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.
Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft
11–20 of 301 posts
Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft
#12It'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 l…
> 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.
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.
Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft
#13It'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 l…
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.)
Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft
#14It'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 l…
>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.
Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft
#15[deleted]
Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft
#16It'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 l…
Time to update the old canard. "If you could have invented Slack... you would have invented Slack." Execution is everything.
Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft
#17> 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
Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft
#18Slack-like chat in an integrated offering isn't new. Zoho has offered this for some time: https://www.zoho.com/chat/
Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft
#19It'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 l…
>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 som…
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-...
Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft
#20Microsoft 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?