When I launched http://throwww.com a while ago, people on HN/Twitter were telling me it's like Branch. I didn't know what Branch exactly was then, and now that I see it, I still don't get what it is. It doesn't seem at all like throwww though. Nice looking interface, anyway.
I think they're trying to solve the same problems other discussion-related services have by approaching the problems from a different perspective: discussions are private by default, and therefore the participants have greater control of signal:noise. They're trying to build from the bottom up instead of top down and hopefully that solves the problems most people associate with discussion services (e.g., comments), particularly people who abuse the the system in various ways such as trolls, griefers, and spammers.
It's a solution to a problem that nobody has. Reminds me of Google Wave, but less useful.
That might be a little too negative, my initial impression of this is that whatever small amount of utility it may actually give just isn't that interesting or different from what we already use.
I had no idea either. And then I clicked on "What do you like about Reddit?" and it said it ended in August 2012 which had me even more confused.
But after clicking around I worked it out. It was an elitist (and far less useful) version of Quora. Or was it simply a polished discussion board. Then I clicked the About Branch button and realised it was more about the Twitter integration than anything.
IMHO: Try and clarify what this is on the home page. "A new way to talk to each other." is contrived, meaningless and simply not true. It's not new, it's better.
I'm going to give them a bit of free user testing and do my best to summarize what I think they are about, now that I'm at their "Welcome to Branch!" screen:
They give you a way to publish comments for any public URL on the web. And those comments live on their site in a comment thread they call a "branch."
I wonder how close I am. Clicking the "Let's get started" button now...
Hmm, I think I was pretty close. Branches, or comment threads, can be closed. Interesting. So they added a life span to a discussion, vs keeping it open for more comments. I wonder why. To preserve the quality of the initial discussion? Hmm.
That may be true. But that's not how the services are designed.
Quora gives your full attention to an answer. It collapses the comments. It lets you downvote unpopular opinions.
Branch limits the most that anyone can say at a time (to something like 800 characters--which is enough for an explanation but not enough for a tirade). And it gives equal weight to each comment that someone makes.
