A new team communication app called Twist has a way for people to get more done at work: fewer notifications.
Created by Doist, the team behind productivity app Todoist, Twist’s biggest differentiator is that it’s based on asynchronous communication. With an interface that feels more like a message board, Twist has channels, which then contain threaded conversations underneath. The threads are meant to encourage in-depth conversations versus one-line interactions, and every response in a thread can be set to notify the entire group, or only certain people. All notifications are centralized, and appear in the Inbox, located in the top left.
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Twist, which launched in beta in January and opened to public today, also does away with an online presence indicator altogether. Online presence indicators, says Doist, become an expectation tool — when you see a teammate online, an immediate response is anticipated. Likewise, if a teammate is not online, a person is more likely to postpone sending non-imperative information.
The company believes that without an online presence indicator, the act of messaging functions rather differently. While it admits that conversations happen over a slower period of time, Doist wants Twist to encourage more “real work” by not distracting people with scattered pings and real-time messaging.
The company says it drew inspiration from initiatives like Time Well Spent, “a non-profit movement to reclaim our minds from the race for attention,” and best-seller Deep Work, which says that people are “spending their days instead in a frantic blur of email and social media, not even realizing there’s a better way.” In other words, Twist has devised a way for people to mindfully disconnect, which Doist says allows for deeper work and more meaningful interactions when teammates check in.
With everyone trying to one-up Slack (which now boasts about 5 million daily users) by focusing on real-time accessibility, Twist’s approach is certainly nonconforming, but could be useful for large-scale projects or remote teams.
If you’re interested, the platform is free, with a couple caveats, like only one month of archived and searchable messages. The Unlimited tier costs $6 per user per month if paid monthly, or $5 per user per month if paid annually, and includes unlimited archives, file storage, and app or service integrations.
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