Does Slack even understand that there are MANY enterprise companies that don't use Slack simply because it's NOT Microsoft?
Hubris is rarely a good quality.
Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft
171–180 of 301 posts
Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft
#172It'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…
> It's a chat room. With channels.
And the iPhone was just a phone with a pretty UI.
Slack is winning exactly for the same reason that the iPhone did, and you're misjudging it for the same reason that a lot of people misjudged Apple: It's all about execution. The first iPhone had the same features as previous phones, but those features were executed so much better than the competition. Slack is the same way. It's an evolutionary product with a revolutionary execution, and should be rightly praised for being innovative in an industry that often moves in surprisingly slow ways — which the state of IRC, HipChat, Skype etc. shows needed serious disruption.
And as with the iPhone, Slack is facing the same problem: Once you've shown how things _can_ be done, everyone else will jump on the same wandwagon.
(I realize you didn't say anything that contradicts the above; this is more about the dismissive attitude towards leaders like Slack.)
Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft
#173Microsoft 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.
They better, because if they try to adapt skype for business (a.k.a lync), they'll fail miserably. That app was terrible
It's even more miserable that it's the de-facto standard where I'm at currently.
Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft
#174Earlier 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…
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…
People bash StackOverflow for their draconian moderation, not because it would be technically trivial to implement (it wouldn't, nothing at scale is).
Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but are those the only people using Slack? Most of us communicate with people for whom that's non-trivial. Even if it is, it's effort to set up, has to run somewhere, and it doesn't integrate well. It's a crappy solution to the problem, when Slack's is 'scroll up'.
In my experiences using Slack, the people who aren't the normal IRC crowd (take that as you will, heh) fall out of common use after a short period of time. You're left with roughly the IRC crowd. That may be dependent on team dynamics.
Depends upon age. Anyone in the UK under 30-35 grew up using MSN messenger so even the least technical of non-technical people are happy using something that as far as they can see is basically the same as MSN.
Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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…
Is like to say cooking is just about mix ingredients.
Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.)
Look into Mattermost
Yeah that's the one they wanted.
Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft
#178This is an opportunity to MS to reply in kind and demonstrate a sense of humour.
Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft
#179I'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.
Skype on Android is terrible. It's slow to sync. It sometimes takes minutes to sync the messages. You get messages in the notifications, then you go to the chat and it's yet to sync. If they fix their mobile client, it would be pretty good.
Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft
#180Our entire company switched to Slack within basically a day. While that's a big selling point for Slack's ease of use, it also means it'd be easy to switch away to a competitor within a day too.
Unless you use their API. Or you invited external users. Or you use one of the other features that lock you in. In fact, I think Slack wrote the letter because they feel so confident that they've locked in their current customers. Switching to Slack is easy. Switching from Slack is not.