Comment
Huddle, the cloud collaboration company that picked up $25 million in funding in May, today is launching a significant update to its platform: it’s adding in a social communication layer to its service, so that when people share and work together on documents online, they can also talk to each other about them.
The move puts Huddle into closer competition against companies like Microsoft, whose $1.4 billion purchase of Yammer closed today and is now likely to create more social collaborations of this kind in its own products. (The picture here, in fact, is from Huddle’s in London, where it parked this sign in front of Yammer/Microsoft’s HQ to drive the competition point home.)
The launch is also very much in keeping with the trend of companies like Acunote and Asana making it easier for disparate colleagues — or even those in the same office who don’t talk in person much — to be able to keep up on what others are doing; plus the second trend of putting significantly more live content into the cloud.
With this new version of the platform, Huddle is working right in the center of where a lot of other enterprise-focused companies want to go. Microsoft’s purchase of Yammer, you can imagine, will likely (hopefully) be integrated into a bigger collaboration suite for businesses; and similarly you can see Google edging in a converged direction with its cloud services, too. However, while these heavy hitters continue to lag on implementing services like this, smaller Huddle has stolen a march.
“The new Huddle is the first enterprise tool that brings together content, conversation and enterprise-level security, giving workers a full 360-degree view of information that is important to them,” says Alastair Mitchell, CEO, Huddle, in a statement.
He notes that customers have seen the time taken to find and share information reduce by half. “Discussions are focused on specific content, knowledge is transmitted to the people that need it and the enterprise data store is enriched and available for everyone in the enterprise ecosystem. Legacy ICT systems no longer support the new ways of working and Huddle is leading a transformation in the ECM space, ensuring people have access to higher quality content, productivity is increased and costs are reduced.”
Huddle’s new version is significantly pared down in terms of how it looks, with the simplified interface pointing users to view and interact with files, as well as see related discussions and metadata in one central place — the idea is to keep people from jogging from one screen to another, or one application to another — both of which can become time-consuming distractions.
The company has also worked in some features that are a hat-tip to services like Yammer and Twitter, with the ability to @ mention someone to alert them to a message. Also included are version histories and audit trails to look at individual revisions on documents.
Huddle says the new version of the platform is already available for all customers, which include 80 percent of the Fortune 500 and 80 percent of central UK government departments. The company’s projecting an eightfold increase in revenues this year.
Every weekday and Sunday, you can get the best of TechCrunch’s coverage.
Startups are the core of TechCrunch, so get our best coverage delivered weekly.
The latest Fintech news and analysis, delivered every Tuesday.
TechCrunch Mobility is your destination for transportation news and insight.
By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice.
Months after Microsoft gained an observer seat on OpenAI’s board, the company is leaving the position of the non-voting seat. In a letter sent to OpenAI on Tuesday, Microsoft said…
SaaS founders trying to figure out what it takes to raise their next round can refer to Point Nine’s famous yearly SaaS Funding Napkin. (The term refers to “back of…
Iceland’s startup scene is punching above its weight. That’s perhaps in part because it kept the 2021 hype in check, but mostly because its tech ecosystem is coming of age.…
Index Ventures is announcing $2.3 billion in new funds to finance the next generation of tech startups globally. These new funds are spread across different stages with $800 million dedicated…
Prompt engineering became a hot job last year in the AI industry, but it seems Anthropic is now developing tools to at least partially automate it. Anthropic released several new…
Hebbia, a startup that uses generative AI to search large documents and respond to large questions, has raised a $130 million Series B at a roughly $700 million valuation led…
NovoNutrients has raised a $18 million Series A round from investors to build a pilot-scale facility to prove that its fermentation process works at scale.
Seven years ago, Uber and Lyft blocked an effort to require ride-hailing app drivers to get fingerprinted in California. But by launching Uber for Teens earlier this year, the company…
Fast-food chain Whataburger’s app has gone viral in the wake of Hurricane Beryl, which left around 1.8 million utility customers in Houston, Texas without power. Hundreds of thousands of those…
Bumble’s new reporting option arrives at a time when, unfortunately, AI-generated photos on dating apps are common
The concept of Airchat is fun, especially if you’re someone who loves to send voice memos instead of typing out long paragraphs on your phone keyboard.
Featured Article
Here is a timeline of the events that led fledgling automaker Fisker to file for bankruptcy.
Ahead of these potential competitors comes Openvibe, a simple aggregator for the open social web.
Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! Last week was a holiday in the United States, so news was a bit lighter than normal. But there was still fintech-related items to report, including…
Fisker Inc. co-founders Henrik Fisker and his wife, Geeta Gupta-Fisker, are lowering their salaries to $1 in order to keep their failed EV startup’s bankruptcy proceedings funded, as lawyers work…
After announcing a whopping $20 million seed last year, Unlikely AI founder William Tunstall-Pedoe has kept the budding U.K. foundation model maker’s approach under lock and key. Until now: TechCrunch…
We’re excited to invite Jesse Pollak to TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 to talk about the future of decentralization.
Featured Article
The tech layoff wave is still going strong in 2024. Following significant workforce reductions in 2022 and 2023, this year has already seen 60,000 job cuts across 254 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. Companies like Tesla, Amazon, Google, TikTok, Snap and Microsoft have conducted sizable layoffs in the…
Infactory is a kind of fact-checking search engine that will be focused exclusively on data at launch.
In a first, the Federal Trade Commission is banning an app from serving users under the age of 18. The agency announced on Tuesday that it’s banning NGL, an anonymous…
When people start navigation on Google Maps, the vehicle’s speed is shown in miles or kilometers, depending on the region.
Design and animation are core to the Duolingo experience, which makes learning a new language or skill more like a game rather than a task to be dreaded.
Two of my friends died within the last three years. By some coincidence, both of their birthdays fall in the beginning of July. So, twice this week, Facebook has reminded…
Running a small business means doing more with less. AI agents can help, but building custom agents for specific workflows remains challenging, even with today’s low-code/no-code tools. The idea behind…
The feature puts Spotify in more direct competition with YouTube as a place where creators can interact with their listeners.
A new iOS app called Wayther wants to help you better plan your road trips by giving you real-time road conditions and weather forecasts along your route. Created by indie…
Evolve has confirmed that the personal data of at least 7.6 million people was accessed during LockBit’s ransomware attack.
Etsy has been grappling with an influx of generic “junk” and AI-generated products on its platform. The service revised its seller policy on Tuesday, introducing new labels that clarify whether…
Seae Ventures is acquiring Unseen Capital after the death of founder Kayode Owens in 2021. The combined firm will continue to invest in healthcare for minorities and underserved populations. Owens,…
Apple released the third developer beta version of iOS 18 on Monday. While there are no major new features like Apple Intelligence in this update, there are some neat design…
Powered by WordPress VIP
Leave a Reply