ASANA - any new reactions

Posted by Ken
Aug 10, 2015 at 04:44 AM

It seems like the list of new options grows. I had not heard of half of these programs, so I appreciate the list. But, the more I evaluate these programs, the more they are starting to look like variations on a single flavor or two. It seems that the key to most of these apps is the chat feature, and while communication is important, and everybody want to be the latest “email killer”, I find many of them wanting. Perhaps it is because I do not fit into their target user profile, which always seems to be some creative 20-30yo working at some startup in a loft of an old warehouse? I have no objection to tools being created for this market, but I suspect there are a lot of us who do not fit that profile. I sometimes want to call these programs “bubble software” because they only work if you are inside their software bubble. How do these people interact with somebody outside of the company if they have abandoned their email? In trying to find reviews of these products, I cam across a Verge video discussing Slack as the latest program to make email obsolete. Thankfully folks in the comment section took them to task for providing an advertisement video rather than a review. It seems that every “reviewer” is so focused on being the person who discovered the program that killed email that they cannot even begin to give a useful evaluation of the product. Is email really that horrible and outdated? I do think that some of these programs offer good feature sets with some useful tools, but why not sell on the programs’ merits, rather than join the queue of companies that all seem to be focusing on selling the same tired claim of killing email? It is the LCD of electronic communication that is neither hardware or software dependent. That is quite an accomplishment, and an amazingly useful feature as well. I am curious as to Steve’s selection and how it is received.

—Ken