HipChat Blog

Android update: Apr 24, 2012

By Chris Rivers | 3 weeks ago | 4 Comments |

Thanks to all the response we received to our request for beta testers, we’re excited to release our latest update of the HipChat Android app to Google Play.

Some major features included in the update:

Improved connection handling (and detection of disconnects)
Loading previous chat history
Hiding archived rooms in the Lobby
Lobby search
Support for s/// replacement

We hope that the update solves many of the issues reported by our users running the Android app. Give it a try! If you have any feedback, please let us know at support@hipchat.com

Android – Request for Testers Part Deux

By Chris Rivers | 1 month ago | 0 Comments |

UPDATE: This beta version has been released to Google Play. We are not currently actively looking for beta testers, but if you’re interested in future beta testing, feel free to let us know at support@hipchat.com

A while back, we sent out a request for Android beta testers. That was for the very first release of the app. Since then, we’ve had a couple minor updates and lots of feedback. Now, we’re in the process of developing another update and we’d like to create a more official beta testing community (previously, we just linked to an APK and let users have at it).

If you’d like to help us beta test the Android app, please drop us an email at support@hipchat.com. I’ll send you an invite and a link to download the latest version.

Since none of us here at HipChat are regular Android users, we depend on you guys to help us get all the real-world testing we can. If you’re beta testing, please send us any and all feedback. We can’t promise to get everything into a single update, but we’ll definitely record it for the future.

We’re hiring!

By Garret Heaton | 2 months ago | 4 Comments |

We just started hiring for a few positions that are going to have a huge impact on the future of our product. Our recent acquisition by Atlassian means we’ve upgraded to a beautiful new office in San Francisco filled with smart people, beer, and dogs. We’d love for you to join our small team (unless you’re really good at ping-pong, we have plenty of those people), so take a look:

Infrastructure Engineer – This person will help us design, build, and maintain a rock-solid infrastructure for hundreds of thousands of chatters.
iOS & OSX Developer – A native OSX app has been on our roadmap for a while and we’re looking for an experienced dev to make it great.
Windows & Android Developer – Believe it or not, Windows is our most common platform. We’re going to be making a beautiful app for these users as well. Ideally this person is interested in doing Android app development as well.

If you’re interested in any of these positions (or various combinations of them, please apply using the links on the Atlassian site). And if you know someone who’s a good fit we’d love to pay you for your referral!

Thanks,

Pete

Chris

Rose

Garret

Yes, you’ll even get a your own cartoon character.

Scheduled maintenance this Saturday at 10PM PST

By Garret Heaton | 2 months ago | 0 Comments |

We’ll be upgrading one of our main databases this Saturday, March 24th at 10PM PST for about 10 minutes. During this time our website will be unavailable and users will not be able to sign in to chat. However, if you’re already signed in when we begin the maintenance you’ll be able to keep chatting.

We have grown tremendously in the past few months and need to perform this upgrade to keep everything running smoothly. Thanks for your patience!

Update 10:15pm: All set. Everything went very smoothly.

iOS App Update – Version 1.6

By Chris Rivers | 2 months ago | 0 Comments |

Version 1.6 of our iOS app just finished Apple’s review process and is available for download. This update is focused mostly on behind-the-scenes improvements, so the list of visible changes is pretty small:

Reconnection no longer blocks all input in the app. Users can now type messages and view chat history while the app reconnects and updates the UI.
Fixed problems with iPads being unable to upload photos
The responsiveness while the app is performing the initial load of users and rooms should be much better for larger groups (100+ users/rooms)

This is a first step towards making our mobile apps easier to use during times when connections are going in and out. Please try it out and let us know any feedback or comments you have: support@hipchat.com.

We look forward to being able to get these updates out even more often now that we’re part of Atlassian. We appreciate all the feature requests and feedback we get from our users, please keep them coming!

We’ve been acquired by Atlassian!

By HipChat | 2 months ago | 45 Comments |

Today, after weeks of secret-keeping, we’re thrilled to announce that we’re becoming a part of Atlassian!

Who is Atlassian?

Atlassian builds collaboration software for product teams, and is used by over 18,000 organizations (both big and small). They’re the folks behind killer development products like JIRA, Confluence, Bitbucket, and SourceTree. They’ve been in the business of building software for companies for 10 years (5 times as long as us) and we can’t wait to join forces and make HipChat even better than it is today.

What’s going to happen to HipChat?

You’re probably thinking “Great, I finally find an app my team loves and now it’s going to get gobbled up and destroyed.” (this is what we normally think when we see a small team get acquired). Well, we can stop you right there. A huge reason we decided to join up with Atlassian is that they’re just as pumped as us to see HipChat turn into the instant messaging powerhouse we all dream of (the swanky new San Francisco office with free beer on tap doesn’t hurt). With their help and infrastructure, we can get some help with servers and providing great support to customers while we keep building kickass features.

What about my account? Are the prices changing?

HipChat is going to remain everything you’ve come to expect. Our pricing will stay the same, and the product will continue to get better. You’ll also be covered by Atlassian’s terms of service, including their legendary service promise and awesome support team. We’re excited to integrate with the products that Atlassian has already built, and continue to integrate with the other services our customers already use.

A very heartfelt thank you.

We wouldn’t be here without you, our customers. Your referrals, reviews, and feedback has brought HipChat to over 1,200 companies in just 2 years. We can’t thank you enough, and we can’t wait to show you some of the new stuff we’re working on.

- Chris, Garret, Pete, and Rose

They may just be chat bubbles, but they’re our chat bubbles

By Pete Curley | 3 months ago | 55 Comments |

We were excited to see Apple’s announcement of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion this morning, especially the new iChat (now called Messages). The consumer chat space has been in serious need of innovation so we were hoping for some big changes. There might even be a few things that would inspire future HipChat releases. Unfortunately, it looks like they were the ones that got a little inspiration. As many of our users noticed, the new Messages logo looks a little…familiar.

Well, crap. I don’t know how Apple came to this design. Do I think they copied us? Probably not (but as a designer, I’ll take the compliment). Regardless of how Apple arrived at this design, one of us has to change. It’s really confusing for our users, and they’re really all we care about. So we have a few options:

Do nothing. ”Screw Apple. We got here first.” Although tempting, it won’t change anything. Our users will still be confused.
“Sue the bastards!” I appreciate this sentiment from our users but it’s pretty much insane when you think about it from our point of view. No matter how many trademarks, patents, or copyrights we have, these guys have billions in cash. We could easily spend more in litigation fees than the value of our entire company. HipChat isn’t going to get any better if we spend the next year in court.
Change our icon and move on. This is probably what we’ll end up doing. We can get back to business and keep running the company we’re proud to be. After all, who signs up for a service for the logo?

Brands are hard to create, and apparently easy to crush. We know that the spirit of what we’ve created is far greater than just our logo. To people that say “whatever man, they’re just chat bubbles”, I don’t disagree with you. It’s a common logo concept, even for services that have nothing to do with chat. They may just be chat bubbles, but they’re our chat bubbles. They’re on our products, the banner hanging in our office, and the t-shirts we wear every day. But to be honest, I look forward to the challenge of creating something new that will make them think “I wish we’d thought of that”.

HipChat is 2 Fast 2 Furious

By Garret Heaton | 4 months ago | 3 Comments |

Happy 2nd birthday, HipChat! We launched two years ago today and have been working nonstop to help your team get things done, stay in touch, and have fun. Here’s what we’ve been up to since last year:

Released apps for iPhone/iPad and Android
Opened up XMPP access and had many users create bots
Shocked Bay Area residents with our billboard
Simplified our pricing model
Added support for signing in from multiple locations
Made over 100 improvements and fixes to our desktop app
Launched a referral program and created a ton of custom emoticons
Added dozens of integrations

We’ve also made major improvements to the reliability and speed of our service and have over 10 times more people chatting every day than we did a year ago. Almost every week in the past year was our biggest ever (apparently everyone goes on vacation during the last week of August). Here’s to another exciting year! We’re grateful for your support and are excited to share the wonderful things we have on our roadmap with you.

Sign in from multiple locations at once

By Garret Heaton | 5 months ago | 4 Comments |

That’s right! You can now sign in to HipChat from multiple locations and will never see the “This account has signed in from another location” message again. This feature has been requested often since our launch and we’re thrilled to finally release it.

Like most HipChat features you’ll find the experience better than on other IM networks. Messages you send and receive will show up everywhere else you’re signed in* and we’ll even restore your proper status message and idle time when you sign out of your most recently used location. You can even see a list of all your sessions in your account settings on the site:

As always, let us know if you run into any trouble or have suggestions for things we can improve. Enjoy!

* Unfortunately the experience will be less awesome for XMPP users since other clients don’t always support this.

Desktop client update: Dec. 28th 2011

By Chris Rivers | 5 months ago | 0 Comments |

We’ve made an update to our desktop client in preparation for our upcoming maintenance to support multiple login (read: lots of behind-the-scenes changes). Of course, nobody wants an update with no visible changes, so we included room renaming and archiving (among some other tidbits). Release notes below:

New feature: Support for room archiving
New feature: Support for room renaming
Improvement: Shift+enter can now be used to add a newline
Bug fix: Using the s/// notation for typo replacement no longer replaces within the message itself
Improvement: The font size of the text in the input area now matches the chat area
Improvement: Idle time now displays in 1-to-1 chats
Bug fix: Fixed an issue where text associated with file uploads would sometimes disappear
Bug fix: Popup notifications for system messages with HTML should now display correctly
Bug fix: Fixed an issue clicking the scrollbar in the autocomplete popup