I read the article top to bottom and couldn't figure out what it is that Hall does.<p>> <i>This startup is interested in building what comes next after the “social intranet.”</i><p>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.<p>> <i>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.</i><p>What was that better way??!? Better than what? He doesn't say.<p>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.
Your copy on the landing page (under the blue circle-ish images) is very hard to read.<p>The logo has an issue with spacing between the letters. The "a" is too far fromn the first "l".<p>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.<p>I would love to test your headline.<p>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.<p>This copy has the wrong rhythm:<p><i>About Hall<p>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.</i><p>Sentence structure is way too long, and confusing. Let me take a quick stab at it.<p><i>About us:<p>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.<p>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.<p>But don't take our word for it. Try Hall now. See what you have been missing. Its free.</i><p>By the way, go ahead and use that if you want. :)
"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.
About time! Besides the hype & price of Yammer, it really sucks at real-time comms for teams smaller than 5-6.<p>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.<p>Just discovered Hall earlier today and so far, so good! Good job @bretthellman & team.
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.<p>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)
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?
How is Hall's "real-time" real-timier than those of Yammer's or a number of other enterprise activity-stream apps?<p>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.<p>What does Hall bring to the table that differentiates it from other Activity stream[1] apps<p>*disclaimer: I work for Socialcast, VMWare's Social Enterprise App that has had these features for a while now.<p>#hint We have a Freemium model where 99% of features are provided for free to companies with less than 50 users.<p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activity_stream" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activity_stream</a>
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.
How is this different than Skype?<p>* I can have permanent group chats in Skype<p>* 1-on-1 chat<p>* Skype is supported in all devices<p>* I can share files<p>Am I missing something?