[HN Gopher] Launch HN: PingPong (YC W21) - Video messaging for r...
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Launch HN: PingPong (YC W21) - Video messaging for remote teams
Hi HN, I'm Jeff, co-founder and CEO of PingPong
(https://getpingpong.com), where we help remote teams collaborate
and stay connected by exchanging video, voice, and screen
recordings asynchronously. Think of it as Marco Polo or Snapchat
(sans ephemerality) for globally-distributed product teams. We got
the idea from our own experience on a different startup. Murphy,
the co-founder and CTO, lives in Nigeria, and I live in the US
(Utah). We had five other team members spread across three
countries and four time zones. The problem for me as a team leader
was how to share my ideas, feelings, and updates in a way that felt
authentic and conveyed energy. I felt like I was spending my entire
life either typing in Slack or scheduling Zoom calls at terrible
hours. I had been kicking around the idea for our product in my
head for months. At some point, I began thinking more about how to
improve communication for distributed teams than what I was working
on. In February 2020, after my second child was born, Murphy and I
planned to slowly build a solution to these problems on the side.
Then, the COVID situation exploded, and we knew it was time to go
all-in. We pivoted our focus entirely. When we first started, our
name was Girbil. The first version of the site is laughable:
https://www.girbil.com/. In synchronous work cultures, people
expect contextual understanding in their interactions because it's
assumed that everyone absorbs that context by osmosis in meetings,
informal chats, and channels. Workers are used to having large
portions of their day plugged into a flow of just-in-time
information like a network. With asynchronous cultures, it's better
to assume little or no prior contextual knowledge in every
communication. Context is given by referring to documentation or by
laying it out specifically. Workers are used to having large swaths
of uninterrupted time to work deeply. Because we lived across
continents, most of our work and communication had to be
asynchronous. We felt that current chat tools (e.g., Slack, Teams)
are built for synchronous teams. You can see this in many of these
products' design decisions. For example, pressing enter sends a
message instead of line-breaking, encouraging short-form messages
that provide minimal context. Furthermore, the lack of a message
workflow encourages a constant stream of low-value messages. By
default, instant notifications are sent for every short message--
even when the recipient is in do-not-disturb, the sender has the
power to override. All these design decisions promote a constant
flow of shallow, quickly-scanned information demanding immediate
responses. We want to build a communication product that better
meets the needs of distributed product teams like ours--designed
first for asynchronous teams across multiple time zones where it
can be hard to get face time. We decided to start with video. We
felt the medium itself, though not perfect, addresses a lot of the
issues we experienced. With video, you tend to record only when you
have something important to say. Most creators want to "sound
good," so they put thought into what they're saying. Additionally,
the listener can't "skim" the messages, and they receive a richer
message in terms of intent, tone, and energy. Sharing an asset
while screen recording adds another layer of depth and efficiency.
But we're still trying to figure out how to maximize the above
strengths of async video while mitigating its downsides (e.g., its
linear nature). For example, we've limited face and voice
recordings to two minutes to encourage succinctness (though screen-
share recordings can be 10 minutes). We'd love to hear your ideas
here. We've also made some design decisions to help teams focus.
For example, instead of channels, we've built conversations. These
are designed to be started with a specific goal and are very easy
to leave, close, and end. Users can have multiple workspaces, but
they're hidden instead of ever-present. We hope to ultimately
build a Slack/Teams alternative designed for rich, asynchronous
human interactions that encourage deep work. We still have a lot to
build before we achieve this goal, and we'll need to incorporate
text and file attachments at some point. Today, we use PingPong for
50-75% of our team communication. When we have to send a file or
structured text, we use Slack. We love using our own product to
collaborate as we work on it together. We'd love to hear your
thoughts, feedback, and ideas--particularly if you'd like to share
any limitations or frustrations you experience with Slack or Teams
as we did. Thanks for reading!
Author : jeffwhitlock
Score : 46 points
Date : 2021-03-07 17:30 UTC (5 hours ago)
| alexandargyurov wrote:
| Why have I seen 2 other companies doing the same thing just in
| the past week?
|
| https://www.verbz.ai/
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26265024)
|
| https://www.woice.me/
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26340042)
| rememberlenny wrote:
| I encounter creative folks who really don't like Slack's
| notification system, and hate how the workplace has become a
| bunch of impersonal pings.
|
| Can you talk a bit about the tech stack? How is your video
| handled and are you using any services worth noting?
|
| One thing that Slack is useful for is an accumulation of a
| searchable knowledge base. Do you have any plans to make the
| videos searchable and/or are closed threads/conversations deleted
| to the end user?
|
| Overall - this makes so much sense. At the beginning of the Covid
| lockdowns, my wife started regularly using MarcoPolo to keep in
| touch with her friends. She loved the semi-serendipitous messages
| and intimacy exchanged. This is definitely missing in the
| workplace.
|
| Congrats on launching.
| jeffwhitlock wrote:
| Thanks for the questions.
|
| For desktop we've built an electron app with React and Node.
| Our mobile apps are built using Flutter.
|
| We use WebRTC for the camera stream and web sockets to send the
| video stream to an EC2 instance. All data is stored in Amazon
| S3.
|
| Your knowledge base point is a good one. We're working on
| searchable video transcripts and a tagging feature to make it
| easier to organize and retrieve the information.
| flaque wrote:
| This is clever; it's pulling a common behavior (audio messages on
| whatsapp) and pulling it into work culture. Slack followed this
| strategy pretty well.
| ZeroOneDz wrote:
| Looks like you forgot to configure Google auth origin
| jeffwhitlock wrote:
| Thanks for pointing this out.
|
| Did you happen to do this in incognito or different privacy
| mode?
|
| We have a bug where Google auth does not work in these modes.
| cmorss wrote:
| I'm not the original poster, but I also had the same issue.
| I'm not in an incognito window nor do I have any special
| privacy mode (I'm using Chrome on OSX).
|
| Error 400: redirect_uri_mismatch The JavaScript origin in the
| request, https://www.getpingpong.com, does not match the ones
| authorized for the OAuth client. Visit https://console.develo
| pers.google.com/apis/credentials/oauth... to update the
| authorized JavaScript origins.
| jeffwhitlock wrote:
| Thank you so much for reporting this. Figured out what's
| causing the the issue and are fixing it now.
| jeffwhitlock wrote:
| Thanks again for pointing this issue out. It's fixed now. Would
| sincerely appreciate it if you can confirm that it works for
| you.
| nafizh wrote:
| Hey, congrats on your launch. The first thing that comes to my
| mind is I hate recording myself. Even on zoom meetings I try to
| turn the video off as much as possible. It also seems easier to
| me to share a thought or suggestion over chat when there is no
| expectation of instant reply given writing something down forces
| you to filter your thoughts and specify the concrete details. How
| do you show the utility of self-recording to such people?
| jeffwhitlock wrote:
| Out of curiosity, is this true for voice and video or just
| video? We added voice recordings as a feature for people who
| don't want to record themselves on camera. We're also adding
| text as a "type" of message you can send.
|
| One of the interesting things we've noticed is that recording
| yourself seems to encourage more intentionality in what is
| being said than a quick chat or SMS (maybe because you're more
| self-aware while recording?).
|
| As you mentioned, some people are very intentional while
| writing, but I'm not sure that's the norm.
|
| Many of the chat tools' design decisions encourage stream-of-
| conscious writing (e.g., press enter to send instead of line-
| breaking, one-line text boxes).
| saurik wrote:
| I think this intentionality comes from the person more than
| the tool; like, as obvious as it is to you that chat causes
| people to dump a stream of consciousness while audio forces
| people to be "intentional" and think about what they are
| saying, it is frankly just as obvious to me that when people
| are speaking they tend to "ramble" as they attempt to somehow
| construct a thought on the fly (and often end up repeating
| things they have already said) whereas with text people
| construct and edit well-organized and considered statements.
| jeffwhitlock wrote:
| Very fair point. Being recorded is an interesting added
| dynamic vs. talking live, but you still could very well be
| right. It is for sure idiosyncratic.
| lvass wrote:
| 28 occurrences of "we" in original text plus 14 from your other
| posts, barely 2 hours in. In a world of 7 billion people, why are
| you so important that I should read all of that?
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
| people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| lvass wrote:
| I'm sorry if I sounded dismissive, I was just impressed by
| the way the text sounded to Me, as I read it, and figured
| people might be interested in the data that I collected as I
| thought made said text sound weird to Me. I have no idea why
| My comments would not be considered a good critical comment
| to you the same way I think it looks like to Me. Get My
| point?
|
| (I never meant to be shallowly dismissive but rather provide
| good criticism and lament if it sounded otherwise)
| sneak wrote:
| Is it end to end encrypted? It sounds like something I'd like to
| use, but if it's not private from the service operator and their
| hosting providers I probably can't use it for most of my
| projects.
| jeffwhitlock wrote:
| Good question/feedback. The app is not currently end-to-end
| encrypted.
|
| We've looked into doing this but haven't found a way to do it
| while supporting transcription.
|
| We're currently planning on implementing single-use keys to
| balance security with transcription needs.
|
| Would love to hear your thoughts on this.
| sneak wrote:
| Is transcription really a critical/killer feature? Does the
| product fall down without it? Can it be done clientside and
| then the transcribed data be encrypted e2e alongside the av
| streams?
|
| For me if it's not e2e it's a nonstarter, which means I'm not
| using the transcription feature because I'm not using the
| product at all.
| jeffwhitlock wrote:
| For some transcription seems to be critical (see the
| search-ability knowledge comment above), but e2e is a deal-
| break for others. I totally understand where you're coming
| from too.
|
| Perhaps we'll figure out a client-side solution or create
| ab e2e channel setting where transcription is disabled.
|
| Really appreciate the push to figure this out.
| pm wrote:
| You've come to the same conclusions I have about video that I'm
| using for my next startup (and YC application), though we're
| using it for a different purpose. We floated the same name as
| well, so I'm glad we didn't pick it!
| jeffwhitlock wrote:
| That's a funny coincidence. Excited to see what you build! Let
| me know if I can help.
| pm wrote:
| Sure thing. E-mail is in my profile (you don't have one in
| yours).
| ourcat wrote:
| I founded and built a company based on a threaded, asynchronous
| multimedia forum system about 12 years ago. It supported any type
| of content that was 'V.I.T.A.L' : Video, Images, Text, Audio and
| Links.
|
| (I sadly had to resign from it, after getting royally screwed
| over by the 'investor relations guys' who were on the 'pump and
| dump' of our OTA stock, after we went public via a reverse
| merger.)
|
| I have been thinking of building something like it again
| recently, using everything I've learned since - technologically
| and financially.
|
| Best of luck! :)
| jeffwhitlock wrote:
| Dang, sounds like an unfortunate experience. Now is a good time
| to do it! Happy to compare notes.
| ourcat wrote:
| The whole last year has definitely been 'the right time' for
| something like it again. And especially across timezones.
|
| These days, I would probably only offer it as a white-
| label/SaaS model rather than an 'open' social network.
| Possibly something private/invite-only.
|
| The past few years have made me think that I'm extremely glad
| to have not been involved at all with it any more. I'd had
| some extremely lucrative offers from political parties for
| them to use one of its features, which I'm glad I turned
| down. The effect it would have had on the incumbent beta-
| testers at that stage would have been catastrophic.
|
| I would also stick to 'organic growth' rather than outside
| investors, who could absolutely destroy your vision for the
| product, for their own ends, without a care in the world for
| the users and community. Lesson learned the hard way.
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(page generated 2021-03-07 23:00 UTC)