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Interesting, why do you use hipchat AND Skype AND Hangouts? Those all seem to overlap quite a bit. Our team meets and chats in Skype, I didn't see the need for hipchat while we're all using Skype.

Totally agree with the morning meetings though, plus we have one longer scheduled weekly.

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HipChat provides a couple things that I don't think you can get from Skype:

1. Searchable backlog for all discussions.

2. API for connecting bots (which can be used for C&C).

3. Web-based and native clients.

4. Public and private rooms chat rooms.

HipChat is more like IRC than like IM, which, for distributed teams, is often very useful.

We too use Hipchat, Skype and Hangouts. All for different things and since some tools offer features which others don't:

- Hipchat: Internal discussions and exchange, syntax highlighting, easy room and pwemission management, updates from other services (github, new relic etc). Furthermore to push notifications to email, mobile device and/or via text.

- Skype: easy 1on1 communication with externals (sometimes replaces the regular phone), internal LAN file transfer

- Google Hangouts: group video conferences (our company uses Google Apps so everyone has it and can access it from anywhere through a browser)

I probably missed some features and usecases, but I think I got the most important ones :)

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