Well, I personally love Slack and I use it at work.
Outside of work, what most people I know use are the usual suspects - WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram. These apps are great for what they do well, which is mainly one-to-one chat, though I don't deny that they all have group features as well, albeit pretty basic in my opinion.
Some issues with Slack are:
1) They're geared mainly towards enterprise users, reflected in their features as well as their pricing model. Though admittedly, they do a good job in making it fun too.
2) Slack interest groups aren't easily discoverable.
Discord is basically Slack for gamers and that's where they excel in functionality and features.
IRC is what I grew up with, and it did play a huge part in me building Wander. If I were to sum up what Wander is (for the technically inclined), it would be Slack meets IRC. A modern, mobile and simpler alternative to IRC channels with the fun and interactivity of Slack in chat.
Hello, I'm Tim and I built this app that lets users create their own channels to chat in. It's a bit of an homage to IRC and Slack, things which I both love. Looking forward to getting some feedback and having a discussion about it.
Built our app, Wander, an IRC-like chat app, 100% with Firebase. We've been using Firebase Queue to get server scripting abilities. Can't wait to migrate to using Cloud Functions instead, just waiting for the (awesome) team at Firebase to iron out any teething beta-related issues.
If only Realm made their server-side scripting available for free (or much less than the $1.5k/mo they're asking for Enterprise). That would give Firebase a run for their money.
Google promotes Services on Google App Engine to be used in a microservice fashion. If you create a new project and click on Services, they include a link to the docs about microservices. So if we go by that, it seems to be more microservices than serverless. Based off the article, the serverless (FaaS) bit would be Google Cloud Functions.
Outside of work, what most people I know use are the usual suspects - WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram. These apps are great for what they do well, which is mainly one-to-one chat, though I don't deny that they all have group features as well, albeit pretty basic in my opinion.
Some issues with Slack are: 1) They're geared mainly towards enterprise users, reflected in their features as well as their pricing model. Though admittedly, they do a good job in making it fun too. 2) Slack interest groups aren't easily discoverable.
Discord is basically Slack for gamers and that's where they excel in functionality and features.
IRC is what I grew up with, and it did play a huge part in me building Wander. If I were to sum up what Wander is (for the technically inclined), it would be Slack meets IRC. A modern, mobile and simpler alternative to IRC channels with the fun and interactivity of Slack in chat.