mmhmm, the communications platform developed by Phil Libin and the All Turtles team, is getting a variety of new features. According to Libin, there are parts of video communication today that can not only match what we get in the real world, but exceed it.
That’s how this next iteration of mmhmm is meant to deliver.
The new headline feature is mmhmm Chunky, which allows the presenter to break up their script and presentation into “chunks.” Think of the presenter the same way you think of slides in a deck. Each one gets the full edit treatment and final polish. With Chunky, mmhmm users can break up their presentation into chunks to perfect each individual bit of information.
A presenter can switch between live and pre-recorded chunks in a presentation. So you can imagine a salesman making a pitch and switching over to his explanation of the pricing as a pre-recorded piece of his pitch, or a teacher who has a pre-recorded chunk on a particular topic can throw to that mid-class.
But mmhmm didn’t just think about the creation side, but also the consumption side. Folks in the audience can jump around between chunks and slides to catch up, or even view in a sped-up mode to consume more quickly. Presenters can see where folks in the audience are as they present or later on.
Libin sees this feature as a way to supercharge time.
“At mmhmm, we stopped doing synchronous updates with our fully distributed team,” said Libin. “We don’t have meetings anymore where people take turns updating each other because it’s not very efficient. Now the team just sends around their quick presentations, and I can watch it in double speed because people can listen faster than people can talk. But we don’t have to do it at the same time. Then, when we actually talk synchronously, it’s reserved for that live back-and-forth about the important stuff.”
mmhmm is also announcing that it has developed its own video player, allowing folks to stream their mmhmm presentations to whichever website they’d like. As per usual, mmhmm will still work with Zoom, Google Meet, etc.
The new features list also includes an updated version of Copilot. For folks who remember, Copilot allowed one person to present and another person to “drive,” or art direct, the presentation from the background. Copilot 2.0 lets two people essentially video chat side by side, in whatever environment they’d like.
Libin showed me a presentation/conversation he did with a friend where they were both framed up in Libin’s house. He clarified that this feature works best with one-on-one conversations, or, one-on-one conversations in front of a large audience, such as a fireside chat.
Alongside mmhmm Chunky, streaming and Copilot 2.0, the platform is also doing a bit of spring cleaning with regards to organization. Users will have a Presentation Library where they can save and organize their best takes, and organizations can also use “Loaf” to store all the best videos and presentations company-wide for consumption later. The team also revamped Presets to make it easier to apply a preset to a bunch of slides at once or switch between presets more easily.
A couple other notes: mmhmm is working to bring the app to both iOS and Android very soon, and launch out of beta on Windows.
Libin explained that not every single feature described here will launch today, but rather you’ll see features trickle out each week as we head into summer. He’ll be giving a keynote on the new features here at 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET.
