It’s time to Chime!

After many months of following the progress of Jive Chime, first as a partner and prospective customer, and then as a member of the Jive team, it’s exciting to be helping to get the word out about a brand spanking new social communication product!

So what is Jive Chime?

Jive Chime is a messaging app that lets you quickly and securely connect with teammates on the go, to get the answers you need, when you need them.

Nothing revolutionary there I hear you say?  We already have (insert the name of your favourite tool here… Lync/Sametime/Jabber/Slack/HipChat/WhatsApp etc), why do we need something else?

What you’d be missing is just how light-weight, fast and dynamic the Chime service is to use:
Think of it as light-weight mobile and desktop messaging, with all the features you’d imagine – push notifications, 1:1 and group (public and private) chats, ability to name conversations, a vast palette of emojis, support for sending images, sync of conversation status across all devices, secure encryption, apps for iOS/Android/Mac and Windows etc etc.  It is beautiful to look and super easy to pick up and use for the first time.

So far so good, yes?

But what’s the compelling reason for using Chime, I hear you ask?

Well for me there’s three significant points I’d pick out:

1. Jive Chime is free to use for individuals and companies.
2. Any users that register using your company’s email domain automatically get networked. This makes it super easy to get your company network up and running, and connected to your colleagues.
3. If you need more control, there’s a plan for you. Just $2 per user per month enables users to be managed from a centralised console, plus the ability for administrators to create/edit/deactivate users and to populate and edit profile fields.  Therefore if you get great adoption of Chime (as we’re sure you will) across a department or location, then you can just move quickly and easily to a larger deployment with all the access and control you’d expect.

That sounds awesome, how do I get started?

Sign up at jivechime.com and download the apps today!

But hey Stuart, we know you’ve been a big fan of Sametime and Slack in the past, how does it really stack up?

I think it’s a stonking v1.0 release, that represents a truly enjoyable and flexible communication network.  It’s free to use, has an incredibly low barrier to entry – sign up, download the app, invite your colleagues, you’re done!

We’ve been using Chime internally as our primary communications channel since before I joined, and over 1 million messages have been sent.  It really does fulfil the IM and group communication needs of a small to medium-sized business incredibly well.

I would be the first to admit there’s a few features that I cannot wait to be added (editing of previous messages being one, an iPad native UI another), but the key features are all there, and are implemented in a very very sweet way.  Jive Software have more than a decade of experience helping businesses develop and enhance their collaborative cultures, and Chime is just the latest product to demonstrate that experience and thinking – this time in a way that means entire organisations can be up and running in a matter of hours.

What have you got to lose? It’s free to use, after all!

Give it a try, and let me know how you get on!