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Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

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Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#101

Post by kzisme »

Latty wrote: post #53
dleslie wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? 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 obv…

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.

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#102

Post by reitanqild »

fizzbatter wrote: post #79
reitanqild wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. :-]

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 S…

>> 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.

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#103

Post by reitanqild »

Latty wrote: post #84
fizzbatter wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 S…

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.

This was my feeling as well.

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#104

Post by gbin »

throwaway1892 wrote: post #46
mackmgg wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

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)

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#105

Post by inthewoods »

Mc_Big_G wrote: post #3

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 l…

Yeah tend to agree - but I do they innovated in terms of the user on-boarding process. Very delightful.

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#106

Post by beachstartup »

intoverflow2 wrote: post #85
fizzbatter wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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 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.

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#107

Post by iblaine »

Mc_Big_G wrote: post #3

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 l…

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.

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#108

Post by wang_li »

Latty wrote: post #27
Mc_Big_G wrote: post #3

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 l…

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…

You've just described iMessage.

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#109

Post by SomeStupidPoint »

Latty wrote: post #84
fizzbatter wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 S…

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.

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#110

Post by vehementi »

kbenson wrote: post #71
NDizzle wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

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.c…

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!
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