Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

Post by irodoramatic » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 5:09 PM UTC

SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #92

Latty wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds a lot like all the people that bash StackOverflow - "It's just posts and a voting system, I could write that in a week!", ignoring all the complexity and design behind it, operating at scale and cultivating the environment. If people need something to be 'amazing' not to put it down, and 'amazing' doesn't include doing the right things to be highly successful... If no one else did it, was it really so obvio…

Microsoft has a well regarded developer network and Q&A system regarding Microsoft technologies, at least in my (limited to primarily Azure) experience. Similarly, Microsoft has already operated a widely used integrated chat, profile, and community system at scale. Given their recent pushes, it wouldn't be entirely surprising for them to bring back similar platforms for business users integrated with LinkedIn. That w…

Post by duaneb » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 5:11 PM UTC

harryjo wrote: post #16

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…

Time to update the old canard. "If you could have invented Slack... you would have invented Slack." Execution is everything.

Post by mbesto » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 5:12 PM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #47

fairpx wrote: post #4

When Steve Jobs "Welcomed IBM" with a full page ad, it was fun. It fit the vibe of who he was and the slightly rebellious marketing campaigns Apple was running. Slack's "Welcome Microsoft" letter felt weird. It felt disconnected from the company and product many of us love and use every day. Might have been stronger to silently add a feature to Slack that lets you communicate with Microsoft Team's members.

Slack's letter appears to betray defensiveness and fear of competition, rather than a tongue-in-cheek attitude like Apple's ad did. I think that's why it seems weird.

Post by dimino » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 5:13 PM UTC

mikestew wrote: post #89

zzguy wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They better, because if they try to adapt skype for business (a.k.a lync), they'll fail miserably. That app was terrible

Lync, was the that the app whose Mac client I've never seen run without crashing shortly after startup, on multiple machines across multiple companies? That's right, I've never successfully used the Mac Lync client to send a message, despite having it installed on probably three or four machines over time. That's not to say that Slack doesn't have a lot to worry about. But competition from Lync, or whatever the hell…

Post by iamatworknow » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 5:15 PM UTC

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…