Hum
YC S13A chat program that integrates with email, with presence.
About
Hum is a product designed to disrupt email with collaboration. It organizes conversation into threads, lets you drop work requests into each others’ feeds, and syncs everything across your devices. Hum is focused on real-time conversation and presence. It makes it easy to see who else is currently viewing a thread. You can “read later” any threads you can’t get to right now, or pin important conversations to the top of the app. The company made a lot of bold claims about how it will transition you away from email as you use it more, but didn’t provide many specifics. Hum will have a steep uphill battle against incumbents like Yammer and Asana, and email, which has been harder to disrupt than most people realize.