Slack Said to Draw Interest from Amazon • Hacker News Board

Re: Slack Said to Draw Interest from Amazon

#201

Post by sangnoir » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 8:15 PM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #180

sp332 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WhatsApp didn't fade at all. They have 1.2 billion monthly active users and climbing. Their "stories" feature got 177 million daily active users in just 10 weeks. For comparison, Snapchat is only at 166 million DAU as of Q1 this year.

WhatsApp is (AFAIK) the only major chat service that offers a J2ME app. There are a _lot_ of feature phones in the Global South, and a lot of telecoms that charge gouging rates for SMS and MMS.

> WhatsApp is (AFAIK) the only major chat service that offers a J2ME app

WhatsApp's support for J2ME ended in 2016[1] - it is now smartphone only, because it requires "advanced features" (or bloat) to compete with Snapchat and complete Facebook's flanking manoeuvre (along with Instagram).

1. https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/s60/21099118

Re: Slack Said to Draw Interest from Amazon

#202

Post by hueving » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 8:17 PM UTC

andreasklinger wrote: post #196

chollida1 wrote: post #77

Serious question..... but also more me fleshing out my thoughts on messaging apps.... What is the point in buying a messaging app? - instant messenger - ICQ - Skype - Yammer - WhatsApp They all seem to be popular for a short time and then fad away. What does owing one of these get a company? The case against owning them is that they all go out of favour and you only have a small window, say up to 5 years, where your…

Slack is an enterprise platform. Given how deep it is in a company's workflow you could think of it almost like an operating system where apps can attach to. It would perfectly fit to eg salesforce, google etc Unsure what Amazon's goal would be - maybe "enterprise as customers" are the interlinking part between ecommerce and webservices

How is slack deep in a company's workflow? In other words, what stops them from switching to an alternative chat?

Internet access is deep in company workflows as well, but that doesn't mean they can't change ISPs.

Are companies building their ordering systems to depend on slack API's or something?

Re: Slack Said to Draw Interest from Amazon

#203

Post by hueving » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 8:20 PM UTC

rhino369 wrote: post #146

praneshp wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it very different from running all your sensitive company code on Bezos & Co servers?

Do the AWS Master Service Agreements really not preclude Amazon from searching through your data for their own purposes?

Isn't the only entity that could conclusively determine if the agreement has been violated the very one who would violate it?

Re: Slack Said to Draw Interest from Amazon

#204

Post by Sir_Substance » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 8:21 PM UTC

andreasklinger wrote: post #196

chollida1 wrote: post #77

Serious question..... but also more me fleshing out my thoughts on messaging apps.... What is the point in buying a messaging app? - instant messenger - ICQ - Skype - Yammer - WhatsApp They all seem to be popular for a short time and then fad away. What does owing one of these get a company? The case against owning them is that they all go out of favour and you only have a small window, say up to 5 years, where your…

Slack is an enterprise platform. Given how deep it is in a company's workflow you could think of it almost like an operating system where apps can attach to. It would perfectly fit to eg salesforce, google etc Unsure what Amazon's goal would be - maybe "enterprise as customers" are the interlinking part between ecommerce and webservices

>Given how deep it is in a company's workflow you could think of it almost like an operating system where apps can attach to

Off the top of my head, both mattermost and rocketchat provide compatible webhook apis that make them drop-in replacements for slack.

So not that deep into peoples workflow...

Re: Slack Said to Draw Interest from Amazon

#205

Post by paulcole » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 8:22 PM UTC

Grue3 wrote: post #38

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #13

Selling Slack seems like a mistake. It's so ubiquitous. I'd be interested in buying stock in Slack if they IPO. Snapchat was in a similar situation, and four or so years ago when they turned down Zuck's ~$5B offer everyone was saying what a silly mistake it was not to sell. How could Snapchat possibly make money? And think of all the disheartened employees whose shares would've been worth something. Turns out there's…

Except Slack doesn't have any new ideas behind it. It's just another chat app. And just like other popular chat apps of yesteryear, it's a fad that will pass.

> Slack doesn't have any new ideas behind it. It's just another chat app.

Billions of dollars can be made on old ideas positioned properly.

Re: Slack Said to Draw Interest from Amazon

#206

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 8:23 PM UTC

r00fus wrote: post #25

ejcx wrote: post #23

There isn't a lot here to read in to. I worked at a very small company that was going to be bought by amazon. We were "left at the alter" by amazon. I would be very surprised to see a slack deal go through, knowing what I know about our acquisition process, but they are a little different than we were. If AMazon buys them they have better be sure they can quickly integrate them, unlike twitch that's unique enough to…

There are so many Amazon purchases that just "hang around" for better or for worse: Audible, Goodreads, IMDB... the list is large. I like they don't necessarily have to vertically integrate all their acquisitions.

[deleted]

Re: Slack Said to Draw Interest from Amazon

#207

Post by hueving » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 8:24 PM UTC

simonrobb wrote: post #42

kayoone wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, to me $9B seems like a lot of money for a glorified IRC client built on web tech. Sure, you don't pay for the tech, but in the end you can do a lot with that kind of money. Elon Musk sold his first two businesses to get the funds to start what he really wanted to do. We don't know where Oculus would be without FB, i would argue they are better off because they are creating a new market and are in a capi…

A glorified IRC client built on web tech... that everybody uses. Tech is only one small part of a business. Slack provides real value to millions of people, $9B certainly doesn't seem an unreasonable valuation to me.

>that everybody uses

You're spending too much time in the tech industry. Even if you double the daily active users from a year ago, that doesn't even reach 5% of the US population.

Re: Slack Said to Draw Interest from Amazon

#208

Post by giarc » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 8:24 PM UTC

chollida1 wrote: post #77

Serious question..... but also more me fleshing out my thoughts on messaging apps.... What is the point in buying a messaging app? - instant messenger - ICQ - Skype - Yammer - WhatsApp They all seem to be popular for a short time and then fad away. What does owing one of these get a company? The case against owning them is that they all go out of favour and you only have a small window, say up to 5 years, where your…

It's best to compare Slack to MS Lync (which is now branded as Skype, was built out of MSN Messenger). In Windows environments, it's a pretty important piece of communication software. I use it constantly everyday to communicate and meet with those across my province (Alberta).

Re: Slack Said to Draw Interest from Amazon

#209

Post by beambot » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 8:37 PM UTC

maitrik wrote: post #3

Really believe that Microsoft should have bought Slack. It makes perfect sense for them and aligns with their vision to be the productivity center of everyone's workflow. Microsoft doesnt understand this space at all. Look what they are doing to Skype by making it more like Snapchat when their main use case is business related. Teams also feels so unfinished.

Salesforce, Oracle, or IBM would make more sense to me...

Re: Slack Said to Draw Interest from Amazon

#210

Post by criddell » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 8:39 PM UTC

I was the person that first brought Slack into our company. I worked hard to get people to start using it and now it's used a great deal.

So now, I find myself using email more again. Slack seems to bring with it expectations of instant replies and lately I find myself preferring the more asynchronous nature of email. I do like that the Slack archive is generally open and searchable to all, but the interruptions suck. If the Slack client was silent unless it had focus, I think it would work better for me.