New Slack Rival 'Twist' Aims to Streamline Team Interaction With Fewer Distractions

The group behind popular productivity app Todoist today launched a new team chat platform called Twist, which aims to make online collaboration more meaningful and efficient while minimizing distractions.

Eschewing the more traditional real-time chat channels common to services like Slack, the Twist interface instead splits channels into topic-specific threads that function like online message boards, while real-time conversations are initiated through separate direct messages.

New chat thread posts and replies are corralled into an inbox, allowing users to check and respond to collated messages when it's convenient for them to do so. The idea is that users no longer have to spend time scrolling through channel threads to find conversations that are relevant to them, and they won't be distracted by notifications and pop-ups when they're working.

In line with this philosophy, Twist has no online presence indicator, which is supposed to prevent other team members from expecting an immediate response whenever they post something. The developers say the UI and interaction method aims for a better balance between timely communication and distraction-free work.

Twist launched in beta in January but officially launched today. In terms of pricing, the communication platform has a free tier that limits archived and searchable messages to one month, while the Unlimited tier costs $6 a month, or $5 a month if paid annually.

Twist can be downloaded for free on Mac and iOS devices, with a web interface also available.