and without mangling whitespace or turning all the (8)s
into ridiculous smileys with a left parenthesis.

I'd love to be able to use Zulip when it's more fleshed out, so here's hoping
Dropbox does something cool with it, and doesn't just quietly absorb the
talent.

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Gigablah
Have you tried Slack? ([https://slack.com](https://slack.com))

It also supports code snippets and side discussions. And it seems really
polished. Haven't seen Zulip so I can't compare the two, though.

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netw1z
slack rocks!

We are using it on a project across 5 continents and everyone is loving it.

I think one thing it does well it automatically annotate links and code -
thats one of many things, but it's quite nice.

The mobile app sounds is so - nice!

Looks like this company did it right and just demoed for all the best people
who might buy it quick. Always follow the money!

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napoleond
_The startup, which has been fairly stealthy to date, competes in the broader
business messaging space with other cross-platform chat solutions, like
Yammer, Convo, recently acquired Tomfoolery, newly launched Slack_

It seems odd that Hipchat wasn't included in the list.

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shaneofalltrad
I have used most of them including Hipchat and for some reason Slack seems to
be the best, with full features, like hubot, sharing documents, links, private
and custom chats etc. This project looks like it is going in a similar
direction and could really compliment Dropbox and compete with Google Docs.
Just as long as they don't make you agree that all stored data is theirs to
keep (yes Google does this now).

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coherentpony
> Psst... hey, you! Yeah, you, the one using Zulip. We have some news for you,
> but you gotta keep it secret. Can you do that? Alright, sweet.

Is the default behaviour when receiving something like this to immediately
leak it?

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gargarplex
a secret is information that travels one person at a time

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samstave
Hence the word secretion!

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lucastx
I read the "stealthy" in the title as "hidden from bosses and coworkers",
thinking its interface was similar to Office and all windows would hide with
Ctrl+Shift+F8.

