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Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

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Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#131

Post by Florin_Andrei »

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…

Eh, it's a bit of both.

Yes, it's IRC with a pretty interface. But that interface is comfy and useful. Juggling multiple devices is seamless. It keeps your history and you can search it.

Not rocket science, sure, but not bad either. It's a step up from IRC.

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#133

Post by empath75 »

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…

I work at the company that popularized internet messaging in the 90s. We used our own product exclusively for interoffice communication, until slack came out, and slack totally replaced it within the course of a couple of months, totally organically. Literally nobody at the company uses our own product any more.

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#134

Post by kevando »

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…

IIRC IRC doesn't switch messages to your phone when you close your computer. In fact I think IRC messages don't even tell the sender that you're offline.

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#135

Post by uryga »

wubalub wrote: post #87

I've been using skype for text messaging pretty constantly for the last 3 years, and I'm not sure why people hate it so. it has groups, 1-1 chat and video. Searching history can be a bit of a pain, but everything else seems to be there. Sometimes I wonder what I'm missing.

I associate Skype with being slow and heavy for some reason. However it's possible that I picked this opinion up from other people and just started repeating it.

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#136

Post by r2dnb »

Wow... So if I understand correctly :

1) They decided to mess with a company having $500B in-cash

2) Which decided to attack their low barrier-to-entry market

3) And took the unusual revealing step of building its own instead of buying

4) And is playing in its comfort zone (productivity tools, Office, API, cloud-scale integration points : azure, azure marketplace etc...)

5) While having a pool of 90M trustful paying customers and the ability to provide them the same offering for free in less than 1 second.

The worst they could do was to help Microsoft define this offering as a direct competition. But this is just what they did with this arrogant and high-schoolish "Welcome" letter.

What really has me roll my eyes here is the way they think that they can be frontal with a corporation like Microsoft playing in its comfort zone and having the dollars we know they have.

This will cost them a lot. You can't easily backtrack from that and even if they somehow manage to do it, by the time they get there, Teams will have already seized a good chunk of their user base.

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#137

Post by Latty »

swasheck wrote: post #124
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…

"Hate" no longer means "hate." It means "disagree with another at any level."

People were saying they hope Microsoft would put Slack out of business. That's not disagreeing, that's actively disliking them.

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#138

Post by ascotan »

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…

Your absolutely right. There is really nothing innovative here. But never underestimate the power of eye-candy.

Think about apple products. You could throw your hands up and say "but there's nothing innovative here! they just built a pretty UI on top of BSD and people have been using Unix operating systems for 50 years!". True, but it's the pretty UI that connects it to the masses.

Slack took a concept that has been done to death (a chat server) and made it useable and accessible. I remember years ago installing pidgin, psi and adium at work because they all ran on different operating system and som guru had to configure an XMPP server somewhere in the company. Then at home i'd fire up mirc to work on some open source. My daughter would come home and hop onto yahoo chat so she could send terrible looking ascii/emoji bling to all her friends.

Yesterday i came into work and some guy came over and saw i had slack up and said, "whoa i love slack, do we have a company server for this?" I said, "yep". He said "send me an invite! i'm gonna go get my boss on this". That sort of emotional reaction to a product I think is what makes something a success.

I a chat room innovative? no. But i think success can't really be wholly described in terms of innovation either. Somehow software has to connect with real people (iXXX - because i own it?) and get people to buy into it like a brand of blue jeans.

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#139

Post by zimpenfish »

kevando wrote: post #134
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…

IIRC IRC doesn't switch messages to your phone when you close your computer. In fact I think IRC messages don't even tell the sender that you're offline.

Slack is much more Jabber/XMPP than it is IRC (although they do provide an IRC gateway for oldsters).

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#140

Post by empath75 »

mackmgg wrote: post #14
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 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…

I'm on 4 or 5 different slack teams. There are network effects in slack, even if the cost of moving your company is minor, nobody is going to switch to another product unless it's an order of magnitude better.

People who are totally active directory and exchange are going to use Teams. Nobody else is.

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