I definitely witter a new IT bubble
Slack Platform Launch
141–150 of 226 posts
Re: Slack Platform Launch
#142Facebook F8 all over again in the sense of startups throwing the success or failure of their company onto a proprietary centralized system that can block or cut them off for any reason. Or rather, another incarnation of IRC chat bots, email listservs, and stuff that's been around forever as commodity autoresponders, only now it's worth millions in investments to write the equivalent of a weekend hack IRC bot because…
While you are right that it's very similar to IRC etc you are completely missing the fundamental reason Slack et al are popular: user experience, especially for non-technical people. Not everyone grew up on IRC with bouncers, irssi on a remote server, and their own server where they could upload attachments to in a single keystroke. Now it's true that there are new alternatives for non-technical people such as IRCClo…
I understand why slack is popular, I use it. But Slack's success is it's UI, and that is not dependent on a centralized close protocol.
We could have a rich ecosystem of competing chat clients over a distributed messaging bus, it's just that there's no economic viability in it.
If SMTP were re-invented today, it would never be open and federated.
Re: Slack Platform Launch
#143Facebook F8 all over again in the sense of startups throwing the success or failure of their company onto a proprietary centralized system that can block or cut them off for any reason. Or rather, another incarnation of IRC chat bots, email listservs, and stuff that's been around forever as commodity autoresponders, only now it's worth millions in investments to write the equivalent of a weekend hack IRC bot because…
So what? Atlassian has a thriving marketplace of extensions for their products and small developers make money out of it. Slack is not a social media site, it's a collaboration tool that is trying to build a platform for the enterprise.
This is an "apples and battleships" comparison.
Re: Slack Platform Launch
#144So if I build something on top of this that actually turns out to be popular and turns a good profit, what is to protect me from Slack then building it in the core product that cutting me out or shutting me down?
Not much I guess. Twitpic anyone? [1].
1. https://blog.twitpic.com/2014/09/twitpic-is-shutting-down/
Re: Slack Platform Launch
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Genuine question -- how how is it been a revelation? It seems to be very similar to HipChat, which was just an iteration on previous chat systems.
I think comparing feature for feature isn't the right way to understand why Slack is a disruptive innovation. Often it's an innovation along some other dimension - process, business model, etc. In this case it's Slack's business model and "platform" strategy. Other tools like HipChat were just that, a tool. Slack is a platform in the sense that it enables businesses and developers to leverage and extend the platform,…
You definetly work in PR. You have the quality of taking something trivial and describing it as if it is a big deal.
Re: Slack Platform Launch
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
While you are right that it's very similar to IRC etc you are completely missing the fundamental reason Slack et al are popular: user experience, especially for non-technical people. Not everyone grew up on IRC with bouncers, irssi on a remote server, and their own server where they could upload attachments to in a single keystroke. Now it's true that there are new alternatives for non-technical people such as IRCClo…
THANK YOU. This is why slack is winning. They took many of the concepts of what makes irc great abd put a much better user experience on top. Why is that so hard for people to understand? This happens over and over again. - Google wasn't the first search engine. - Facebook wasn't the first social network. - Microsoft didn't build the first operating system. They all just did it in a way that appealed to mass amounts…
I have no idea why you were down-voted. It's the truth.
Now, to answer why is it so hard to understand? Many people here are programmers/engineers and fail to understand how marketing and nice packaging can sell. Especially if they are old enough to know how IRC works.
To extend what you wrote, I'd compare Slack with iPhone. All the tech. to build the iPhone was there, but Apple managed to put it all together in beautiful, easy to use package. Slack is the iPhone in its area.
Re: Slack Platform Launch
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
THANK YOU. This is why slack is winning. They took many of the concepts of what makes irc great abd put a much better user experience on top. Why is that so hard for people to understand? This happens over and over again. - Google wasn't the first search engine. - Facebook wasn't the first social network. - Microsoft didn't build the first operating system. They all just did it in a way that appealed to mass amounts…
I have no idea why you were down-voted. It's the truth. Now, to answer why is it so hard to understand? Many people here are programmers/engineers and fail to understand how marketing and nice packaging can sell. Especially if they are old enough to know how IRC works. To extend what you wrote, I'd compare Slack with iPhone. All the tech. to build the iPhone was there, but Apple managed to put it all together in beau…
Because it's a platitude that has been repeated ad nauseam, and we get it. The GP gets it. As he explains in OP's sister comment.
Re: Slack Platform Launch
#148Facebook F8 all over again in the sense of startups throwing the success or failure of their company onto a proprietary centralized system that can block or cut them off for any reason. Or rather, another incarnation of IRC chat bots, email listservs, and stuff that's been around forever as commodity autoresponders, only now it's worth millions in investments to write the equivalent of a weekend hack IRC bot because…
One key difference is that people building Slack integrations adds a huge amount of value to Slack's product. If there's a tool that works with Slack that you want then you're much more likely to pay for Slack. Consequently Slack do better if they support developers. The same isn't really true for Facebook.
Re: Slack Platform Launch
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because the expected loss from a malicious actor with access to those logs cloning your product (without any access to the actual people who thought up your product!) is often more than balanced by the expected benefit from getting everyone on a knowledge base with a brilliant UX. Sure, you wouldn't have wanted to host the Apollo Program's lab notes on Soviet servers, but your cat selfie startup isn't quite as high-s…
Yeah, what you just said is probably the case for the majority of Slack's users, and I get that. My perspective is framed by working with an EMS provider (PCB design & assembly) who does business in some highly regulated fields. We've started using Slack in the last couple months for some of our teams, and love it, but the idea of using it as a catch all strikes me as questionable. If we used Slack for actually talki…
Another self-hosted alternative you might like is MatterMost, which is quite similar to Slack in look-and-feel, but free software and self-hosted.
Re: Slack Platform Launch
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
THANK YOU. This is why slack is winning. They took many of the concepts of what makes irc great abd put a much better user experience on top. Why is that so hard for people to understand? This happens over and over again. - Google wasn't the first search engine. - Facebook wasn't the first social network. - Microsoft didn't build the first operating system. They all just did it in a way that appealed to mass amounts…
I have no idea why you were down-voted. It's the truth. Now, to answer why is it so hard to understand? Many people here are programmers/engineers and fail to understand how marketing and nice packaging can sell. Especially if they are old enough to know how IRC works. To extend what you wrote, I'd compare Slack with iPhone. All the tech. to build the iPhone was there, but Apple managed to put it all together in beau…
Think of it this way. Did the Web Browser need to be a proprietary closed protocol in order for the massive improvement over Gopher/WAIS or other end user hypertext information systems back then?
No, Netscape/Mozilla didn't need to "own" HTTP and HTML completely, and turn the Web into a giant App Store in order to innovate in the Browser client, neither did Google, Apple, or MS. At various points, proprietary extensions were tried, and either failed, or got standardized when they became popular or proven their need.
All Praise to Slack's UI, I love all the flourishes, like auto-detection of paste of code bits and offering to create snippets. I get it, I really do.
I just don't think we need another messaging platform owned by a single company.