LOL. I spent some time yesterday fooling with Hive (from Hiveteams.com), and I was using their Intercom.io support chat with comments about UX and their underlying design.
I made a microdent in their universe, it seems.
PS In 1999, I was reviewing a tool called Abuzz, by Beehive, which was acquired while I drafted the final issue of Message from Edge City, an ‘e-magazine’, and then started blogging. I coined the term social tools because of that experience, writing
A new category of software is emerging, software intended to augment social systems. Not to change the company inadvertently, like email did, when the electronic analog of interoffice mail became something else, grew into something else by changing the way people communicated, and led a change in the structure of the company. No, this generation of software is intentional, designed from the start to guide human behavior into new paths and patterns, to counter prevailing ways of interaction. I call these social tools: software intended to shape culture.
Seventeen years later we are still spiraling around these central issues.
from Stowe Boyd http://stoweboyd.com/post/140853429877
