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Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

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Re: Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

#171

Post by vonklaus »

slack needs to sell asap.

edit: to expand. Slack has 0 technology moat. The reason Github has been so successful and has gone many years without significant competition, is that it is an open platform in the sense that I have my personal, work, and private repos there. Many open source stuff is up there, and the platform allows me to contribute to my private repos, public repos and quickly download software.

To some extent slack has this idea where you can have 3 or 4 organizations in the app, but user to user seems to not be implemented, or at least non-obvious. Everything is siloed in an org.

lots of companies and apps are working on chat and are substitutes for pieces. It was not obvioius Github could make money or was significant for a long time. Professional chat is the opposite.

* Low barrier to entry

* high competition

* limited revenue/margin

* open source alternatives

* largely based on users/social proof. e.g. could get myspaced.

* competing in a space that is "hot" and many larger companies are moving in, already poised to take this.

Re: Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

#173

Post by wodenokoto »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #153
k__ wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it depends on the level where the business acts on. If you have a real low level technology, an acquisition can be a good thing, because the big corp could integrate it some of their products and increase the spreading. But yeah, if we look at Skype and WhatsApp, it's probably good that Slack didn't get acquired.

Weren't both of these somewhat successful acquisitions? i.e. Would Skype have been better today without the acquisions, and did WhatsApp suffer product-wise as a result of being part of FB?

I think Skype suffered from their first acquisition and Microsoft never got it back on to its original trajectory when they bought it.

Skype still has a lot of consumer good will and a strong brand. Amongst my peers online video calling is called Skype notater what platform we use.

Re: Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

#174

Post by baddox »

Klathmon wrote: post #88
baddox wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack seems to have mostly eclipsed Hipchat, at least among Silicon Valley startups, but integrations probably weren't a huge factor in that. Slack does have a nicer flow for integrations, but Hipchat worked quite well (and actually had much-missed features like customizing the background color of messages; it's unfathomable how Slack could still not have this feature).

>it's unfathomable how Slack could still not have this feature I hear this saying a lot, and every time I just can't take it seriously. This is the first time I've ever heard of someone wanting customizable background colors for messages on a messaging platform. It's just not something I or anyone I know about cares about. I just can't see how that would be considered a high importance feature by anyone.

It's all about integrations. We have all sorts of server messages and errors in a couple of our Slack engineering channels. Slack provides almost no way to visually distinguish these messages based on importance. In Hipchat, we had red/yellow/green background colors that worked great.

To be clear, I'm not dead set on having background colors. I just really miss having a good visual distinction between messages.

Re: Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

#175

Post by avtar »

tomlongson wrote: post #155
teen wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also used for video games a lot, but between leaking your IP and allowing esports players to get DDOSed, and just generally being not a great fit, Discord is getting more popular.

I hadn't heard about any data leaks from Slack, so I looked it up: http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/8/6946341/slack-has-a-seriou... https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/382mao/psa... What's confusing is the second link is about Skype leaking your IP, not Slack.

When I read teen's comment I thought they were implying that Skype is used by gamers and leaks info.

Re: Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

#176

Post by RHSeeger »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #55

What a disaster that would have been. The people that use Slack are much younger than the enterprise customers that Microsoft has. It would have been another failed acquisition. Plus we used Slack and moved aggressively back to HipChat. I thought it was fine but there's no real difference between Slack and Hipchat.

You can't edit messages older than 1 minute in HipChat, and even editing newer messages is painful. That fact, alone, makes me despise it.

Re: Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

#177

Post by Klathmon »

baddox wrote: post #174
Klathmon wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it's unfathomable how Slack could still not have this feature I hear this saying a lot, and every time I just can't take it seriously. This is the first time I've ever heard of someone wanting customizable background colors for messages on a messaging platform. It's just not something I or anyone I know about cares about. I just can't see how that would be considered a high importance feature by anyone.

It's all about integrations. We have all sorts of server messages and errors in a couple of our Slack engineering channels. Slack provides almost no way to visually distinguish these messages based on importance. In Hipchat, we had red/yellow/green background colors that worked great. To be clear, I'm not dead set on having background colors. I just really miss having a good visual distinction between messages.

I came on a little strong there, it's just saying things like "how could they not have [insert niche feature here]?" drives me up a damn wall!

But that makes sense, and it would be a nice to have. In the meantime can you "hack it in" via different icons per status?

Re: Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

#178

Post by avtar »

vpkaihla wrote: post #78
apocalyptic0n3 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's far more than web-based IRC and has a substantial userbase, a significant number of whom are paying for the service. Given the failures MS has had with communication tools in the past, I'm not surprised at all they mulled an $8B acquisition of Slack

> It's far more than web-based IRC How exactly?

Mobile clients, persistent chat history when switching clients/devices, search, @mentions notify you when you're away from your desk, and easy integrations with lots of services.

P.S. I mainly use IRC everyday :)

Re: Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

#179

Post by hvass »

kough wrote: post #152
Negative1 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Unless Microsoft rebuilds Skype for the ground up" This. This exactly. Is it really unbelievable to assume Microsoft wouldn't attempt to build their own IRC+ clone and save a few billion while they are at it? I do agree with you, Slack is much better than Skype, but I would add that Lync is just as good. I went from Lync to Slack (after changing jobs) and I would say that Lync not only works just as well but has mor…

When I was forced to use Lync (due to an acquisition) in 2014 it was absolutely fucking terrible. The OS X client failed to report online status correctly, couldn't participate in most group chats or video or audio calls, and crashed regularly. Also weirdly non-native UI. And, no linux client to speak of - for a startup like the one I worked for where many devs used linux, that was a nonstarter. Has the story improve…

So much this. We are currently using Lync and to quote you: absolutely fucking terrible.

Re: Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

#180

Post by flurdy »

zyxley wrote: post #45
ue_ wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>get eclipsed every 5-10 years as a new generation comes along with a new favorite tool I wonder if this rule holds just as much for IRC - for most FOSS projects, IRC is the go-to choice, and it's been that way for a long time.

Many new FOSS projects are now using Slack instead of IRC, with a variety of methods for auto-inviting members of the public instead of Slack's intent of manually managing users. Another popular one now is Discord, which is Slack-like but anecdotally better for large sets of users because of a more robust admin/permissions scheme.

Most FOSS projects I am involved / interested in seems to use http://gitter.im, though a few uses Slack
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