Socialtext (discontinued) vs. Yamdu

We use Social Text as a platform to air our issues with different departments. We voice our concerns and suggestions so we can help find a solution to the problems we incur on a daily basis. We need to have social text as an app so we can communicate in real time not only during work hours.

Even for a small business like mine, Yamdu really felt like a one-stop shop for everything. It's hard to find a comprehensive software for film/video productions, but Yamdu has everything we need. The only thing that really held us back was the cost, ultimately. If anything, I would love a storyboarding feature that let you set the time per shot and build out a sequence in pre-production. I used Storyboarder for this currently and it's very helpful, especially for music videos, to be able to build out a storyboard, set a music/audio track to it, then play it back in real time and see the pacing of the shoot.

• Version history - Always keeps the edited versions and one can revert back any time
• Creating and Editing an article is very easy and intutive
• Sharing the articles with peers

• Crewlists
• Callsheets
• Breakdowns

• Search needs a ton of improvements. It was very slow a year ago
• Search result quality was also not that good
• I know they have improved their UI recently but when i used it last year it did not really have any design elements which could be used to make the articles look more presentable. It was important for us as we used it for external communication as well.

• More specific financial management reports.
• Creation of some instant messaging software for the team.

We have a lot of info in Socialtext already. It would be hard to get all that info out and port it to a different system

What you see is what you get. It's easy to start working when you setup your first project. Also team members do not need many new to learn skills to work with the basic functions. Really incredible is Yamdu's help center. It is always available in the right corner. A lot of topics are covered with video links. If you need personal assistance, you can write a message within the help-box and Yamdu's crew is really fast in responding!

This is one of Yamdu's strongest points.

I frankly like Confluence better than socialtext because of the speed and the quality of search. They also have better design elements which can help make the articles pleasant to the eyes.

At the time, there really wasn't anything else like Yamdu. Especially as, in Celtx's case, at that time they weren't doing Excel/CSV exports of shot lists in the A/V format, something we required for what we were shooting. I understand that StudioBinder has increased its featureset the past few years, but Yamdu always felt like the most robust option and more familiar with the film/tv world.

• We get solutions to concerns much faster
• We promote interactions with the other depts
• We listen and have discussions

• Positive impact, centralized place with some good tools for film productions
• Negative impact, not that flexible and as expected and strict pricing policy with little flexibility