Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Salesforce Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Slack

salesforce.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 659 posts

Re: Salesforce Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Slack

#371

Post by sg47 »

brundolf wrote: post #120
colinmhayes wrote: post #68

I can't possibly see this going well for salesforce. Buying slack for 70x revenue is insane. Their entire market is going to be eaten by teams and google chat, if it hasn't already. Microsoft has such a gigantic advantage when it comes to enterprise productivity software because everyone is already using office. And those that aren't are on g-suite. Slack's recent guidance was horrible too.

Slack's main differentiator up until now was that it wasn't tied up in a tech giant. That meant it had great compatibility with everything, and that it was, as a product, the primary focus of its company (and not just an accessory). I think it could have survived on that alone, but this acquisition throws that entire story in the garbage. Now it'll just be "Teams but worse".

Slack's sales execution sucked. They had a great product but didn't know how to sell in the middle of a pandemic. Salesforce will treat Slack like Microsoft treats LinkedIn or Github. I wish I could invest in the 'acquired' company.

Re: Salesforce Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Slack

#372

Post by sjg007 »

Anyone read the press release? Salesforce wants to use Slack as an input device driver. Imagine slacking with your customers, colleagues etc... need to create a DB entry? Slack command. Need to schedule some follow up, slack command. Need to track a bunch of tasks? Slack-Force integrations. I see an AI bot here to help get that data into Salesforce.

To quote: "Together, Salesforce and Slack will shape the future of enterprise software and transform the way everyone works in the all-digital, work-from-anywhere world"

I work day to day in Slack. It's better than email and the need for workflow and knowledge integrations is clear. Asana needs to get a chat layer going ASAP.

The knowledge workflow integration sector is the next big thing.

Re: Salesforce Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Slack

#374

Post by ldarby »

SheinhardtWigCo wrote: post #205
emmanueloga_ wrote: post #121

Whatever happened to matrix.org/vector/riot.im/element.io? (side note: most confusing branding ever :-/). Element seemed to be picking up some momentum a few months back. There was recent news that they acquired gitter too [1]. These days I only hear about slack exodus and discord this and discord that, though. If I get it right, from all the group messengers that appeared around 6 years ago, the only one with an ope…

Enterprises don't want federation. They want an easily searchable information repository much more than they want strong E2EE. They also don't see open source as an advantage. Matrix was focused on things that deter enterprise customers while Slack built a machine for locking them in.

> Enterprises don't want federation.

100% of companies require a way of communicating with other companies/people, and federated email and phone calls are extremely common ways (granted that non-federated means are becoming more popular, and I can believe there are a few companies whose only communication with the outside world is via non-federated means).

Companies have lists requirements for their tools and "not federated" isn't one of them, it's just that so far non-federated tools already fullfil the other requirements. Once Element is mature enough (and I'm sorry, but looking at the incoming issues on https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues?q=sort%3Aupd..., it doesn't look like it yet), then hopefully more companies will start considering it.

Also, some companies (at least some people in the one I work for, so I'm extrapolating) want to be able to text chat with other companies/people, and they currently do this with Teams (which requires both parties to have a Teams account). Slack allows this too if I understand. Federated chat would also give them this, so it is something they need, even if they don't realise that.

Re: Salesforce Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Slack

#375

Post by siliconmountain »

ebg13 wrote: post #276
abalashov wrote: post #267

For me the fascinating headline here is the 86% gross margins. FY2020 gross revenue at Slack was $630.4m, GAAP gross profit $533.2m [1]. SaaS apps are comically, stupidly profitable at scale. That's educational. [1] https://slack.com/blog/news/slack-announces-fourth-quarter-a...

Except they had net income of -$570M (that's a minus sign in front) because their operational losses are staggeringly high.

What's the difference here? How can GAAP profit and net income be nearly a billion dollars in difference? I thought GAAP was standard accounting? What kind of operational losses are not included in GAAP

Re: Salesforce Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Slack

#376

Post by ptx »

colinmhayes wrote: post #278
jasonv wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mobile Google Chat still doesn't let you switch accounts, like Hangouts supports. Perplexing, given how much people in the Google-sphere context switch.

Chat is now built into the gmail app which is much easier to switch on.

Makes it more difficult to switch between Gmail and Meet though (to look something up while in a meeting) since they are now conjoined into the same app.

I can understand Facebook or WeChat building everything into the same app, making the app into an inner platform within the platform, but when Google already control the outer platform it doesn't make much sense.

Re: Salesforce Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Slack

#377

Post by Androider »

somethingwitty1 wrote: post #370
filoleg wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't personally know anyone that has actually switched to using it. Everyone still uses Chime. It must be just your org/team, because a few of my friends working there in entirely different orgs had their teams switched to Slack fully within the week of announcement. Not claiming you are wrong though, because my sample size of 3 people/teams is purely anecdata.

Slack uses Chime under-the-hood for meetings. So, people are still using Chime. This was announced at re:invent today.

The video meetings are easily the worst part of Slack. Even though Slack meetings are free and integrated, everyone at my org still uses Zoom with Slack instead.

Re: Salesforce Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Slack

#378

Post by redisman »

thallium205 wrote: post #163
HatchedLake721 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google chat, lol. Which one? Google Wave? Google Buzz? Google Talk? Google Hangouts? Google Allo? Google Duo? Google Meet? Google chat that came with Google Apps? Or G Suite? Or Google Workspace?

The one that is built into every GSuite/Workspace account. For free. Google Chat.

I have no idea what that is and I've used GSuite for decades.

Re: Salesforce Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Slack

#379

Post by ant6n »

hated wrote: post #223
singhkays wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn! What kind of research did you have to do to write all those names or did you remember them all? :) They're so many now, I can only remember a few

Your one stop shop for all things killed by Google https://killedbygoogle.com/

They'll kill hangouts? I´d say there´s a big danger that instead of switching to yet another Google chat service, ppl will just switch to telegram/whatsap/facebook messenger.

Re: Salesforce Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Slack

#380

Post by srgpqt »

wincy wrote: post #185
young_unixer wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could copy-paste Discord, replace all occurrences of "gaming" for "enterprise" and it would be a much better business communication platform than Slack.

And replace all instances of “Discord” with “Harmony” and you have the perfect Enterprise chat tool!

No no no, it should be called Synergy
Post reply on HN