Is HipChat really a good thing? Constant distractions all day means I get nothing done, so I'm pretty much against any kind of constant stream of communication when you're trying to think. Call me crazy.
On to the service itself:
I can't join in on my client's conversation without creating a whole new account with a different email address. Annoying and incredibly short-sighted. I know that the people over at HipChat never work with anyone outside of their office, but unfortunately this is not the case for most people.
Honestly, I can get an IRC server up and running in the time it takes to get a HipChat account activated. It's annoying that so many people are hyping HipChat, as if it were some groundbreaking thing.
We use hipchat because previously the constant distraction was somebody walking up to your desk to ask a question. I can disable notifications and somebody can wait for me to respond via hipchat.
There are still desk-walking drive-byers, though far fewer.
The way we used it. There was a dev+qa channel and a dev+support channel with no one above tech leads in either group and it replaced Skype for a lot of work the devs did with support. Though we ultimately didn't use it beyond the trial period the key value driver for us was that a dev could step into an ongoing issue and get a of context very quickly even if they didn't have HipChat running. This means that as an IC you don't need to have the client running when you are "trying to think". That, along with the lack of management types in the communication flow meant that it was minimally distracting and mostly used as intended.
You can do pretty much the same thing with IRC, but getting HipChat set up on peoples PCs and phones is dead simple which is nice when you are dealing with remote QA and support teams.
With IRC, you need a bouncer (e.g. znc) to get the functionality of seeing history without having the client open (and technically the bouncer is just the open client).
I totally agree with new account with new account with a different email address problem. Apart from that one big issue I've is privacy. As such admins can't see private messages, however since you will be registered to HipChat with your organizational email the admins can just reset your email password followed by Hipchat and eventually see all your private messages. I've seen this happen.
On to the service itself:
I can't join in on my client's conversation without creating a whole new account with a different email address. Annoying and incredibly short-sighted. I know that the people over at HipChat never work with anyone outside of their office, but unfortunately this is not the case for most people.
Honestly, I can get an IRC server up and running in the time it takes to get a HipChat account activated. It's annoying that so many people are hyping HipChat, as if it were some groundbreaking thing.