| The org I work for has used [Flowdock](flowdock.com) for several years now and I have to say that threaded semi-real time communication is a huge boon. So, on the face of it I'm not against Twist but, as a user of a similar application, I have several questions: 1. Must all messages be thread topics or thread replies?
2. Are messages presented in the order they were sent/recieved or in some grouping based on thread?
3. Can messages be "re-threaded" so that replies
i. become their own thread topic?
ii. become a reply to a different thread? From my own research, it seems the answers are: 1. yes, all messages are either thread topics or replies;
2. messages are only grouped by thread and can't be seen as a stream where real-time communication across threads can happen;
3. and, no, messages cannot be re-threaded. Which, if true, I think makes it decidedly worse than Flowdock. Its true that Flowdock also does not support re-threading and for that I will eternally hate Rally/CA for never adding but in all other aspects where Flowdock attempts to be something fundamentally different than email, Twist attempts to be, like Slack before it, an email killer. For Flowdock default communication in a channel is just a message and only reifies into a thread topic when it recieves a reply. Also, the default presentation of messages is "real-time" group chat with color coding to identify threads and a dedicated thread viewer to "focus" on a single discussion if needed. Essentially Flowdock is standard group chat with an admittedly useful organizational concept of threads. Twist seems to strip out the "group chat" part, leaving only threads and at that point I kind of agree that its just sexier email. I'd argue the whole reason Flowdock (or similiar) is necessary in addition to email is it reduces the barrier of what is "message worthy". If I want to send a message about my dog as an email, that feels weird. If I want to send the same message to a channel in Flowdock it doesn't; it may even become a thread but it doesn't disrupt useful work going on in other threads. Twist seems like it falls decidedly in the first camp and _that_ is why I won't switch to it from Flowdock. I simply can't use it for water-cooler style communication (group chat - Slack, Flowdock, even AIM win here) or productive real-time focused discussion _across problems_ (multi-threaded group chat so that one thread can dovetail/inform another in the public discussion - this is a Flowdock only thing AFAIK). The only problem it seems to solve is productive focused discussion on a single topic and honestly email already does that very well. I will say searching is nice; of course, Flowdock has that too (as does Slack and many internet-based email solutions). |