With the consumer shift toward mobile devices over the past few years, it’s somewhat surprising to see that mobile-centric word processors have remained pretty much the same. In search of a better, more intuitive experience, a pair of reputable technology experts has co-founded a new company called Quip.
The project is spearheaded by Bret Taylor, an engineer known for his work on Google Maps and his later role as CTO of Facebook, and Kevin Gibbs, another Google employee who helped develop the autocomplete search function that many of us use on a daily basis.
According to GigaOM, the San Francisco based firm wants to target their new service at the “post-social, post-mobile, and touch-centric era.” To turn this vision into reality, Taylor and Gibbs have reportedly raised approximately $15 million from primarily Benchmark Capital.
With smartphones and tablets in mind, Quip aims to integrate document composition, collaborative editing, and messaging into a single program. Like most modern applications, the service is cloud-based, and combines several of the best aspects from popular platforms such as Evernote, Google Docs and Yammer.
In reference to the admittedly slow evolution of mobile word-processing products, Taylor and Gibbs wrote:
“The features these products have accrued over thirty years have made it difficult for most of us to switch to new products, but they have also made it almost impossible for the products to truly change. When we decided to build Quip, it was based on the premise that the shift to tablets and phones is so fundamental and so all-encompassing that it dwarfs the sum of all of these features in importance.”
They highlight four main components that make Quip stand out against the competition: collaboration, mobility, interactivity and simplicity. Although all of these characteristics are important, it’s the collaboration features that truly make Quip special. Whenever a friend or colleague makes an edit to one of your documents, you conveniently receive a push notification. For example, if your spouse wants to make a quick addition to the grocery list while you’re shopping, you will receive the update in real-time. You can then, just as easily, cross off the retrieved items from the virtual list.
Currently, Quip is being offered free-of-charge for personal use, while businesses will be asked to pay a subscription fee. To learn more about the application, be sure to check out the official Quip webpage.
