Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft(theverge.com)
theverge.com
Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft
http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/3/13504932/slack-microsoft-teams-letter-wtf
300 comments
Our entire company switched to Slack within basically a day. While that's a big selling point for Slack's ease of use, it also means it'd be easy to switch away to a competitor within a day too.
Team communication tools don't suffer the same network-effect downsides to switching that other social apps do. The decision to switch can be made by one person. Everybody else is responding to a mandate.
While the decision can be made by one person, I'm not sure this is true. There is a big switching cost for most team tools.
* There's going to be a lot of discussion and consensus building. Most of the team is going to have an opinion on the subject.
* Setting up new accounts for team members, teaching team members how to use the new tool, and change management all take time.
* Most teams have integrations within their chat apps, these will have to be switched or re-implemented to use new APIs.
I think it's fair to say that most team tools have good moats. The longer the team has used a tool the stronger the moat becomes.
* There's going to be a lot of discussion and consensus building. Most of the team is going to have an opinion on the subject.
* Setting up new accounts for team members, teaching team members how to use the new tool, and change management all take time.
* Most teams have integrations within their chat apps, these will have to be switched or re-implemented to use new APIs.
I think it's fair to say that most team tools have good moats. The longer the team has used a tool the stronger the moat becomes.
My team has built numerous chatops bots and automation around Slack, mostly because of their great API. In a way, we're building our own lock-in, as any replacement would have to provide the same level of API access, from in-channel announcements to channel scraping for parsing by other systems. And it would require retooling the bots too.
Respectfully, that sounds like an engineering failure on your part. There are enough similarities in the APIs among different chat systems that the business logic can be easily decoupled from the event loop; had you abstracted the interface, your system would be more easily portable to other providers.
Except... other than Slack, nobody has a sane API just yet (I work at sameroom.io).
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What about using something like the Microsoft Bot Framework(1)?
I am not too familiar with it but its open source and it looks like it works with Skype, Slack, Facebook Messenger, Kik, Office 365, etc.
(1) https://dev.botframework.com/
I am not too familiar with it but its open source and it looks like it works with Skype, Slack, Facebook Messenger, Kik, Office 365, etc.
(1) https://dev.botframework.com/
Unless you use their API. Or you invited external users. Or you use one of the other features that lock you in. In fact, I think Slack wrote the letter because they feel so confident that they've locked in their current customers. Switching to Slack is easy. Switching from Slack is not.
It's not necessarily true--Mattermost has a Slack-compatible API, and Sameroom can be used to mirror channels in both systems during the transition.
Tangentially related. I'm using rocket chat - it's open source (MIT) alternative to slack.
And i think it would be easier/safe for companies to adopt self hosted solution or use already trusted company like Microsoft.
Slack had great UX - but one cannot compete only with that because it could be copied. Maybe Slack have some comparative advantage that could not be copied.
And i think it would be easier/safe for companies to adopt self hosted solution or use already trusted company like Microsoft.
Slack had great UX - but one cannot compete only with that because it could be copied. Maybe Slack have some comparative advantage that could not be copied.
Slack copied Yammer and HipChat... and now it's angry that Microsoft stole some of its unique features - such a hypocrisy!
> "All this is harder than it looks," Slack warns. And then the company straps on its wax wings and flies into the sun.
That was a very nice turn of phrase.
That was a very nice turn of phrase.
I dunno, I just want to stop hearing about it here on HN, this single letter has been posted a dozen times in the past day:
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dear%20microsoft&sort=byPopula...
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dear%20microsoft&sort=byPopula...
Hey, if it takes a little away from the barrage of boring, half-reasoned opinions about the MacBook announcement, I'll take it.
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=apple&sort=byPopularity&prefix...
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=apple&sort=byPopularity&prefix...
It's funny that Slack thinks they've perfectly balanced a unique and special snowflake on the tip of a unicorn's horn when what they've really done is added a pretty UI to IRC. It's a chat room. With channels. So, sorry to tell you guys, but it's not innovative, it's lucky. We had chat rooms back in 1995. Yes, that scrappy startup Microsoft will not have too much trouble implementing a chat room and they don't need luck to get users. How were the people at Slack not thinking "Holy shit, people are paying for this!" the entire time like it was a dream. I'm sure Slack will continue with much success now that they have their user base, so good for them, but to delude themselves into thinking no one can do it as good as they do is a bit naive.
I think you're under estimating the amount of time and effort that goes into to making an ergonomic and approachable user interface, that both your technical teams and nontechnical teams enjoy using.
Sure someone can replicate it, but I think you're underestimating the value of it. Like IRC could have the best features in the world but for the users who do not find it approachable it may as well not exist.
Sure someone can replicate it, but I think you're underestimating the value of it. Like IRC could have the best features in the world but for the users who do not find it approachable it may as well not exist.
but it's not innovative, it's lucky.
Or it is "time", or marketing, or just because it is mobile first.
You could say the same about what's app, Instagram and others. Maybe it is not just about the big picture. Maybe they are successful because of small things like knowing they will always work when you need.
Or it is "time", or marketing, or just because it is mobile first.
You could say the same about what's app, Instagram and others. Maybe it is not just about the big picture. Maybe they are successful because of small things like knowing they will always work when you need.
> I'm sure Slack will continue with much success now that they have their user base
If they don't add something that is innovative I'm not so sure. I see companies and people who raved about it 10 months dropping it just as fast all around me.
If they don't add something that is innovative I'm not so sure. I see companies and people who raved about it 10 months dropping it just as fast all around me.
I agree. In my previous startup, we've been jumping from one platform to an other without too much trouble. Because the people using these products are 'teams', it takes only 1 in the group to suggest everyone in the team to try out a new shiny platform and before you know it... you're deep in conversations in this new platform and see no reason to get back to the old one.
We have serious security concerns about Slack but insufficient time and motivation to explore alternatives.
We've delayed the inevitable by coming up with a file sharing and secrets policy for what can and cannot go over Slack.
We've delayed the inevitable by coming up with a file sharing and secrets policy for what can and cannot go over Slack.
Agreed, they may have done it better than most or marketed their product better but nothing compelling here.
> Slack could have done what most companies do when a competitor rips them off, and said nothing.
Someone competing in your space is NOT ripping you off.
> Slack could have done what most companies do when a competitor rips them off, and said nothing.
Someone competing in your space is NOT ripping you off.
But does copying the UI is ripping someone off?
The UI is pretty different than slack. And how exactly do you think a chat app to have a radically different UI. Did slack rip off mIRC?
We have IRC at work. Some people suggested switching to an open-source slack clone - with IRC integration! But... why? IRC works fine. It'd just be one more thing to maintain.
(My firm is largely made up of old school unix hackers. I can see the appeal of something with a better UI and better integration than IRC for some, but when half the company are the type to run CLI IRC clients, it seems unnecessary.)
(My firm is largely made up of old school unix hackers. I can see the appeal of something with a better UI and better integration than IRC for some, but when half the company are the type to run CLI IRC clients, it seems unnecessary.)
>I'm sure Slack will continue with much success now that they have their user base, so good for them, but to delude themselves into thinking no one can do it as good as they do is a bit naive.
The problem is, Slack has a user base consisting mainly of people willing to switch to the "next big thing" pretty quickly. That's how they got to Slack, but there's nothing preventing those people from leaving to move onto something new. Most slower to react companies are still using Lync, and probably won't ever switch to Slack.
The reason I use Slack is because it is better than any of the alternatives, but I wouldn't hesitate to switch to something better if it comes around.
The problem is, Slack has a user base consisting mainly of people willing to switch to the "next big thing" pretty quickly. That's how they got to Slack, but there's nothing preventing those people from leaving to move onto something new. Most slower to react companies are still using Lync, and probably won't ever switch to Slack.
The reason I use Slack is because it is better than any of the alternatives, but I wouldn't hesitate to switch to something better if it comes around.
It's also crazy easy to dump your Slack history out of Slack, as well as use their Discovery API, to have a competing service interrogate your team configuration and replicate it in a new service. Maybe not one click import, but it wouldn't be painful to move.
Perhaps an open source utility will be written that can package all of the content and metadata required for your chat service up as a JSON bundle for import elsewhere.
https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/201658943-Export-yo...
https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/204897248-Guide-to-...
Perhaps an open source utility will be written that can package all of the content and metadata required for your chat service up as a JSON bundle for import elsewhere.
https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/201658943-Export-yo...
https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/204897248-Guide-to-...
IIRC that's an option when spinning up a Mattermost server.
> The problem is, Slack has a user base consisting mainly of people willing to switch to the "next big thing" pretty quickly.
I'm not so sure. I got us using Slack at work, and that was after about 12 months of hearing ads for it. It is IRC plus a slick UI and integrated bots, but putting all that together with a web UI and a dedicated client and phone apps makes it multiple times better than regular IRC for the common person.
I don't use twitter. I only started actually using my Facebook account I've had for many years last week, after finally deciding it's curring me off from people to not use it. I've never used Instagram or Snapchat or any of those other newer things. I'm not what you would call "people willing to switch to the next big thing". Quite the opposite in fact. At this point, the new users of slack are hearing about it from other people that are themselves 3-4 people removed from those early adopters.
That said, Slack isn't a perfect snowflake. It's a simple idea executed well. The reason I was so for it once I finally bothered to check it out is because my prior experience with IRC let me immediately see the value they had created by combining IRC and all the extras for IRC together in a nice package, and made it accessible to less technical people.
> The reason I use Slack is because it is better than any of the alternatives, but I wouldn't hesitate to switch to something better if it comes around.
Same here on why I use it, but I would hesitate switching (given most my usage is work related). If Google had a good competitor, we would probably switch, since it was our solution to crappy support for what we need in Hangouts, as all our other stuff is in Google Apps. I imagine a lot of people/companies might feel the same way with MS if their stack is dominated by MS products. For those that already have a fairly heterogeneous environment, there's probably less reason to switch to the major names, but I imagine those groups are already fairly on board with trying new tools to find what works best, so have little allegiance.
Edit: s/seeing ads/hearing ads/. I think a really good case could be made that Slack was genius to market on podcasts as much as they did, and on the ones they did, and that might have been instrumental to their growth.
I'm not so sure. I got us using Slack at work, and that was after about 12 months of hearing ads for it. It is IRC plus a slick UI and integrated bots, but putting all that together with a web UI and a dedicated client and phone apps makes it multiple times better than regular IRC for the common person.
I don't use twitter. I only started actually using my Facebook account I've had for many years last week, after finally deciding it's curring me off from people to not use it. I've never used Instagram or Snapchat or any of those other newer things. I'm not what you would call "people willing to switch to the next big thing". Quite the opposite in fact. At this point, the new users of slack are hearing about it from other people that are themselves 3-4 people removed from those early adopters.
That said, Slack isn't a perfect snowflake. It's a simple idea executed well. The reason I was so for it once I finally bothered to check it out is because my prior experience with IRC let me immediately see the value they had created by combining IRC and all the extras for IRC together in a nice package, and made it accessible to less technical people.
> The reason I use Slack is because it is better than any of the alternatives, but I wouldn't hesitate to switch to something better if it comes around.
Same here on why I use it, but I would hesitate switching (given most my usage is work related). If Google had a good competitor, we would probably switch, since it was our solution to crappy support for what we need in Hangouts, as all our other stuff is in Google Apps. I imagine a lot of people/companies might feel the same way with MS if their stack is dominated by MS products. For those that already have a fairly heterogeneous environment, there's probably less reason to switch to the major names, but I imagine those groups are already fairly on board with trying new tools to find what works best, so have little allegiance.
Edit: s/seeing ads/hearing ads/. I think a really good case could be made that Slack was genius to market on podcasts as much as they did, and on the ones they did, and that might have been instrumental to their growth.
Have you ever looked at Discord? Slack isn't the only choice if you want a nice UI that works on all of your devices. https://discordapp.com/
Discord is a bad alternative to Slack for anything you care about. It often fails to deliver messages for multiple minutes at a time and will deliver messages out of order or only sparsely deliver some of your messages.
It's a nice option for small communities and people who need voice chat, though.
It's a nice option for small communities and people who need voice chat, though.
No, but from looking at it now that's likely because they've targeted themselves towards more informal (game) voice chat. It actually looks like it could be a good contender in this space if they decided to not only compare themselves to voice chat systems[1] (Skype, Ventrilo, Teamspeak), and didn't specifically market to gamers. That is, assuming the service is good, since I haven't tried it.
1: https://discordapp.com/features
1: https://discordapp.com/features
My gaming group switched from Slack to Discord. Not having history is the only negative, otherwise it's basically an upgrade for our usage. It uses the same codecs as mumble and lets you have all your shit in one place, so you can see who's online playing what, join voice channels with them and have chat. You can also join an unlimited number of communities which are essentially just tabs all in the same experience. It's zero effort to spin up a new group for a new game or group of friends, and you can just paste a link that gets people talking with no registration needed at first. Can't say enough good things about discord!
It works very well in the context of games. Skype can can awkward for gaming and Vent/Teamspeak require someone to pay for a dedicated server (not an issue for the HN crowd, but for your typical gamer it is). Discord is free, has better audio quality than other services (in my opinion), in-game overlays, the ability to connect to multiple servers/groups at once...it's pretty slick. I think they would do well to continue focusing on the gamer market.
I think Discord is on a path to be a suitable replacement for IRC, Slack, and Skype.
They still need some polishing, but once they fix some bugs and add good support for history and searching, I think it'll be fantastic.
They still need some polishing, but once they fix some bugs and add good support for history and searching, I think it'll be fantastic.
IMO, the main worrying thing is that Discord is propped up entirely by VC money right now, and there's absolutely no telling how the hell they're going to monetize it. Slack at least has the obvious "pay us money" model, so they can survive on that even with competitors. IRC (decentralized) and Skype (Microsoft, unlimited money) could practically survive nuclear apocalypse, by comparison.
They promise the core features will remain free, but I don't trust that when investors come knocking for a return, and I expect unless they find a very suitable model, it will slowly start to get worse at some point. I seriously doubt their core audience (people playing games) is going to throw money at them for things, like, skins, or something. Maybe they plan on more "B2B" style profitability where they do deep integration with partners like Youtube, Twitch etc behind the scenes?
FWIW: I say this as someone who's extremely happy with Discord since I switched me and my friends over to it for playing games, and as someone who thinks they really do have a solid product. And as someone who'd hate to see it go into the shitter just because of the above. It's wonderfully stable for its youth, and it's light years ahead of Skype, Vent, Mumble in terms of "Just Works", and has every feature we've needed, and more (the moderation/ACL, and external service features keep getting better, for example).
Maybe my only complaint with Discord is that, because it's so feature rich, it's actually a bit confusing to initially wrap your head around, in terms of UI/UX. I had to guide a few of my more non-technical friends through the UI when they first used it. Things like, non-obvious buttons and stuff like that.
They promise the core features will remain free, but I don't trust that when investors come knocking for a return, and I expect unless they find a very suitable model, it will slowly start to get worse at some point. I seriously doubt their core audience (people playing games) is going to throw money at them for things, like, skins, or something. Maybe they plan on more "B2B" style profitability where they do deep integration with partners like Youtube, Twitch etc behind the scenes?
FWIW: I say this as someone who's extremely happy with Discord since I switched me and my friends over to it for playing games, and as someone who thinks they really do have a solid product. And as someone who'd hate to see it go into the shitter just because of the above. It's wonderfully stable for its youth, and it's light years ahead of Skype, Vent, Mumble in terms of "Just Works", and has every feature we've needed, and more (the moderation/ACL, and external service features keep getting better, for example).
Maybe my only complaint with Discord is that, because it's so feature rich, it's actually a bit confusing to initially wrap your head around, in terms of UI/UX. I had to guide a few of my more non-technical friends through the UI when they first used it. Things like, non-obvious buttons and stuff like that.
Valid point.
I personally like the UI/UX, except some of the channel management features. It took me some time to figure out how to set ranks and give permissions.
I personally like the UI/UX, except some of the channel management features. It took me some time to figure out how to set ranks and give permissions.
What bugs ail you friend? Looking to see where and if they are on our bug tracker.
I was actually just parroting claims of message arrival time/sync inconsistencies in this thread. I don't use the app too much, in part because nearly everyone I know uses Skype instead of Discord, but I've never personally experienced a bug.
My personal biggest gripe is the lack of easy searching. I rely on it a lot, and Skype usually does an okay job at it (even though it can often be slow and tends to lag the UI).
My personal biggest gripe is the lack of easy searching. I rely on it a lot, and Skype usually does an okay job at it (even though it can often be slow and tends to lag the UI).
Discords the voice chat works great and is super easy.. But without search there's just no way it could replace Slack for us.
I'm on 4 or 5 different slack teams. There are network effects in slack, even if the cost of moving your company is minor, nobody is going to switch to another product unless it's an order of magnitude better.
People who are totally active directory and exchange are going to use Teams. Nobody else is.
People who are totally active directory and exchange are going to use Teams. Nobody else is.
An existing problem would be all the integration/bots builts into slack, even if they exist for the alternative, that kind of change is not trivial.
That is one of the reason we should encourage people to use a "generic" bot, not one shot integrations.
Disclaimer: I am one of the creator of Errbot that was designed for this specific purpose (be chat system independent)
Disclaimer: I am one of the creator of Errbot that was designed for this specific purpose (be chat system independent)
Slack just needs to deliver an on-prem version in the next 6 months.
I'm happy they have a reason to bother now.
I'm happy they have a reason to bother now.
Time to update the old canard. "If you could have invented Slack... you would have invented Slack." Execution is everything.
> Execution is everything.
Execution is a lot, but so is timing. Execution can be controlled, timing is mostly luck.
Execution is a lot, but so is timing. Execution can be controlled, timing is mostly luck.
From a creative sector perspective, this claim holds a lot of merit as well. A correlative phrase I've heard is "Success is preparation meeting luck" because the sands of time are littered with well executed failures. In many fields!
[deleted]
Execution is everything? Then Microsoft is also copying their execution. What's wrong with that? Why going overboard and trying to troll Microsoft?
You can't copy execution. In the trenches every day decisions are made. The quality of the product that comes out deeply reflects the team that made it. You can clone an implementation relatively easily, and Microsoft has a ton of smart teams and has really upped its game recently, but Microsoft's next feature will not be the same as Slack's next feature, the cultures are just too different.
Can't copy in one day for sure, but boy you sure can. Ask zynga how they did it. Or just look at Samsung phones with latest Android. Sure there are few products like Adobe suite & stackoverflow etc which have stood the test of time, but slack is a relatively newcomer who is yet to crack into the big enterprises.
Which pairs up with the age old assumption that everyone is trying to create slack and couldn't have possibly been doing something more important with their lives than bringing IRC to the masses.
Yea, but at the same time I don't want to spend my life evangelizing chat software as revolutionizing how business is done. The business reminds me more of a lifestyle magazine than anything.
[deleted]
They did far more than "added a pretty UI". I used IRC for years, and getting it to do the things I use Slack for (mobile interface, file transfers, a half dozen API integrations, near instant search, etc etc) was either painful or impossible.
Also, if all it took was a pretty UI, companies like Hipchat would have been the winner years ago. I mean, Slack has a better UI in my opinion than Hipchat, but it's an example of taking the basics of IRC and slapping an interface of it.
Besides that though, I agree this letter was pretty stupid.
Also, if all it took was a pretty UI, companies like Hipchat would have been the winner years ago. I mean, Slack has a better UI in my opinion than Hipchat, but it's an example of taking the basics of IRC and slapping an interface of it.
Besides that though, I agree this letter was pretty stupid.
I'm really weirded out that people can't see the value Slack added. Having your messages stored while you are offline is hugely valuable. If I have been out of signal range on a train, I want to be able to look at history on my phone once I'm back in range of a cell tower.
Beyond that, a well made UI for web, desktop and phone that is consistent is valuable. 'Adding a pretty UI' isn't a zero-effort or skill thing.
No, Slack isn't a world away from IRC or email - but it's enough better that people want to use it, that's good. I'm not sure where all the hate comes from.
Beyond that, a well made UI for web, desktop and phone that is consistent is valuable. 'Adding a pretty UI' isn't a zero-effort or skill thing.
No, Slack isn't a world away from IRC or email - but it's enough better that people want to use it, that's good. I'm not sure where all the hate comes from.
Hate? Everyone i know loves slack. I love slack. I've used it for my last two companies for (~many) years now. That doesn't make it innovative though, imo.
I can't think of a single feature they've done that is innovative. Attaching a file to a message?. Searching history? These aren't new or special in any way shape or form.
What slack did far more than UI, was UX. Top to bottom, it's a very nice UX. It's why i love Slack.
There's no hate coming from me - i'm just a realist. Slack didn't do anything amazing. It just did things right. Which is unfortunate for all of us users, as it took so many years to do things right. Unfortunately for slack though, they showed what is a good UX.. how hard do you think it is to copy that UX? Not easy, sure, but the template is there. Spend some time copying Slack, and i think you can manage to make Slack.Clone.
I can't think of a single feature they've done that is innovative. Attaching a file to a message?. Searching history? These aren't new or special in any way shape or form.
What slack did far more than UI, was UX. Top to bottom, it's a very nice UX. It's why i love Slack.
There's no hate coming from me - i'm just a realist. Slack didn't do anything amazing. It just did things right. Which is unfortunate for all of us users, as it took so many years to do things right. Unfortunately for slack though, they showed what is a good UX.. how hard do you think it is to copy that UX? Not easy, sure, but the template is there. Spend some time copying Slack, and i think you can manage to make Slack.Clone.
It sounds a lot like all the people that bash StackOverflow - "It's just posts and a voting system, I could write that in a week!", ignoring all the complexity and design behind it, operating at scale and cultivating the environment.
If people need something to be 'amazing' not to put it down, and 'amazing' doesn't include doing the right things to be highly successful...
If no one else did it, was it really so obvious?
If people need something to be 'amazing' not to put it down, and 'amazing' doesn't include doing the right things to be highly successful...
If no one else did it, was it really so obvious?
Microsoft has a well regarded developer network and Q&A system regarding Microsoft technologies, at least in my (limited to primarily Azure) experience.
Similarly, Microsoft has already operated a widely used integrated chat, profile, and community system at scale. Given their recent pushes, it wouldn't be entirely surprising for them to bring back similar platforms for business users integrated with LinkedIn.
That would eat a lot of Slack's potential big clients, because MS has a history of enterprise grade support on products like that, and Slack has scale issues for large orgs.
Similarly, Microsoft has already operated a widely used integrated chat, profile, and community system at scale. Given their recent pushes, it wouldn't be entirely surprising for them to bring back similar platforms for business users integrated with LinkedIn.
That would eat a lot of Slack's potential big clients, because MS has a history of enterprise grade support on products like that, and Slack has scale issues for large orgs.
Does Slack even allow on-premise installs yet? That instantly disqualified them from the last 3 jobs I've had. (All of which had data protection issues that prevented them from using off-premises IM systems, mostly HIPAA regulations.) Microsoft's got that market already sewn-up, right out of the gate.
As far as I'm aware Slack does not offer on-premise installs. (On-premise in this case could mean running in my own account at a cloud service provider) It's unfortunate because I'd love to adopt them as well at my current company, but it will be very difficult to achieve if the only option is to become yet another tenant of some large multi-tenant infrastructure.
Microsoft will quickly take over this market if they offer an easy-to-manage on-prem solution that's integrated with the company directory, as it seems they've done. Plenty of firms already have Exchange and ActiveDirectory and Skype for Business.
Microsoft will quickly take over this market if they offer an easy-to-manage on-prem solution that's integrated with the company directory, as it seems they've done. Plenty of firms already have Exchange and ActiveDirectory and Skype for Business.
I think this is one reason teams use hipchat, because it does provide this.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Microsoft Team doesn't currently have a self-hosted option. I hope it's in the pipeline because my company can't use an offsite IM service. It would be nice if Microsoft added support and then Slack followed. Competition is good!
Mattermost is an open source, self-hosted Slack-alternative: https://www.mattermost.org/what-slack-might-learn-from-its-o...
There is also Matrix (matrix.org), an open standard for decentralized communications. Our goal is to let all apps talk to each other - including Slack, Mattermost, and Microsoft Teams!
Check it out using any Matrix-enabled app: https://matrix.to/#/#matrix:matrix.org
Check it out using any Matrix-enabled app: https://matrix.to/#/#matrix:matrix.org
Skype can be self hosted.
For enterprise companies that already use a lot of MS services, and which have tight security policies on what software can be used/licensed/installed, an MS Slack clone could be a wonderful thing for employees.
Having worked for a company with security concerns and tightly coupled to Microsoft, Lynx fucking sucks and a MS Slack alternative would have made my short time there much more bearable.
I think you are interpreting the rhetoric as "Slack is not innovative, therefore it is not praiseworthy."
The claim is something else entirely: "Slack is not innovative, therefore it is not immune to competition."
There isn't any value judgment with the second claim. "didn't do anything amazing" is a statement of fact, not a put down. It's not somehow morally bad to do nothing amazing! If anything, it's morally good. There's no sense wasting time building amazing technological breakthroughs when the problem space doesn't need it, and just needs someone to execute well on boring problems. (Slack is particularly good at recognizing this and just getting the job done; see also their tech stack running on PHP.)
The claim is something else entirely: "Slack is not innovative, therefore it is not immune to competition."
There isn't any value judgment with the second claim. "didn't do anything amazing" is a statement of fact, not a put down. It's not somehow morally bad to do nothing amazing! If anything, it's morally good. There's no sense wasting time building amazing technological breakthroughs when the problem space doesn't need it, and just needs someone to execute well on boring problems. (Slack is particularly good at recognizing this and just getting the job done; see also their tech stack running on PHP.)
Stack overflow benefits from tremendous network effects while Slack does not.
Slack has some limited network effects with guest access, but they should really make inter-company collaboration easier.
The lock-in due to loss of history is a bigger reason to stick with slack though once you have it.
The lock-in due to loss of history is a bigger reason to stick with slack though once you have it.
Sorry, but you're wrong about this. This is my opinion on the matter and I understand that not everyone will agree with me.
People bash StackOverflow for their draconian moderation, not because it would be technically trivial to implement (it wouldn't, nothing at scale is).
I've seen both. The "draconian moderation" is also the reason for their success.
That's highly debatable. I use it despite the moderation. Half the questions I get answers for are "closed, off topic".
If it wasn't for the moderation, it'd be a swamp of terrible just like the forums of old.
Many people feel otherwise. Anyway it's way off topic to the op.
Stack overflow was hugely popular before their draconian moderation. And I use it less because of it. The most valuable questions I have as a developer are things like "what are they trade offs between using system.js or webpack". "How should I use flux Or redux to get the most benefit?" Or "how does the js build ecosystem work". These are much more valuable in my opinion then "I got error 4602 how do I solve it?".
>What slack did far more than UI, was UX. Top to bottom, it's a very nice UX. It's why i love Slack.
I don't think they even do that well, it's a complete nightmare finding anything on slack beyond the last 24 hours.
What Slack did well was branding and marketing.
I don't think they even do that well, it's a complete nightmare finding anything on slack beyond the last 24 hours.
What Slack did well was branding and marketing.
I personally prefer Flowdock's UI, but they're slipping behind.
Marketing yeah. They weren't the first to do the obvious "make IRC in the cloud with persistent storage and notifications/app/etc." I had been waiting for, just the first I heard of.
Do you have any other issues, just curious or is their search algorithm enough to make the Slack platform a net bad UX?
Do you have any other issues, just curious or is their search algorithm enough to make the Slack platform a net bad UX?
I haven't met a single person (unless they were ~really~ non technical) that enjoyed using slack.
It never works the way I expect it to work, and very simple things that you can do within IRC takes multiple steps in Slack.
It never works the way I expect it to work, and very simple things that you can do within IRC takes multiple steps in Slack.
I enjoy using Slack. There were a lot of nuances that together adds up into substantial improvements over Hipchat or IRC.
I am also a remote software engineer who have been working on distributed teams for the past 8 years. I've tried a bunch of different things to collaborate remotely, including IRC. Your mileage may vary.
I am also a remote software engineer who have been working on distributed teams for the past 8 years. I've tried a bunch of different things to collaborate remotely, including IRC. Your mileage may vary.
What downsides did you find to using IRC?
Either way each choice is just a tool and if it works for you - thanks great!
Either way each choice is just a tool and if it works for you - thanks great!
Wasn't a downside to IRC so much as there are UI/UX stuff in Slack that helps a lot. These are small things that seems obvious now, but they help with communication.
I've been working on applying the theory of Kanban starting from first principle: "Make work visible." Visibility helps develop trust. Slacks helps with signaling a lot, and there are obviously a lot of thought put into the design.
Some examples:
1. URL for every message. I can paste that URL into Github PRs or Jira to reference a conversation where people talk through something.
2. Cross-device notifications and fallbacks, and other controls such as Do Not Disturb, etc. This allows me to control heads-down coding vs. when people needs help.
3. Notification integration helps. I know there are IRC bots that can do that, but how well you can just click through things depends upon the IRC client you choose. Being able to see a log of say, Github and Jira (usually in a separate channel) helps stay in the loop. The same with when adding CI/CD notifications.
4. Starring messages helps me manage time. I don't read everything people send over the chat. I certainly do NOT try replacing person-to-person contact with Slack (or IRC or HipChat). Sometimes I'll star something I want to read later (which may or may not happen).
5. URLs posted often have previews, which also helps with managing whether I go read it or not.
I'm sure these things can be done with IRC, and Hipchat probably copied over some of these ideas. Mattermost has certainly cloned the important stuff. By no means am I saying any of this seem earth-shattering innovative, but it is clear to me that Slack was designed around remote working, and it works well.
To keep things in perspective too: before Gmail, I used to run my own web server and used terminal-based apps for that. I don't do that anymore because it was easier to just dump things in Gmail and then search for things I need. I'm still keeping my tmux+emacs setup though -- maybe I'm missing out with web-based development.
So yeah, Slack is a great tool, and it works well with what I do. If you don't use it with discipline, or you have not developed much of a philosophy on how this all works together, it's not going to work well. You won't have a philosophical framework in which to curate or vet what you want in your life or attention-space.
I've been working on applying the theory of Kanban starting from first principle: "Make work visible." Visibility helps develop trust. Slacks helps with signaling a lot, and there are obviously a lot of thought put into the design.
Some examples:
1. URL for every message. I can paste that URL into Github PRs or Jira to reference a conversation where people talk through something.
2. Cross-device notifications and fallbacks, and other controls such as Do Not Disturb, etc. This allows me to control heads-down coding vs. when people needs help.
3. Notification integration helps. I know there are IRC bots that can do that, but how well you can just click through things depends upon the IRC client you choose. Being able to see a log of say, Github and Jira (usually in a separate channel) helps stay in the loop. The same with when adding CI/CD notifications.
4. Starring messages helps me manage time. I don't read everything people send over the chat. I certainly do NOT try replacing person-to-person contact with Slack (or IRC or HipChat). Sometimes I'll star something I want to read later (which may or may not happen).
5. URLs posted often have previews, which also helps with managing whether I go read it or not.
I'm sure these things can be done with IRC, and Hipchat probably copied over some of these ideas. Mattermost has certainly cloned the important stuff. By no means am I saying any of this seem earth-shattering innovative, but it is clear to me that Slack was designed around remote working, and it works well.
To keep things in perspective too: before Gmail, I used to run my own web server and used terminal-based apps for that. I don't do that anymore because it was easier to just dump things in Gmail and then search for things I need. I'm still keeping my tmux+emacs setup though -- maybe I'm missing out with web-based development.
So yeah, Slack is a great tool, and it works well with what I do. If you don't use it with discipline, or you have not developed much of a philosophy on how this all works together, it's not going to work well. You won't have a philosophical framework in which to curate or vet what you want in your life or attention-space.
i enjoy the built in gifs and emojis but thats about it
When I used it at a previous job emojis/gifs were quite fun, but after awhile I stopped using them.
I feel like they get in the way more than anything - and other platforms can still implement those just as easily.
I feel like they get in the way more than anything - and other platforms can still implement those just as easily.
i agree, the search and history are its achilles' heel right now. i still cut and paste important stuff out of slack into a big notes text file because i know it will be a shitty experience finding it later.
You know you can "star" stuff in slack, right?
so what? i want to search based on keyword, not know ahead-of-time what i'm going to find important in 6 months.
Shameless plug here, but you could give us a try: https://pogo.ai , we aim to solve that problem (and more :) )
> I can't think of a single feature they've done that is innovative.
This reminds me a lot of HN dismissing Dropbox on the original show HN or something:
"We have git, rsync, FTP. We can hack something like this together in an afternoon."
Except that was before Dropbox went ahead to become a huge success.
This time we are saying this after Slack has already established itself. :-]
This reminds me a lot of HN dismissing Dropbox on the original show HN or something:
"We have git, rsync, FTP. We can hack something like this together in an afternoon."
Except that was before Dropbox went ahead to become a huge success.
This time we are saying this after Slack has already established itself. :-]
Both Slack and Dropbox are simple ideas, executed extremely well. I see that for both of them the challenge is there's quite many customers who don't demand the best execution, but can settle for not-so-good-but-a-bit-cheaper alternative.
Both companies can probably make well enough money to survive and achieve growth, but maybe not such an exponential growth the investors where expecting.
Both companies can probably make well enough money to survive and achieve growth, but maybe not such an exponential growth the investors where expecting.
So what? you don't have to innovate to be a success, that's where a lot of HNers get stuck imo.
Sure, i'm not calling Slack amazing - but i very clearly said i use slack, love it, pay for it and recommend it. I used Dropbox too.
I don't think anyone here is claiming Slack isn't a massive success. Nor that the product is any less great because it's not innovative. A comment like:
> This time we are saying this after Slack has already established itself. :-]
seems to suggest "we" are somehow wrong.. but i'm not sure where. Is my above statement somehow wrong? Or are you simply linking success and innovation where as i am not?
Sure, i'm not calling Slack amazing - but i very clearly said i use slack, love it, pay for it and recommend it. I used Dropbox too.
I don't think anyone here is claiming Slack isn't a massive success. Nor that the product is any less great because it's not innovative. A comment like:
> This time we are saying this after Slack has already established itself. :-]
seems to suggest "we" are somehow wrong.. but i'm not sure where. Is my above statement somehow wrong? Or are you simply linking success and innovation where as i am not?
>> This time we are saying this after Slack has already established itself. :-]
> seems to suggest "we" are somehow wrong.. but i'm not sure where.
Thanks, it was just an attempt to not talk down to anyone even if I disagree.
> seems to suggest "we" are somehow wrong.. but i'm not sure where.
Thanks, it was just an attempt to not talk down to anyone even if I disagree.
I agreed earlier today.
Rethinking it I think they might have been really innovative, but more in sales, marketing etc than in pure technical terms.
Rethinking it I think they might have been really innovative, but more in sales, marketing etc than in pure technical terms.
The general response in the thread was hoping that Slack would get gutted and dismissing it as trivial. Not being 'innovative' isn't a sin. Thinking there is nothing to learn from slack sounds like a mistaking to me.
But MS already operated a widely used webchat, profile, and community network, before social networks were a thing. As usual, MS did a meh implementation ahead of the market, got scooped by a bunch of slick implementations, and will come back a few years later with a relatively solid enterprise offering.
MS is going to bundle LinkedIn with a Slack-clone tied to their CMS and AI chat systems, and provide an easy-to-scale-in-private-cloud platform to enterprise. Part of their Azure smart services.
That's all people mean: Slack did a pretty good job, but it's very similar to stuff MS has done before, and there's not really a secret sauce trench. So MS will probably be able to win a lot of the enterprise market.
MS is going to bundle LinkedIn with a Slack-clone tied to their CMS and AI chat systems, and provide an easy-to-scale-in-private-cloud platform to enterprise. Part of their Azure smart services.
That's all people mean: Slack did a pretty good job, but it's very similar to stuff MS has done before, and there's not really a secret sauce trench. So MS will probably be able to win a lot of the enterprise market.
Well, isn't what you're describing the Teams software that prompted Slack's letter?
Only tied to Office365, not Azure and LinkedIn.
https://products.office.com/en-US/microsoft-teams/group-chat...
Only tied to Office365, not Azure and LinkedIn.
https://products.office.com/en-US/microsoft-teams/group-chat...
This was my feeling as well.
I have the feeling doing Dropbox right is a lot more difficult than doing Slack right. I still use Dropbox because somehow Drive and iCloud still don't work quite as nicely as Dropbox does. But I might be wrong; I've never built chat or file-sync apps.
It's not about what can be done, it's about prior art.
I've used xmpp chats with a couple of clients since well before slack and I'd struggle to think of a feature in slack that I hadn't used before.
I've used xmpp chats with a couple of clients since well before slack and I'd struggle to think of a feature in slack that I hadn't used before.
We're actually investigating switching over to an XMPP server and completely ditching slack. No-one in the company uses it, no-one likes using it and XMPP just seems to work.
I wasn't a pro about it, but I set up and ran our XMPP at a previous company. What I saw as a real problem was a split between clients, servers, modules over the protocol, so it definitely wasn't painless in what functionality worked between one server, modules, a client and inevitably someone choosing a different client. You might do it better than me and it ends up working great for you, or it's gotten better in the last few years since I tried it, but if my experiences are any indication I wouldn't recommend that route. YMMV.
But if you don't like Slack, I'm guessing Mattermost is out of the question as well. I'm still using IRC in a lot of places which "just works", but obviously that is missing a lot of features and fluff of newer technologies, even if some can be retrofitted in.
Please et me know what you decide and your success since it's still relevant for me in a couple of places.
But if you don't like Slack, I'm guessing Mattermost is out of the question as well. I'm still using IRC in a lot of places which "just works", but obviously that is missing a lot of features and fluff of newer technologies, even if some can be retrofitted in.
Please et me know what you decide and your success since it's still relevant for me in a couple of places.
After having read http://www.asymco.com/2014/04/16/innoveracy-misunderstanding... I think that people often misuse the term innovation. From my understanding Slack is innovative, precisely because it is useful. Its novelty is not in features but in the delivery. Yes IRC had all the features but it is hardly something one can recommend. Slack made the long process of setting up a server, shell/bouncer, dcc a matter of a few clicks. On top of that they provide a unique client for everybody which means that everybody sees the same thing. Throw in the integrations and you have a very compelling package. The features one by one are not new or revolutionary, but they were the first to push the whole deal out.
Plus, Microsoft can throw engineering power at integrating their 'clone' with all their other tools. While I can't seem myself buying into their ecosystem anytime soon, that's a huge advantage that will be hard for Slack to compete with.
I'd imaginethe developers of the products integrating their own things into Slack would give more and better thingts than Microsoft integrating other products into their things. We'll have to see if people start shifting where they integrate.
Good point. I'm too far away from Moft's ecosystem to be able to tell how well they can execute such integrations...
Is like to say cooking is just about mix ingredients.
> Top to bottom, it's a very nice UX. It's why i love Slack.
I wouldn't even credit them with that. 20 minutes ago I yet again pressed up-arrow to scroll up one line to see a message off the top of the page and yet again it dropped me into an editing prompt for my last message. What?
And then there's the click-click-click of jumping between channels to see the latest messages, instead of having some form of summary.
In my experience people tolerate the UI of Slack, they don't praise it.
I wouldn't even credit them with that. 20 minutes ago I yet again pressed up-arrow to scroll up one line to see a message off the top of the page and yet again it dropped me into an editing prompt for my last message. What?
And then there's the click-click-click of jumping between channels to see the latest messages, instead of having some form of summary.
In my experience people tolerate the UI of Slack, they don't praise it.
I've long thought that an aggregated screen holding all unread message (with a button to expand +/- 5 lines) was sorely missing from Slack.
This is a newish feature that's at least close to what you want https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/226410907-View-all-...
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>No, Slack isn't a world away from IRC or email - but it's enough better that people want to use it, that's good.
Move Slack into IRC's position, and Microsoft Teams into Slack's position, and you can see what Microsoft is trying to do. The problem with Slack is that right now, they're caught in the middle. They're not a consumer-facing company (at least, their profit model isn't consumer-facing), but, at the same time, they haven't invested in the boring schlep work (auditing, compliance, etc.) to make their product truly competitive to large enterprises. So they're stuck in this small-to-medium business space, while Microsoft is trying to vault ahead of them to capture the large enterprises.
From what I've seen, this is pretty much Microsoft's cloud strategy in a nutshell: take other companies' products, do the boring schlep work to add auditing, compliance, Active Directory Integration, etc. and then sell it to enterprises as a cloud service. This appears to be Azure's strategy against AWS, Office 365's strategy against Google Docs, Visual Studio Team Services' strategy against Github, and now, Microsoft Teams' strategy against Slack. It's a brilliant strategy that plays to Microsoft's strengths - knowing the needs of enterprise customers - while relying on the broader market to fill in for its weaknesses in discovering new products and doing UI design.
Move Slack into IRC's position, and Microsoft Teams into Slack's position, and you can see what Microsoft is trying to do. The problem with Slack is that right now, they're caught in the middle. They're not a consumer-facing company (at least, their profit model isn't consumer-facing), but, at the same time, they haven't invested in the boring schlep work (auditing, compliance, etc.) to make their product truly competitive to large enterprises. So they're stuck in this small-to-medium business space, while Microsoft is trying to vault ahead of them to capture the large enterprises.
From what I've seen, this is pretty much Microsoft's cloud strategy in a nutshell: take other companies' products, do the boring schlep work to add auditing, compliance, Active Directory Integration, etc. and then sell it to enterprises as a cloud service. This appears to be Azure's strategy against AWS, Office 365's strategy against Google Docs, Visual Studio Team Services' strategy against Github, and now, Microsoft Teams' strategy against Slack. It's a brilliant strategy that plays to Microsoft's strengths - knowing the needs of enterprise customers - while relying on the broader market to fill in for its weaknesses in discovering new products and doing UI design.
XMPP/Jabber has always supported offline message storage.
I don't hate Slack; heck, I've never even used it. But like _many_ people I'm disappointed that we still don't have a non-proprietary, federated IM system. That leaves most of us ambivalent, and some of us bitter.
IRC is still around, but IRC isn't a substitute for IM. IRC can't be truly federated because there's no global directory or routing the way there is for SMS or XMPP.
XMPP is still around. I can even chat with a few GTalk stragglers, and quite a few tech-savvy people still run their own XMPP servers. But it seems to be on the decline. For a brief period it was gaining corporate momentum, but that stopped years ago.
My company still uses XMPP for corporate IM. Fortunately, nobody can agree whether to move to IRC, HipChat, or Slack. So for now I can actually instant message with co-workers from my personal XMPP server/account. That was actually useful when I was on contract and didn't have (or want to deal with) juggling and logging onto corporate accounts.
Somebody else suggested Slack was like the iPhone, in that it offered features and usability previously unimagined. I don't think so. The iPhone wouldn't have gotten anywhere if it wasn't a _phone_. It would have just been a fancy minicomputer if it didn't have the built-in capability to interoperate with any other phone, and participate in the global federated telephone and SMS network.
For all of Slacks features, they pale in comparison to what _could_ be. They could still create a better IM client, with better searching, indexing, etc, etc. But if it supported global federation a la XMPP, the sky would be the limit. Instead of the Internet people are simply excited about an upgraded AOL experience.
I don't hate Slack; heck, I've never even used it. But like _many_ people I'm disappointed that we still don't have a non-proprietary, federated IM system. That leaves most of us ambivalent, and some of us bitter.
IRC is still around, but IRC isn't a substitute for IM. IRC can't be truly federated because there's no global directory or routing the way there is for SMS or XMPP.
XMPP is still around. I can even chat with a few GTalk stragglers, and quite a few tech-savvy people still run their own XMPP servers. But it seems to be on the decline. For a brief period it was gaining corporate momentum, but that stopped years ago.
My company still uses XMPP for corporate IM. Fortunately, nobody can agree whether to move to IRC, HipChat, or Slack. So for now I can actually instant message with co-workers from my personal XMPP server/account. That was actually useful when I was on contract and didn't have (or want to deal with) juggling and logging onto corporate accounts.
Somebody else suggested Slack was like the iPhone, in that it offered features and usability previously unimagined. I don't think so. The iPhone wouldn't have gotten anywhere if it wasn't a _phone_. It would have just been a fancy minicomputer if it didn't have the built-in capability to interoperate with any other phone, and participate in the global federated telephone and SMS network.
For all of Slacks features, they pale in comparison to what _could_ be. They could still create a better IM client, with better searching, indexing, etc, etc. But if it supported global federation a la XMPP, the sky would be the limit. Instead of the Internet people are simply excited about an upgraded AOL experience.
Just because you didn't mention it, Matrix https://matrix.org/ is another option. It supports federation, services (like IRC bridges), encryption, push notifications, offline storage and has some really nice clients for Android and iOS.
I found it really cool that I could spend ~half an hour setting it up on my own server then just pop in on chats on another server.
I found it really cool that I could spend ~half an hour setting it up on my own server then just pop in on chats on another server.
It's not zero effort, but it's low effort. Implementing the important features of Slack (specifically the ones you mention) is not hard. I know that because me and one other person did that as a weekend project over a few months[1]. It's not because we're the most amazing developers in the world, but
(Sure, not as poslished but that would only take one more designer to fix.)
What I'm saying here is that GP is correct, and you are significantly overestimating the value of what Slack provides. They have the mindshare right now, but that's really all. They don't even the benefits a company like Facebook has, since a Slack competitor is still useful if a small number of people use it, as opposed to social media companies who are not useful at all unless they have a large userbase.
[1] https://github.com/cicakhq/potato
(Sure, not as poslished but that would only take one more designer to fix.)
What I'm saying here is that GP is correct, and you are significantly overestimating the value of what Slack provides. They have the mindshare right now, but that's really all. They don't even the benefits a company like Facebook has, since a Slack competitor is still useful if a small number of people use it, as opposed to social media companies who are not useful at all unless they have a large userbase.
[1] https://github.com/cicakhq/potato
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>Having your messages stored while you are offline is hugely valuable.
Sure. Nice feature. hardly game-changing or innovative.
Our company is just getting on the Slack train. I'm honestly underwhelmed with the experience. I suppose I expected a lot given the hype and valuation. My main gripe is the lack of UI customization.
Sure. Nice feature. hardly game-changing or innovative.
Our company is just getting on the Slack train. I'm honestly underwhelmed with the experience. I suppose I expected a lot given the hype and valuation. My main gripe is the lack of UI customization.
> Having your messages stored while you are offline is hugely valuable. If I have been out of signal range on a train, I want to be able to look at history on my phone once I'm back in range of a cell tower.
Perhaps you should also try using email. Or SMS. They can do that.
Perhaps you should also try using email. Or SMS. They can do that.
Amazing!
Email does the stored-history thing. So does every other mobile IM app I have (the built-in SMS app, Google Hangouts, BBM, etc.).
Furthermore, in the IRC world that's not uncommon either; Quasseldroid does this. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.iskrembile...
Furthermore, in the IRC world that's not uncommon either; Quasseldroid does this. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.iskrembile...
Email sucks for real-time communcation. Most of the other IM applications you list suck for multi-person communication. Quassel looks good, but clearly harder to set up than Slack.
People always point at everything and go 'this stuff existed!' - even if all Slack did was pull everything together into a single cohesive environment, that's useful to people, it provides value. I'm shocked people are shocked by that idea.
People always point at everything and go 'this stuff existed!' - even if all Slack did was pull everything together into a single cohesive environment, that's useful to people, it provides value. I'm shocked people are shocked by that idea.
It's from the same set of people who don't understand why Microsoft's Active Directory is more popular than the cluster of hard-to-configured, barely-related Linux utilities needed to reproduce some of its functions on a Linux server.
It absolutely provides value! But I don't think the commenter above is claiming that it doesn't provide value. They're claiming it's not innovative.
Some of the most important work in the tech industry is highly valuable and not one bit innovative. CRUD apps that bridge data from two different parts of an organization are amazingly valuable and amazingly important, but have no innovation. There's nothing wrong with that CRUD app—but there's nothing making that app better from another CRUD app that also bridges those two departments.
None of this thread is saying that Slack is bad. It's not criticizing Slack. It's not saying people are wrong to use it. It's just saying that people can jump ship very easily because there's nothing innovative.
Slack is great. I use it daily and love it. But the things I like about it aren't tied to Slack the company in any way, and it would be easy for me to love Microsoft Teams (or some hypothetical open-source, competent-at-UX, mobile-enabled version of IRC) every bit as much. Slack doesn't seem to realize that.
Some of the most important work in the tech industry is highly valuable and not one bit innovative. CRUD apps that bridge data from two different parts of an organization are amazingly valuable and amazingly important, but have no innovation. There's nothing wrong with that CRUD app—but there's nothing making that app better from another CRUD app that also bridges those two departments.
None of this thread is saying that Slack is bad. It's not criticizing Slack. It's not saying people are wrong to use it. It's just saying that people can jump ship very easily because there's nothing innovative.
Slack is great. I use it daily and love it. But the things I like about it aren't tied to Slack the company in any way, and it would be easy for me to love Microsoft Teams (or some hypothetical open-source, competent-at-UX, mobile-enabled version of IRC) every bit as much. Slack doesn't seem to realize that.
Yeah, except people were saying they were hoping Microsoft would kill Slack, as though it's some cardinal sin to not be innovative. (And I contest that, Slack definitely bought things together that other people didn't. It's obvious in hindsight, but so was Dropbox, for example).
I don't see those people in this thread? Certainly I don't see 'Mc_Big_G or myself saying that (and 'Mc_Big_G says basically the opposite). Would it help if I also said I don't hope Microsoft will kill Slack?
More precisely, I hope that if Microsoft builds a vastly better product, that they kill Slack, and if Slack builds a vastly better product, that they kill Teams, and if someone else builds a vastly better product (maybe Ryver stops arguing on Twitter and focuses on product? maybe everyone realizes that Zulip has been awesome all along? maybe Mattermost builds great mobile apps?), they kill both Slack and Teams. And I hope Slack does not get complacent about the product they have built and how hard it is to build a vastly better one, because I am currently using Slack and invested in it. I hope this because competition is a good thing. Is that wrong?
More precisely, I hope that if Microsoft builds a vastly better product, that they kill Slack, and if Slack builds a vastly better product, that they kill Teams, and if someone else builds a vastly better product (maybe Ryver stops arguing on Twitter and focuses on product? maybe everyone realizes that Zulip has been awesome all along? maybe Mattermost builds great mobile apps?), they kill both Slack and Teams. And I hope Slack does not get complacent about the product they have built and how hard it is to build a vastly better one, because I am currently using Slack and invested in it. I hope this because competition is a good thing. Is that wrong?
Adding a backlog to IRC is something that has been around almost as long as IRC.
Bots to sit in channels to passively log; bots which act to send messages to people who are presently offline, at the time at which they come online again; and so on.
Adding a log to IRC isn't particularly innovative. Slack's value is almost entirely in its user engagement, not its technology.
Bots to sit in channels to passively log; bots which act to send messages to people who are presently offline, at the time at which they come online again; and so on.
Adding a log to IRC isn't particularly innovative. Slack's value is almost entirely in its user engagement, not its technology.
As far as I know, all the pieces to make Slack have been around for a while. But nobody ever put them together properly. So the fact that all the pieces existed doesn't count for very much in the end.
Nor was it obvious that if someone put it together properly it would achieve commercial success. I was theoretically in the right place at the right time to have put together something like Slack at my job, but there was no desire to invest enough to do that and eventually the entire product was EOL'ed a couple of years before Slack was released, not just because the product itself was not doing well but the entire market segment was not doing well. Commercial IM products have not done well historically, because it was difficult to do enough better than the free stuff to get people to pay.
What Slack may demonstrate is that, indeed, there was a market there all along, it's just the activation energy was higher than almost anyone was prepared to pay.
Nor was it obvious that if someone put it together properly it would achieve commercial success. I was theoretically in the right place at the right time to have put together something like Slack at my job, but there was no desire to invest enough to do that and eventually the entire product was EOL'ed a couple of years before Slack was released, not just because the product itself was not doing well but the entire market segment was not doing well. Commercial IM products have not done well historically, because it was difficult to do enough better than the free stuff to get people to pay.
What Slack may demonstrate is that, indeed, there was a market there all along, it's just the activation energy was higher than almost anyone was prepared to pay.
Slack was basically just a prettier hipchat clone when it first came out.
And what Slack's numerous competitors are proving is that Slack's total absence of any new or challenging technology has made it easy pickings for duplication. Slack remains competitive in the face of copy cats only because of its current user engagement. Thus, the threat from Microsoft and other behemoths who can effectively purchase users is very real.
That's the key - make something worth more than the sum of its parts
The reason why we started using Slack is simple. Its simpler than IRC and accessible to non techies and it's free (compared to HipChat and others from that time).
Not marketing, or features or UX - price was key for us.
I still hope Slack wins, but MS is a very serious threat. In the end its best for us, users - prices will drop, new features will be added, support will be awesome all thanks to competition.
Not marketing, or features or UX - price was key for us.
I still hope Slack wins, but MS is a very serious threat. In the end its best for us, users - prices will drop, new features will be added, support will be awesome all thanks to competition.
What people are saying is that not only have the pieces to make Slack been around for awhile, but IRC has implemented those pieces successfully for 20 years.
The only "innovation" Slack provided was the UI, and that's textbook "bad startup idea", because of how easy it is for someone else to step into the space.
The only "innovation" Slack provided was the UI, and that's textbook "bad startup idea", because of how easy it is for someone else to step into the space.
"but IRC has implemented those pieces successfully for 20 years."
It did indeed... implement them as pieces. The out-of-the-box experience for an IRC network does not look like Slack.
And the UI was a non-trivial component. Personally I'm in the segment who doesn't much care and for whom IRC is a fine amount of bandwidth... but a looooot of other people, including lots of people with money, want something more.
Slack is not "just IRC". The proof is that if it was, we wouldn't be talking about Slack, we'd be talking about IRC. We aren't.
It did indeed... implement them as pieces. The out-of-the-box experience for an IRC network does not look like Slack.
And the UI was a non-trivial component. Personally I'm in the segment who doesn't much care and for whom IRC is a fine amount of bandwidth... but a looooot of other people, including lots of people with money, want something more.
Slack is not "just IRC". The proof is that if it was, we wouldn't be talking about Slack, we'd be talking about IRC. We aren't.
The UI was a trivial enough component that it can be replicated by a dozen competitors, to suddenly become a hugely busy space such as it is now.
Those people with money can easily be stolen out from under Slack, precisely because they didn't innovate, they simplified.
Slack is "just IRC", and the proof is that if it were more, there wouldn't be nearly as much competition in the space, with more people joining every month, it seems.
Those people with money can easily be stolen out from under Slack, precisely because they didn't innovate, they simplified.
Slack is "just IRC", and the proof is that if it were more, there wouldn't be nearly as much competition in the space, with more people joining every month, it seems.
We are talking about IRC. Right now. In this thread. ;)
Except, that's not true. As I pointed out with History, IRC does not do that. Even if you count hacks like bots or additional services, it doesn't do it well, easily, or as a core part of the thing that is there the second you set it up without extra effort.
I don't understand why people keep saying it's not "easy" or IRC doesn't do history "well"? ZNC or another bouncer is plenty easy to set up and configure, and you get a full history of all messages in a chat.
Slack didn't innovate, it simplified. I called it a "UI" simplification, but you can call it whatever you like. They didn't innovate on technology, and that's a dangerous place to build your startup, because someone like Microsoft can eat your lunch and there's nothing you can do about it.
Slack didn't innovate, it simplified. I called it a "UI" simplification, but you can call it whatever you like. They didn't innovate on technology, and that's a dangerous place to build your startup, because someone like Microsoft can eat your lunch and there's nothing you can do about it.
Bots? It's awkward. In Slack, you scroll up. No bot is going to be as simple to use and obvious as that. If you do manage to integrate it that well, you will need to set up the bot, which is a separate service, get your clients to understand the bot, etc... It's like suggesting a tin can with strings to solve a communication problem. A rough, imperfect solution.
Who gives a damn about innovative? It may have been obvious and simple, but if no one else is doing it well, and they do, sneering at it seems dumb. They made a good call, and are profiting from it.
Who gives a damn about innovative? It may have been obvious and simple, but if no one else is doing it well, and they do, sneering at it seems dumb. They made a good call, and are profiting from it.
I'm sure OP was using bots as an example - IRC bouncers exist ,and if that's too technical for you then there are multiple other solutions.
Sure, and none of those solutions are as good as 'scroll up' after clicking five buttons to make a slack team. By quite a way.
With a bouncer you literally just scroll up.
When I used a Bouncer, all messages that I missed just were there after logging in. I could just scroll up. Easy!
Bouncers are really "Set it and forget it"...
Pings show up - if you desperately need phone notifications there are many apps/solutions to deal with that too. (but lets be real...nobody ~really~ wants notifications outside of work)
Pings show up - if you desperately need phone notifications there are many apps/solutions to deal with that too. (but lets be real...nobody ~really~ wants notifications outside of work)
I've had a persistent to IRC backlog since 1998. This is a simple task for anyone who reads a site that is called "hacker news".
Yes, but are those the only people using Slack? Most of us communicate with people for whom that's non-trivial. Even if it is, it's effort to set up, has to run somewhere, and it doesn't integrate well. It's a crappy solution to the problem, when Slack's is 'scroll up'.
In my experiences using Slack, the people who aren't the normal IRC crowd (take that as you will, heh) fall out of common use after a short period of time. You're left with roughly the IRC crowd.
That may be dependent on team dynamics.
That may be dependent on team dynamics.
Obviously, small sample size, but that's not my experience at all. I've used Slack in two or three different environments for 1y+, and people didn't seem to drop it.
Depends upon age. Anyone in the UK under 30-35 grew up using MSN messenger so even the least technical of non-technical people are happy using something that as far as they can see is basically the same as MSN.
I had a persistent IRC backlog pre-Slack too. It's less difficult to get your colleagues that dont read "hacker news" to do it.
Slack is undoubtedly better than IRC, but so is Flowdock or HipChat and the other players that existed in this space before.
Slack's innovation was getting a huge funding round, blowing it on advertising to mainstream non-tech markets and trying to build a competitive moat with 3rd party integrations that other developers are incentivized to make on their own due to Slack's large user base.
Slack's innovation was getting a huge funding round, blowing it on advertising to mainstream non-tech markets and trying to build a competitive moat with 3rd party integrations that other developers are incentivized to make on their own due to Slack's large user base.
I only heard of Slack through people showing off their ridiculous bots on Twitter.
I think the first was the bot that told you off for using gendered pronouns.
The evangelism it has fostered has been a great promoter, however now I think if our company (non-tech) adopted it - it would be a massive distraction.
I think the first was the bot that told you off for using gendered pronouns.
The evangelism it has fostered has been a great promoter, however now I think if our company (non-tech) adopted it - it would be a massive distraction.
I prefer IRC because I can grep the logs. Slack's search is next to useless.
You've just described iMessage.
I didn't read Mc_Big_G's post as negating the value of Slack, but rather the technological innovativeness of Slack, and when I look at HipChat, Kato, or any of the various competitors in that space when Slack was born, I don't see why Slack's victory was so obvious. That's why I put a little more weight on the luck theory.
They provided a ton of value by bringing things together, by making everything easy and work intuatively. I guess my point is I think too many people are indeed dismissing slack as being lucky, or just pushing with heavy marketing, when I think they actually did something of value we can learn from.
But what would you say about HipChat or other competitors? Why didn't HipChat win? Was there a critical feature they missed or botched?
Providing value is not the whole story. That's why I begin looking for alternative factors -- like luck and circumstance.
Providing value is not the whole story. That's why I begin looking for alternative factors -- like luck and circumstance.
HipChat hasn't botched anything, but they also haven't done anything really well. HipChat is merely... ok I guess?
The thing keeping HipChat going in the face of Slack is that Slack can't be used on-premises, which is HUGE for an extremely large percentage of business.
HipChat hasn't improved as fast as Slack because they haven't needed to-- since no HIPAA-compliant business (to give just one example) can use Slack at all, the two products don't really compete with each other currently.
That doesn't apply to this new Microsoft solution, which will probably kill-off HipChat long before it kills off Slack. Unless Atlassian really gets their butt moving and starts improving their product.
The thing keeping HipChat going in the face of Slack is that Slack can't be used on-premises, which is HUGE for an extremely large percentage of business.
HipChat hasn't improved as fast as Slack because they haven't needed to-- since no HIPAA-compliant business (to give just one example) can use Slack at all, the two products don't really compete with each other currently.
That doesn't apply to this new Microsoft solution, which will probably kill-off HipChat long before it kills off Slack. Unless Atlassian really gets their butt moving and starts improving their product.
I don't know about the overall reason, but in my personal experience Slack just worked way better. My team used Hipchat for a while a few years ago. We found it to be very buggy. I would frequently send messages, but the recipient would never get any indication I'd sent it. The same thing happened for my incoming messages. Technically the message would be there if I looked though all my chats and checked for messages I hadn't seen yet, but there were no notifications or indications they were new.
Even when the worked, Hipchat notifications weren't configurable a the granularity I wanted.
Slack also is prettier and feels more cohesive to me, but that's a secondary concern.
Even when the worked, Hipchat notifications weren't configurable a the granularity I wanted.
Slack also is prettier and feels more cohesive to me, but that's a secondary concern.
Ultimately, the deal breaker for me is that Slack is not on-prem. Microsoft's solution will be, and that will be the true end for Slack.
Marketing
I work at the company that popularized internet messaging in the 90s. We used our own product exclusively for interoffice communication, until slack came out, and slack totally replaced it within the course of a couple of months, totally organically. Literally nobody at the company uses our own product any more.
Yahoo Messenger, right?
Personally, my money would would be on AOL (by a large margin), followed closely by ICQ. MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger, although relatively popular, were latecomers.
> 'Adding a pretty UI' isn't a zero-effort or skill thing.
It's not a huge barrier to entry though.
I think the hate comes from the ridiculous letter.
It's not a huge barrier to entry though.
I think the hate comes from the ridiculous letter.
MS has already added enough value for us to switch over. I work in life sciences and the fact that they are HIPAA compliant makes this a no trainer for us.
I don't think people are hating on slack here, it's just that what they do isn't nearly as hard to u.plement as they seem to think it is, so a letter like this just comes off as pompous.
I don't think people are hating on slack here, it's just that what they do isn't nearly as hard to u.plement as they seem to think it is, so a letter like this just comes off as pompous.
Agree that "it's a chat room" but it's also a chat room that's pretty well entrenched at this point, hooked into a lot of people's entire operational workflows thanks to API hooks and bots, etc.
In short, they are entrenched and have done a great job of ensuring that the cost of switching is high enough that it's going to take a lot of justification to get somebody to take the time to make the move.
All they really have to do is avoid a colossal screw up.
In short, they are entrenched and have done a great job of ensuring that the cost of switching is high enough that it's going to take a lot of justification to get somebody to take the time to make the move.
All they really have to do is avoid a colossal screw up.
Chat-bots are a dime a dozen on IRC.
The problem is not if chat-bots exist in any system, but rather, does the chat-bot you need exists and how hard is it to change your integration (and perhaps workflow).
> added a pretty UI to IRC
And they didn't even add it, Metalab did. http://metalab.co/projects/slack/
And they didn't even add it, Metalab did. http://metalab.co/projects/slack/
Wow, really fascinating. Thanks for this
"So, sorry to tell you guys, but it's not innovative, it's lucky."
If only luck made slack, then doesn't that mean Microsoft will need to be equally lucky to succeed?
If only luck made slack, then doesn't that mean Microsoft will need to be equally lucky to succeed?
Software development is to Microsoft what olive oil importation was to the Corleone family: yes, it's their business and they're good at it, but no, it's not exactly how they got rich.
You often have to be lucky (in timing, in marketing, in whatever) to be the first. Once you've proven the market, later entrants don't have to be lucky. You've already given them a path to follow. They can follow you, letting you do the regular trailblazing while they easily follow and devote their effort into figuring out how and when to jump out in front.
I remember thinking this to myself about five billion times back when Twitter blew up right as we were all busy writing Twitter-like Rails apps for fun. Timing is everything.
I know from a technical standpoint Slack is just a pretty UI on top of IRC. However, consider for instance, one of the Slack teams I use on a daily basis is a law firm. The difference of getting users at a non-tech company, such as a law firm, to use a chat client like Slack vs an IRC client is a huge chasm.
I've been guilty several times myself of saying UIs or veneers over long existing technology isn't that impressive and dismissing companies that do so, but companies have made billions doing just that.
Right. Here on Hacker News, we look at things through techie lenses. Most companies are not tech companies, and cannot set up their own IRC. User experience is the only thing that matters to these companies. They don't care if you're using MongoDb or Postgres, or that you're using React instead of Angular. They just want something that works reliably and is easy to use.
It is extremely hard to create a compelling and delightful user experience that is also maintainable so that new features can be added quickly. So to say "they just slapped a nice UI on IRC" is a little short sighted.
It is extremely hard to create a compelling and delightful user experience that is also maintainable so that new features can be added quickly. So to say "they just slapped a nice UI on IRC" is a little short sighted.
Yeah, but Hipchat or Campfire are just as easy to use. And Microsoft's will probably be as well.
Another day, another post dismissing success as luck.
Let's take this somewhere. So what if it's just luck? What useful information can we glean from your dismissal?
Let's take this somewhere. So what if it's just luck? What useful information can we glean from your dismissal?
>Another day, another post dismissing success as luck.
I thought it was pretty well known that luck plays a significant factor in success. Are you disputing that?
I thought it was pretty well known that luck plays a significant factor in success. Are you disputing that?
Not at all. If you need to add words to a person's statement in order to refute it, you are engaging in rhetorically useless behavior.
The Bloomberg Terminal lock-in strikes me as a similar walled garden of sorts and ripe for upstarts to break the grasp in time. Not overnight, of course, but in time.
Yeah tend to agree - but I do they innovated in terms of the user on-boarding process. Very delightful.
I thought the same thing with VNC. GotoMyPC took something that was free, improved it, then made a fortune on it. While the technology improvements were notable, I think their success was derived from marketing.
One Hyphenated Word: Follow-through.
Yes, Slack's core tech has been around for decades now, and that it is pretty much a gussied up IRC with some bots. But they found that IRC is awesome for what it does and they found that businesses needed something like IRC with bots. Luck is for sure what they have, but they also followed it up. A favorite site of mine recently had a post on follow-through [0]. I'll quote the part that is relevant to Slack:
"There’s a dearth of people who know, or have the will, to do the stupidly easy stuff to be charming and successful. Let me give you just one example. Both off the air and on, guests of my podcast will tell me, “I can tell you actually read my book before this interview and I really appreciate that. It’s so rare.” I don’t bring this up to toot my own horn, but rather to point out how ridiculous it is that this might even be something worthy of mention! An interviewer reading someone’s work before asking them questions about it would seem like the barest of bare minimum job requirements — a prerequisite rather than something above and beyond. And yet the majority of podcasters aren’t even taking care of this most basic of basics. There are tons of people doing what you want to do, but how are they executing? In 90% of cases, not as well as they could be. That’s your opening. And such openings are absolutely everywhere." (emphasis from the source)
Slack is this to a T. It's simple stuff, but they followed through with it. They spent time on the code, on iterating, on making sure it was not just ok, but good. And as a result they are not eating Ramen anymore. Is MS going to squish them? Who knows?! What we do know is that Slack is capable of following through with this product and the MS has a history of not being able to do so. I'd put the money into Slack over MS in the long run. But we will have to wait and see if MS will dump enough cash into their competitor to squish them out before MS runs out of follow-through and bureaucratic stamina.
[0]http://www.artofmanliness.com/2016/10/10/myth-scarcity-12-st...
Yes, Slack's core tech has been around for decades now, and that it is pretty much a gussied up IRC with some bots. But they found that IRC is awesome for what it does and they found that businesses needed something like IRC with bots. Luck is for sure what they have, but they also followed it up. A favorite site of mine recently had a post on follow-through [0]. I'll quote the part that is relevant to Slack:
"There’s a dearth of people who know, or have the will, to do the stupidly easy stuff to be charming and successful. Let me give you just one example. Both off the air and on, guests of my podcast will tell me, “I can tell you actually read my book before this interview and I really appreciate that. It’s so rare.” I don’t bring this up to toot my own horn, but rather to point out how ridiculous it is that this might even be something worthy of mention! An interviewer reading someone’s work before asking them questions about it would seem like the barest of bare minimum job requirements — a prerequisite rather than something above and beyond. And yet the majority of podcasters aren’t even taking care of this most basic of basics. There are tons of people doing what you want to do, but how are they executing? In 90% of cases, not as well as they could be. That’s your opening. And such openings are absolutely everywhere." (emphasis from the source)
Slack is this to a T. It's simple stuff, but they followed through with it. They spent time on the code, on iterating, on making sure it was not just ok, but good. And as a result they are not eating Ramen anymore. Is MS going to squish them? Who knows?! What we do know is that Slack is capable of following through with this product and the MS has a history of not being able to do so. I'd put the money into Slack over MS in the long run. But we will have to wait and see if MS will dump enough cash into their competitor to squish them out before MS runs out of follow-through and bureaucratic stamina.
[0]http://www.artofmanliness.com/2016/10/10/myth-scarcity-12-st...
Eh, it's a bit of both.
Yes, it's IRC with a pretty interface. But that interface is comfy and useful. Juggling multiple devices is seamless. It keeps your history and you can search it.
Not rocket science, sure, but not bad either. It's a step up from IRC.
Yes, it's IRC with a pretty interface. But that interface is comfy and useful. Juggling multiple devices is seamless. It keeps your history and you can search it.
Not rocket science, sure, but not bad either. It's a step up from IRC.
IIRC IRC doesn't switch messages to your phone when you close your computer. In fact I think IRC messages don't even tell the sender that you're offline.
Slack is much more Jabber/XMPP than it is IRC (although they do provide an IRC gateway for oldsters).
Your absolutely right. There is really nothing innovative here. But never underestimate the power of eye-candy.
Think about apple products. You could throw your hands up and say "but there's nothing innovative here! they just built a pretty UI on top of BSD and people have been using Unix operating systems for 50 years!". True, but it's the pretty UI that connects it to the masses.
Slack took a concept that has been done to death (a chat server) and made it useable and accessible. I remember years ago installing pidgin, psi and adium at work because they all ran on different operating system and som guru had to configure an XMPP server somewhere in the company. Then at home i'd fire up mirc to work on some open source. My daughter would come home and hop onto yahoo chat so she could send terrible looking ascii/emoji bling to all her friends.
Yesterday i came into work and some guy came over and saw i had slack up and said, "whoa i love slack, do we have a company server for this?" I said, "yep". He said "send me an invite! i'm gonna go get my boss on this". That sort of emotional reaction to a product I think is what makes something a success.
I a chat room innovative? no. But i think success can't really be wholly described in terms of innovation either. Somehow software has to connect with real people (iXXX - because i own it?) and get people to buy into it like a brand of blue jeans.
Think about apple products. You could throw your hands up and say "but there's nothing innovative here! they just built a pretty UI on top of BSD and people have been using Unix operating systems for 50 years!". True, but it's the pretty UI that connects it to the masses.
Slack took a concept that has been done to death (a chat server) and made it useable and accessible. I remember years ago installing pidgin, psi and adium at work because they all ran on different operating system and som guru had to configure an XMPP server somewhere in the company. Then at home i'd fire up mirc to work on some open source. My daughter would come home and hop onto yahoo chat so she could send terrible looking ascii/emoji bling to all her friends.
Yesterday i came into work and some guy came over and saw i had slack up and said, "whoa i love slack, do we have a company server for this?" I said, "yep". He said "send me an invite! i'm gonna go get my boss on this". That sort of emotional reaction to a product I think is what makes something a success.
I a chat room innovative? no. But i think success can't really be wholly described in terms of innovation either. Somehow software has to connect with real people (iXXX - because i own it?) and get people to buy into it like a brand of blue jeans.
The Fear Of Missing Out
Fear of missing out or FoMO is "a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent".[2] This social angst[3] is characterized by "a desire to stay continually connected with what others are doing".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out
Slack has this to it, a team gets using Slack for their own purposes, the initiative started by someone that wonders why the company/team use Skype still.
Then other teams in the company want to be in on it, there is a party on Slack and they want to know all the gossip that goes down. Plus the Giphy memes.
The next thing is that you then find that it is no longer a private chat room, the guys in HR are reading this too so no longer can some things be said in the banter. So then you move your important chats off Slack and onto WhatsApp or somewhere where whomever the bad guys are, e.g. HR, will not be reading. Obviously Slack then becomes something that your manager uses to tell you what to do and no longer becomes a channel for convo for things peripheral to the tasks in hand. This is how I see Slack shaping up in the long term, it might as well be a MS product and you might as well get the MS product since it is better integrated to Office things.
Fear of missing out or FoMO is "a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent".[2] This social angst[3] is characterized by "a desire to stay continually connected with what others are doing".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out
Slack has this to it, a team gets using Slack for their own purposes, the initiative started by someone that wonders why the company/team use Skype still.
Then other teams in the company want to be in on it, there is a party on Slack and they want to know all the gossip that goes down. Plus the Giphy memes.
The next thing is that you then find that it is no longer a private chat room, the guys in HR are reading this too so no longer can some things be said in the banter. So then you move your important chats off Slack and onto WhatsApp or somewhere where whomever the bad guys are, e.g. HR, will not be reading. Obviously Slack then becomes something that your manager uses to tell you what to do and no longer becomes a channel for convo for things peripheral to the tasks in hand. This is how I see Slack shaping up in the long term, it might as well be a MS product and you might as well get the MS product since it is better integrated to Office things.
...and black turtlenecks
The big difference for me is that with Slack anyone can create their own network with their own plethora of channels. You can't really compare it with traditional IRC where everyone is on the same IRC network.
> It's funny that Slack thinks they've perfectly balanced a unique and special snowflake on the tip of a unicorn's horn when what they've really done is added a pretty UI to IRC. It's a chat room. With channels. So, sorry to tell you guys, but it's not innovative, it's lucky. We had chat rooms back in 1995.
It is kind of amazing that Slack are the only chat system out of dozens our hundreds who can make a UI that doesn't suck (I wouldn't even call Slack good), but evidence would suggest it's true.
> Yes, that scrappy startup Microsoft will not have too much trouble implementing a chat room and they don't need luck to get users.
Well they've tried four or five times and always managed to screw it up.
It is kind of amazing that Slack are the only chat system out of dozens our hundreds who can make a UI that doesn't suck (I wouldn't even call Slack good), but evidence would suggest it's true.
> Yes, that scrappy startup Microsoft will not have too much trouble implementing a chat room and they don't need luck to get users.
Well they've tried four or five times and always managed to screw it up.
> It's a chat room. With channels.
And the iPhone was just a phone with a pretty UI.
Slack is winning exactly for the same reason that the iPhone did, and you're misjudging it for the same reason that a lot of people misjudged Apple: It's all about execution. The first iPhone had the same features as previous phones, but those features were executed so much better than the competition. Slack is the same way. It's an evolutionary product with a revolutionary execution, and should be rightly praised for being innovative in an industry that often moves in surprisingly slow ways — which the state of IRC, HipChat, Skype etc. shows needed serious disruption.
And as with the iPhone, Slack is facing the same problem: Once you've shown how things _can_ be done, everyone else will jump on the same wandwagon.
(I realize you didn't say anything that contradicts the above; this is more about the dismissive attitude towards leaders like Slack.)
And the iPhone was just a phone with a pretty UI.
Slack is winning exactly for the same reason that the iPhone did, and you're misjudging it for the same reason that a lot of people misjudged Apple: It's all about execution. The first iPhone had the same features as previous phones, but those features were executed so much better than the competition. Slack is the same way. It's an evolutionary product with a revolutionary execution, and should be rightly praised for being innovative in an industry that often moves in surprisingly slow ways — which the state of IRC, HipChat, Skype etc. shows needed serious disruption.
And as with the iPhone, Slack is facing the same problem: Once you've shown how things _can_ be done, everyone else will jump on the same wandwagon.
(I realize you didn't say anything that contradicts the above; this is more about the dismissive attitude towards leaders like Slack.)
>The first iPhone had the same features as previous phones
The browser was the killer feature. Remember Jobs going to the NYT website?
The browser was the killer feature. Remember Jobs going to the NYT website?
It just was one of many killer features. Contemporary phones also had web browsers, they just weren't as good, by far.
I remember the awful browser on the Nokia N73 (my last phone before the iPhone), which had a largeish screen and a little joystick to control a mouse pointer, but no touchscreen.
I remember the awful browser on the Nokia N73 (my last phone before the iPhone), which had a largeish screen and a little joystick to control a mouse pointer, but no touchscreen.
>they just weren't as good, by far.
Exactly. The point of the demo was "this browser is just as good as one on a computer".
Exactly. The point of the demo was "this browser is just as good as one on a computer".
Not the first internet browser on a phone though, just a vastly superior UX to what had been done before.
Also worth checking out the history of MindAlign [0] corporate group chat software. It's been around since pre-2000 (originally built in house by UBS) and has supported channels, offline chat history, bots and embeddable status widgets for years. So it's true, Slack isn't all that innovative - although they've done a much better sales job as MindAlign was only ever used (and still is) by a tiny number of companies!
The fun thing is that Microsoft bought the product back in 2007 and sold it again pretty quickly but not before taking a bunch of the code and using it in their own group chat product (never as effectively as the original app, perhaps until now Slack have come along and shown them how valuable a product like that can be...)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MindAlign
The fun thing is that Microsoft bought the product back in 2007 and sold it again pretty quickly but not before taking a bunch of the code and using it in their own group chat product (never as effectively as the original app, perhaps until now Slack have come along and shown them how valuable a product like that can be...)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MindAlign
> We had chat rooms back in 1995.
Not only that, on those days doing an IRC like server and chat client was a common programming exercise at the network programming classes on the university I attending.
Not only that, on those days doing an IRC like server and chat client was a common programming exercise at the network programming classes on the university I attending.
When Steve Jobs "Welcomed IBM" with a full page ad, it was fun. It fit the vibe of who he was and the slightly rebellious marketing campaigns Apple was running. Slack's "Welcome Microsoft" letter felt weird. It felt disconnected from the company and product many of us love and use every day. Might have been stronger to silently add a feature to Slack that lets you communicate with Microsoft Team's members.
Apple's add was rebellious in the sense that they weren't trying to intimidate or smear a competitor, they wrote a genuine welcome. Slack's ad, by comparison, is a passive aggressive roommate leaving weird, indecipherable post it notes on the fridge.
I felt the same way. It was not genuine nor was it encouraging competition. Just because Slack built a very good product does not mean other companies are not allowed to compete with them especially one that already has an immense user base in the office/enterprise market.
> When Steve Jobs "Welcomed IBM" with a full page ad [...]
For reference, here is the ad: http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/jobs-apple-welco...
There is an interesting welcome ad that Data General made when IBM announced their entry into the minicomputer market in 1976, although Data General never actually ran their add. It said:
For reference, here is the ad: http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/jobs-apple-welco...
There is an interesting welcome ad that Data General made when IBM announced their entry into the minicomputer market in 1976, although Data General never actually ran their add. It said:
They Say IBM’s Entry Into Minicomputers Will
Legitimize The Market.
The Bastards Say, Welcome.It definitely felt polar opposite to the tone of the wonderful animated animal character ad. Even visually the tone was too stark.
They should really do another full-page ad saying they fucked up and that they thought they were being clever and their ego got the best of them. Make it visually appealing, full of animals ... that'd make me feel good about Slack again, like they're grownups and can admit mistakes.
Slack's letter appears to betray defensiveness and fear of competition, rather than a tongue-in-cheek attitude like Apple's ad did. I think that's why it seems weird.
It doesn't help that the snark from the CEO was awkward too:
https://twitter.com/stewart/status/793969175807098881
https://twitter.com/stewart/status/793969175807098881
> It felt disconnected from the company.
I felt a sort of haughtiness in the letter, like "you don't understand what chat is, but we do, and if you look at our success, you will never understand what chat is, but we will." This was not a letter of advice, but instead a letter of intimidation.
But if I give them the benefit of doubt, maybe it was just an ad. Nothing more. Nothing less. One that touted the underlying coolness of Slack and the platonic posture of Microsoft.
In all of this, Slack misses the point of Office 365 chat, e.g. tie users together when working on Office products, and build collaboration features for Office users. Maybe Slack slacked off on what the market was requiring now and was not able to keep itself up to date with what companies like Microsoft needed.
I felt a sort of haughtiness in the letter, like "you don't understand what chat is, but we do, and if you look at our success, you will never understand what chat is, but we will." This was not a letter of advice, but instead a letter of intimidation.
But if I give them the benefit of doubt, maybe it was just an ad. Nothing more. Nothing less. One that touted the underlying coolness of Slack and the platonic posture of Microsoft.
In all of this, Slack misses the point of Office 365 chat, e.g. tie users together when working on Office products, and build collaboration features for Office users. Maybe Slack slacked off on what the market was requiring now and was not able to keep itself up to date with what companies like Microsoft needed.
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Or Slack may just die?
Microsoft can just copy everything that Slack does right, give it away for a fraction or for free and there's nothing that they can do about it.
If they give it away for free (as part of office365), is that not effectively anticompetitive behaviour?
It's not anticompetitive if the actual product is easy/cheap to implement (especially on Microsoft's existing infrastructure). If they can do something much cheaper than Slack can, and they can turn a profit at a much lower price point. The Slack product has a lot of delivered value for teams, but that doesn't mean that they have a right to high margins or high costs.
You're not required to use Teams on Office365. The anti-competitive behavior would be if you couldn't turn it off, and it had to be on due to core functionality with Office. Most people just use o365 for exchange and office apps.
Well, now that slack has so "genuinely" welcomed microsoft as a competitor, I don't think they can turn around and argue the opposite for the same offering.
Slack is going to look dumb if it ever sues Microsoft.
"But, your honor, Slack told the world they welcome competition from us in this infamous letter from November 2016!"
"But, your honor, Slack told the world they welcome competition from us in this infamous letter from November 2016!"
I get your point, but, if an anti-trust suit ever happened, it would be DoJ that sues MS, not Slack.
Microsoft has nothing close to a monopoly in this space, so no.
In office applications? That is the one they would be abusing.
They better, because if they try to adapt skype for business (a.k.a lync), they'll fail miserably. That app was terrible
Lync, was the that the app whose Mac client I've never seen run without crashing shortly after startup, on multiple machines across multiple companies? That's right, I've never successfully used the Mac Lync client to send a message, despite having it installed on probably three or four machines over time.
That's not to say that Slack doesn't have a lot to worry about. But competition from Lync, or whatever the hell they call it this week, is not one of those things.
That's not to say that Slack doesn't have a lot to worry about. But competition from Lync, or whatever the hell they call it this week, is not one of those things.
I use their Mac client just fine...
As one who was previously employed by Microsoft, I have to believe that they would not let something that broken out the door, and that I've just had a run of bad luck of broken configurations or server-side operations folk that didn't know what they were doing. But the fact remains that I've never sent a message using the Lync Mac client, and not for lack of trying.
I tried IM and voice calls in Teams today and it's almost perfect. I honestly don't see much of a future for Skype for Business now.
It's even more miserable that it's the de-facto standard where I'm at currently.
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> Or maybe it will evaporate into the ether, like Yammer, which Microsoft spent $1.2 billion on to seemingly no effect whatsoever.
Ah, Silicon Valley. Where growing slowly is the same as being already dead
Ah, Silicon Valley. Where growing slowly is the same as being already dead
Nah, that thing was a clunker its whole life. They spent the billion because Twitter was much more fearsome at the time.
Slack-like chat in an integrated offering isn't new. Zoho has offered this for some time: https://www.zoho.com/chat/
Yeah buddy, but Microsoft has more employees than Zoho's customers.
When practically every office employee on the planet is your customer, it is kind of different.
When practically every office employee on the planet is your customer, it is kind of different.
I didn't see such a catastrophic marketing decision for a long time.
Slack is the most overrated startup of the last couple years.
A native ui for IRC with some extra features.
Their valuation is laughable and is a prime example of the bubble forming in vc tech.
A native ui for IRC with some extra features.
Their valuation is laughable and is a prime example of the bubble forming in vc tech.
> with some extra features
That's what got them where they are right now.
That's what got them where they are right now.
I can't believe this has become a scandal. It's a bit tone-deaf. Okay. There are worse things.
My prior experience with some of the now leadership of Slack indicates that they don't have sufficient moral authority for this kind of commentary anyway.
I've been treated unethically by four relatively senior employees of Slack myself. It never occurred to me to complain until they started acting so holier than thou.
It's funny how achieving great success more as a result of luck than ingenuity seems to go hand-in-hand with arrogance.
Can you elaborate for those of us not in the loop?
ICQ, AIM, MSN Messenger and IRC were all entrenched at different points in time.
To give a parallel, so were Teamspeak, Ventrillo, Mumble, Raidcall, Xfire or whatever have you (for gaming at least).
Chat rooms and VOIP solutions are commodities and have been for a decade or more. Sure, some companies do some more value-add than others in terms of service and support, but at the end of the day it's still a commodity and no amount of rationalization and wishful thinking will change that.
Which is why their mimicking of Apple ad seems condescending and arrogant. Personal PCs were at the top of the technological know-how in the early 80s. Glorified chat rooms haven't been new or high tech for 20 years (IRC is how old?). In fact the only innovation in recent years seems to be end-to-end encryption, which Microsoft seems to be on board with.
To give a parallel, so were Teamspeak, Ventrillo, Mumble, Raidcall, Xfire or whatever have you (for gaming at least).
Chat rooms and VOIP solutions are commodities and have been for a decade or more. Sure, some companies do some more value-add than others in terms of service and support, but at the end of the day it's still a commodity and no amount of rationalization and wishful thinking will change that.
Which is why their mimicking of Apple ad seems condescending and arrogant. Personal PCs were at the top of the technological know-how in the early 80s. Glorified chat rooms haven't been new or high tech for 20 years (IRC is how old?). In fact the only innovation in recent years seems to be end-to-end encryption, which Microsoft seems to be on board with.
What a badly written letter. No aim, no structure, no class.
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I've been using skype for text messaging pretty constantly for the last 3 years, and I'm not sure why people hate it so. it has groups, 1-1 chat and video. Searching history can be a bit of a pain, but everything else seems to be there. Sometimes I wonder what I'm missing.
Skype on Android is terrible. It's slow to sync. It sometimes takes minutes to sync the messages. You get messages in the notifications, then you go to the chat and it's yet to sync. If they fix their mobile client, it would be pretty good.
My team uses it for group calls mostly, and I cannot remember the last time we had a call where someone suddenly couldnt talk but could hear, or vice versa. Weve had to default to just writing up anything important at the end and emailing it to people as we could not get through a meeting without restarting the call over and over
I associate Skype with being slow and heavy for some reason. However it's possible that I picked this opinion up from other people and just started repeating it.
One thing Skype doesn't do so well: when a new person joins they then have to add every other team member one-by-one. With Slack you simply join the team and have immediate access to everyone. Not a huge deal with small teams but adding 50+ people on Skype is a real PITA.
Slack gives you webhooks (post my team's commits to a chat room) and a great team-based chat. Groups in Skype can't really add the same value.
Also, people tend to use their personal emails on Skype in my organization. Slack's sign up process makes more sense for an organization.
Also, people tend to use their personal emails on Skype in my organization. Slack's sign up process makes more sense for an organization.
> Searching history can be a bit of a pain
Doesn't really give an edge to Slack since their search is awful as well.
Doesn't really give an edge to Slack since their search is awful as well.
Microsoft has lost my trust in them after what happened to me with Skype. I was one of the many victims who had their account hacked. The worst part was how their customer support handled the issue. They almost gave me an ulcer by trying to convince me that it was probably a virus on my computer causing the problem. Look at your own Skype forums people! Be transparent, own up to having problems, and fix it!
Communication is extremely important to me. That said, if all the employees in my company were only using 'Teams', 'Skype for business', 'Lync' or any other POS out of Microsoft then I'd be looking for a new job.
Communication is extremely important to me. That said, if all the employees in my company were only using 'Teams', 'Skype for business', 'Lync' or any other POS out of Microsoft then I'd be looking for a new job.
You seem like a real joy to work with.
[deleted]
The essential issue here is this - starting with the Fortune 500, how far down the business size stack do you have to go before this question stops being a laughing out loud no-brainer:
"Shall we buy more-or-less the same chat application
from Microsoft or Slack?"Let's really talk about a no-brainer... How far down that stack do you have to go to before the Microsoft choice isn't included as part of some already-priced-and-paid package? Free Microsoft or paid Slack...
"Nobody was ever fired for choosing IBM."
"Nobody was ever fired for choosing IBM."
At my Fortune 500 client Office communicator / lync/ Skype for whatever is per seat chargeable. But as it's 3 bucks no one even blinks at signing it off.
MS actually has done rather neatly out of that one
MS actually has done rather neatly out of that one
Seems like the Slacklash I've been expecting has finally arrived.
So does this mean that Microsoft is 'UnDead'?
Ref: Paul graham : Microsoft is Dead http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html
Ref: Paul graham : Microsoft is Dead http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html
Looks like you didn't follow the news. Microsoft is the new Apple.
Wow...
So if I understand correctly :
1) They decided to mess with a company having $500B in-cash
2) Which decided to attack their low barrier-to-entry market
3) And took the unusual revealing step of building its own instead of buying
4) And is playing in its comfort zone (productivity tools, Office, API, cloud-scale integration points : azure, azure marketplace etc...)
5) While having a pool of 90M trustful paying customers and the ability to provide them the same offering for free in less than 1 second.
The worst they could do was to help Microsoft define this offering as a direct competition. But this is just what they did with this arrogant and high-schoolish "Welcome" letter.
What really has me roll my eyes here is the way they think that they can be frontal with a corporation like Microsoft playing in its comfort zone and having the dollars we know they have.
This will cost them a lot. You can't easily backtrack from that and even if they somehow manage to do it, by the time they get there, Teams will have already seized a good chunk of their user base.
1) They decided to mess with a company having $500B in-cash
2) Which decided to attack their low barrier-to-entry market
3) And took the unusual revealing step of building its own instead of buying
4) And is playing in its comfort zone (productivity tools, Office, API, cloud-scale integration points : azure, azure marketplace etc...)
5) While having a pool of 90M trustful paying customers and the ability to provide them the same offering for free in less than 1 second.
The worst they could do was to help Microsoft define this offering as a direct competition. But this is just what they did with this arrogant and high-schoolish "Welcome" letter.
What really has me roll my eyes here is the way they think that they can be frontal with a corporation like Microsoft playing in its comfort zone and having the dollars we know they have.
This will cost them a lot. You can't easily backtrack from that and even if they somehow manage to do it, by the time they get there, Teams will have already seized a good chunk of their user base.
"Making my eyes roll" sums my feelings on this perfectly.
Dear Slack,
We built the cloud service, web framework, programming language and operating system our Team app runs on as well as the IDE it was built with, the source control its stored in and the office apps it integrates with, oh and 2 of the browsers we tested it on. The chat part really wasn't that hard.
We'll probably be OK.
- Microsoft
Dear Slack,
We built the cloud service, web framework, programming language and operating system our Team app runs on as well as the IDE it was built with, the source control its stored in and the office apps it integrates with, oh and 2 of the browsers we tested it on. The chat part really wasn't that hard.
We'll probably be OK.
- Microsoft
Modern teams at Microsoft usually use Git. Also Microsoft has acquired most of their version control systems. But yes I agree with you.
0) Ask said company for a whooping $8B in cash.
Or maybe they knew all that, being the communication gurus that they claim to be, and it was a desperate move to be bought, essentially saying: "hey MS you got cash and loads of engineers but you can still fail at that because _reasons_; we have the know-how, consider buying us too". J/k, but who knows.
Who said Microsoft has $500B in cash? They have ~$100B in cash
Welcome IBM. Seriously.
What a smug, sanctimonious piece of writing.
It's hard to imagine that anyone who read this came away with a positive perception of Slack.
It's hard to imagine that anyone who read this came away with a positive perception of Slack.
Between this and the debate around the new macbooks/surface-studio, Microsoft is having very good week in terms on gaining some mindshare and good-will from the technorati and the (traditionally) anti-microsoft press.
Slack is great. I'm part of many slack communities and until they move I'll stay (although they are all in the free-tier). While the many millions who are already part of the O365 subscription base (and who probably don't even know slack or why they need them) won't have reason to start a community on Slack I think Slack is safe in the short-run with those who don't pay the "MS-tax" or those who are already part of existing slack communities.
And while Slack is a great product (as the IRC on steroids that it is) it is easy to replicate and so MS now did.
Slack is great. I'm part of many slack communities and until they move I'll stay (although they are all in the free-tier). While the many millions who are already part of the O365 subscription base (and who probably don't even know slack or why they need them) won't have reason to start a community on Slack I think Slack is safe in the short-run with those who don't pay the "MS-tax" or those who are already part of existing slack communities.
And while Slack is a great product (as the IRC on steroids that it is) it is easy to replicate and so MS now did.
Does Slack even understand that there are MANY enterprise companies that don't use Slack simply because it's NOT Microsoft?
Hubris is rarely a good quality.
Hubris is rarely a good quality.
Actually, they don't use Slack because Slack would be the most expensive piece of software they license. The enterprise model from Slack is so prohibitively expensive it's like they're intentionally trying to drive away large customers.
More likely because it's not available on-premise. Check into how many use HipChat instead, because it is.
Either way, this is a HUGE market Slack hasn't even begun to touch. (Although I see they now have a "coming soon!" banner on their homepage.)
Either way, this is a HUGE market Slack hasn't even begun to touch. (Although I see they now have a "coming soon!" banner on their homepage.)
> More likely because it's not available on-premise. Check into how many use HipChat instead, because it is.
Just one data-point, but: my employer went with HipChat because we needed an on-premise solution. (We were moving away from IRC because we needed persistent chat history for remote employees. Using IRC bouncers was considered too high of a barrier-to-entry, given we wanted non-technical employees to join the conversation too).
Just one data-point, but: my employer went with HipChat because we needed an on-premise solution. (We were moving away from IRC because we needed persistent chat history for remote employees. Using IRC bouncers was considered too high of a barrier-to-entry, given we wanted non-technical employees to join the conversation too).
Does that really matter, since those companies by definition would never be Slack customers? It's not like Slack could ever become a Microsoft product -- barring the obvious buyout, which is not likely to ever happen since Microsoft rolled their own.
So if they aren't buying now because it's not Microsoft, I don't see how Slack hubris changes anything in that equation.
So if they aren't buying now because it's not Microsoft, I don't see how Slack hubris changes anything in that equation.
If (when, likely) Teams gets momentum, other companies will start making a choice between Slack and Teams. This could start cutting into Slacks market share.
This is an opportunity to MS to reply in kind and demonstrate a sense of humour.
> threaded conversations
How does an instant messaging app not have threaded conversations?
How does an instant messaging app not have threaded conversations?
Surprised by the tone of this. It's Slack declaring cultural war to Microsoft. All values subverted, what is praise is actually negative admiration (envy basically), probably based on fear. Kind of gramscian stuff what they did. Very unexpected and unnecessary. Unless they wanted to do some noise because of marketing? I guess they got scared but doesn't sound like Slack needs that. Wonder why they bought this battle this soon.
I think the intended audience of this ad is people who haven't heard of or use Slack but are interested in this new thing Microsoft is doing with the hope of poaching some users. It's not actually intended to convince Microsoft of anything, obviously.
Can someone link me to a hi-res image.. or do I have to buy the newspaper in order to read the ad?
Let the IRC wars begin. :) Seriously, I am not sure what to think when a chat company is worth 1 billion. Sure it has nice UI but so does HipChat and a bunch of other tools. For me, Slack is just one of the many communication platforms I used ever since, starting with IRC, ICQ and other apps and protocols from the 90s. I am not particullary fond on Microsoft but they deliver. I cannot forget the initial uproar when they introduced their entering the gaming console industry with Xbox, and look at them now. Slack has to offer a bit more than just a nice UI for async messaging to be relevant in the corporate communication space in the next 5 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_messaging#History
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_messaging#History
terrible judgment by the CEO to send this.
The letter just makes me feel like the people calling the shots over at Slack are immature and can't handle the realities of running a competitive business. It just comes off as a disguised advertisement and I doubt it really earned them any more customers.
Apples and oranges. The MS product is a paid version within a particular target/universe. That said, evidently, MS didn't study the never-rose and fell story of Google Wave. In short, collaboration needs people. Any people. All people. One outside within the team and a platform becomes irrelevant to the matter at hand.
In addition, the communication market is bigger than the market for soda. Genuine or otherwise Slack and the market will benefit from competition. There's still plenty of upside for Slack, Microsoft and perhaps one or two more.
In addition, the communication market is bigger than the market for soda. Genuine or otherwise Slack and the market will benefit from competition. There's still plenty of upside for Slack, Microsoft and perhaps one or two more.
Why are we analyzing this as though it's supposed to be an honest statement from Slack (ie. arguing they're not an open platform or that Slack isn't actually as special and snowflakey as the ad makes them out to be)? It's pure marketing. Could argue it comes across too insincerely for positive impact, not sure if that will be true for the general audience reading it or not.