PingPong - Structured, async messaging for distributed teams | Product Hunt

Hi Product Hunt!

It's hard to believe that it's been nine months since we launched PingPong 1.0 on Product Hunt.

We loved the experience and are back for more! 🤞

Many remote teams around the world adopted PingPong. They taught us how to help remote, asynchronous teams be more effective.

With PingPong 1.0, our goal was to make remote work more personal and improve understanding through async video messaging.

With PingPong 2.0, we're making distributed, asynchronous work more effective by addressing the core problems with today's workplace chat apps: they are disorganized and distracting.

Our aim with PingPong 2.0 is to help teams be more productive and happy by reducing burnout, communication overload, and constant distraction that result from Slack's (and similar tools') design decisions.

We're excited to show you a new design and set of features so different that we're calling it 2.0. We'd love you to try it and tell us what you think.

👉Get PingPong for Free👈

-------------------------------- PingPong is for Teams That --------------------------------

• Work cross-functionally and across timezones
• Communicate asynchronously (i.e., emphasize document/artifacts for problem solving and decisions, and minimize meetings)
• Have 4-12 people
• Are open to having a place separate from Slack (or other dominant chat apps) for deep, long-form discussions and decisions
• Feel like Slack (or other dominant chat apps) lead to costly context switching, communication overload, and tasks/content falling through the cracks.

-------------------------------- Big Product Updates -------------------------------- 📐 Structured conversations – PingPong helps you ditch chaotic channels for more structured communication with (1) Conversations, which are like Slack channels but designed to have a goal and a resolution and (2) Threads, where all messaging happens within conversations and can be closed, summarized, and highlighted.

Watch PingPong clip

✅ Message workflow – Essential action items and requests constantly fall through the cracks when chatting. In PingPong, users can tag messages that require action so critical discussion-related responses and action items get completed, and work moves forward.

Watch PingPong clip

🧘‍♀️ Notifications that encourage focus – How often do you check Slack? On average, users check Slack every 5 minutes—it was designed to create instant habit loops. With that much distraction, it's impossible to be productive. PingPong minimizes communication overload and context switching with intuitive notifications. We do not notify unless the sender explains why. Users always control when PingPong notifies them.

Watch PingPong clip

🎞 Long-form, multi-medium messaging – One-line Slack messages often lead to synchronous conversations that are shallow, sloppy, and drawn out. PingPong encourages thoughtful and complex communication with video, screen recording, audio, and text messages; we transcribe all non-text messages, and users can annotate them.

Watch PingPong clip

-------------------------------- Additional Improvements --------------------------------

• Improved search: Search transcripts, thread titles, and people.
• Recording preview: Preview your recording before sending it. If you don't like it, you can re-record.
• Replies: Reference specific messages when you reply to them (like Whatsapp).
• Improved web player: Our web player looks better and functions smoother when sharing links.

-------------------------------- The Philosophy behind PingPong -------------------------------- Most people will spend more time working than anything else in life. Whether this is good or bad can be tabled for another day, but one thing is for sure: time is precious.

The renaissance of distributed work offered the promised flexibility of location and time. Instead, people feel burned out with back-to-back Zoom calls and a never-ending backlog of Slack messages.

Initially, remote work offered an opportunity for startups to disrupt the incumbents built with video-game design principles that create addicting patterns of behavior to boost DAUs and time-in-app, not productivity.

But the pandemic so quickly accelerated the adoption of remote work that the incumbents caught on and "pivoted" their platforms to "accommodate" remote work. But they did so without changing their products' core problematic design patterns.

We believe that messaging should be built on the following principles:

1. Orient towards decisions and actions
2. Encourage a high signal to noise ratio
3. Respect peoples' time and focus, and the end-user should always be in control of when they are notified.
4. Help people keep track of messages that require responses or actions so they don't fall through the cracks.

We designed PingPong with these principles.

-------------------------------- Can I use both PingPong and Slack? -------------------------------- Yes, that is the intended use case. We're under no delusion that we can completely replace Slack. There is a time and place for short-form, quick, back-and-forth messaging.

Slack is ideal for low-complexity, ephemeral messaging, like team updates, coordination, and team small-talk.

PingPong is for high-complexity, enduring communication, like designing, decision-making, and problem-solving.

By reducing the types of messages that move through Slack, the volume of messages will significantly decline, and your team's productivity will improve as context switching and communication overload are reduced.

-------------------------------- Get PingPong for Free -------------------------------- We're only getting started towards where these principles can lead, and we've likely messed up applying them.

But if these ideas resonate with you, we'd love for you to try PingPong, share it with your team, and give us feedback as you work with us to build a better way to work.

PingPong is currently free and will be for several months. By using PingPong and sharing it with others, you'll help us keep building it to achieve our mission of helping teams get more done in less time.

👉Get PingPong for Free👈

— Jeff and the PingPong Team

P.S. You can email me ([email protected]) or text me (801-628-1798) anytime with questions or feedback