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This is a live review of Twist, a potential digital workplace tool for your organization. It’s part of a series where we review products which can function as a new digital HQ for your organization.
Reviewers:
- Vonda Page of Radical Change LLC
- Vijay Anand of The Startup Centre
- Neil Miller of The Digital Workplace
What is Twist?
Twist bills itself as the anti-Slack. It’s a full-out work messaging app, but with a heavy and open bias towards asynchronous communication. Twist tries to play on the fact that a lot of communication in tools like Slack is overly chaotic. Twist offers most of the same core features, but pushes users towards asynchronous behavior.
Twist is made by Doist, the same company that makes Todoist, which is primarily a task management tool with some project management capabilities. However, the two products are not easily linked or seen as a whole. So, if you opt to use Twist, it’s only solving your need for communication about work. It’s a more structured approach to ad hoc communication, but it’s still separate from where it is taking place.
What’s our take on Twist?
Here’s a summary of our opinions after doing a Twist review.
Vonda
The key thing here is culture. If your culture is already a fit for Twist, then it’s a great tool. But if you have a strong, responsible, respectful culture around communication, you can get the same results with Slack, and Slack’s platform is definitely more fun to use.
Twist might be a good tool for a newly established team that wants to have more structured conversations around a few core topics. It’s good for decision making. But it doesn’t feel intuitive to use it for everyday messaging.
The lack of fun features and the ability to post a quick random picture makes it seem like Twist is for the old, serious people.
Vijay
I have a lot of appreciate for this experiment. It’s for people who want to change work and not just let it go on as usual.
The key phrase that comes to mind is “thoughtful communication”. If a company is striving for more of that, Twist can help. But if you are in a startup mode where things are moving very fast, Twist may feel like an unnecessary throttling of communication.
I wonder if this kind of communication will prevent people from submitting ideas that are not full-fledged ideas yet? If you can’t quite put a full name on it and add four paragraphs, Twist discourages you from adding it.
I’m surprised they haven’t more tightly integrated with Todoist. Twist+Todoist is a nice combination for a lot of people, but having to jump between platforms is challenging.
There’s not an obvious place for serendipitous conversations, water cooler chats, or quick pics of pets and things that Slack has nailed. It feels like a platform for PhD folks that are a little too serious.
Neil
Every tool has a bias, and Twist is one of the rare ones that displays it proudly and reminds you of it often. They tell you not to use messages. When you hit Return, you get a new line of text instead of sending the message. These little things are nicely done to demonstrate they want you to think deeper and be more open.
If your tools tend to dictate the culture, and you want to be more asynchronous, then Twist has some great upsides. But you’ll probably get more mileage just using Slack and setting up clear ground rules to use it in a more asynchronous way.
Using Twist is a reminder that the product won’t take you all the way where you need to go. Start with strong working agreements and find a tool that lets you work inside of your own constraints.
Twist pricing
Check their pricing page for the latest details. As of this recording, they have a free plan for up to 500 people with one month of records and five integrations. For $5/user/month, you get unlimited history, users, and integrations.
Live Twist review
Other reviews
Clickup review
Friday.app review
Kintone review
Qatalog review
Swit review
This is a live review of Twist, a potential digital workplace tool for your organization. It’s part of a series where we review products which can function as a new digital HQ for your organization.
Reviewers:
- Vonda Page of Radical Change LLC
- Vijay Anand of The Startup Centre
- Neil Miller of The Digital Workplace
What is Twist?
Twist bills itself as the anti-Slack. It’s a full-out work messaging app, but with a heavy and open bias towards asynchronous communication. Twist tries to play on the fact that a lot of communication in tools like Slack is overly chaotic. Twist offers most of the same core features, but pushes users towards asynchronous behavior.
Twist is made by Doist, the same company that makes Todoist, which is primarily a task management tool with some project management capabilities. However, the two products are not easily linked or seen as a whole. So, if you opt to use Twist, it’s only solving your need for communication about work. It’s a more structured approach to ad hoc communication, but it’s still separate from where it is taking place.
What’s our take on Twist?
Here’s a summary of our opinions after doing a Twist review.
Vonda
The key thing here is culture. If your culture is already a fit for Twist, then it’s a great tool. But if you have a strong, responsible, respectful culture around communication, you can get the same results with Slack, and Slack’s platform is definitely more fun to use.
Twist might be a good tool for a newly established team that wants to have more structured conversations around a few core topics. It’s good for decision making. But it doesn’t feel intuitive to use it for everyday messaging.
The lack of fun features and the ability to post a quick random picture makes it seem like Twist is for the old, serious people.
Vijay
I have a lot of appreciate for this experiment. It’s for people who want to change work and not just let it go on as usual.
The key phrase that comes to mind is “thoughtful communication”. If a company is striving for more of that, Twist can help. But if you are in a startup mode where things are moving very fast, Twist may feel like an unnecessary throttling of communication.
I wonder if this kind of communication will prevent people from submitting ideas that are not full-fledged ideas yet? If you can’t quite put a full name on it and add four paragraphs, Twist discourages you from adding it.
I’m surprised they haven’t more tightly integrated with Todoist. Twist+Todoist is a nice combination for a lot of people, but having to jump between platforms is challenging.
There’s not an obvious place for serendipitous conversations, water cooler chats, or quick pics of pets and things that Slack has nailed. It feels like a platform for PhD folks that are a little too serious.
Neil
Every tool has a bias, and Twist is one of the rare ones that displays it proudly and reminds you of it often. They tell you not to use messages. When you hit Return, you get a new line of text instead of sending the message. These little things are nicely done to demonstrate they want you to think deeper and be more open.
If your tools tend to dictate the culture, and you want to be more asynchronous, then Twist has some great upsides. But you’ll probably get more mileage just using Slack and setting up clear ground rules to use it in a more asynchronous way.
Using Twist is a reminder that the product won’t take you all the way where you need to go. Start with strong working agreements and find a tool that lets you work inside of your own constraints.
Twist pricing
Check their pricing page for the latest details. As of this recording, they have a free plan for up to 500 people with one month of records and five integrations. For $5/user/month, you get unlimited history, users, and integrations.
Live Twist review
Other reviews
Clickup review
Friday.app review
Kintone review
Qatalog review
Swit review
