For the past week, I’ve been using present.ly at work. Present.ly is a twitter-style “micro-blogging” tool aimed for internal use within organizations, much like TC50′s 2008 Winner Yammer.  Unfortunately Yammer has at least one major flaw: it builds its network based on the user’s organization name/email URL, therefore not allowing to join two organizations that use different emails.

So after no longer being able to cope with Yammer’s pitfalls anymore, Thornley Fallis and 76design‘s CEO Joe Thornley had the insight to give present.ly a try, and actively encouraged both organizations to become part of this community. Here are my thoughts and feedback after our first week of use.

Ease of use

A handful of us are already avid twitter users, so the learning curve was next to none.  Many were newly introduced to Twitter lingo, but after a few tries, it was smooth sailing.

Luckily for all us there are also some great additional features in presently that we got to know :

• Groups are a marvel;
• “Highlighting” when people ask questions (?) or say something urgent (!!!) is quite useful;
• Built-in media sharing.

The web interface is really straightforward, and logical.  In addition to this, present.ly also has a desktop AIR app and an iPhone-friendly interface.

However, things tend to behave just a little differently than they do on twitter, which can lead to some frustrating moments.  The behaviors aren’t bad, but I like my conventions!

• No “delete” option: seriously, we all make typos;
• Unlike Twitter’s web interface, the return key will send a message instead of doing a line break (This seems minor, but without a delete button, it’s a total pain.)
• Another often mentioned issue is that of the confusion on how the “Groups” feature works.  If two users are members of a group, but do not “follow” one another, they don’t receive all the updates destined for that group.  This could lead to people missing out on part of the conversation. And also forces a user to follow pretty much everyone;
• Multiple email activity notifications that are impossible to turn off.

None of these issues are significant enough to stop me from doing what I want to do with present.ly.  But to the folks at present.ly, if you’re listening – hear me out!

Is it all worth it?

After the first day on present.ly, many of us, myself included, questioned if this tool was worthwhile.  The entire day on present.ly had been spent sending silly messages and testing out the features.  It felt like a productivity killer.

I’d say that for the remainder of the week, a good lot of us realized the potential of present.ly and made a conscious effort to make it useful.  A few examples of things we’ve used it for:

• Tracking any internal technical issues with hashtags;
• Sharing news / ideas about development in our devSquad group;
• Sharing business successes;
• Status updates (what you’re working on, where you are, etc.);
• Giving out bonuses (if you’re Joe)!

Overview

All in all, I think Present.ly is a great app, and it seems to have really “hit the nail on the head” in terms of what we needed as a inter-office communication tool.  I also envision it being useful on any “Enterprise” level, as it is reasonable secure and stable.  But as with any collaborative tool or app, we must always keep the ball rolling and choose to make it useful…

What do you think?  I’d love to hear feedback on some solutions that have worked for you, and have allowed you to communicate better at work.