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Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

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Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#201

Post by solatic »

sparkling wrote: post #174
solatic wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enterprise E20 pricing (with the all-important high-availability clustering feature) is unlisted. Yeah, going back to opaque pricing and needing consultants to take care of anything and everything is a real step up /sarcasm

Hiding enterprise pricing is quite common for many SaaS companies.

And yet, Atlassian got as big as they did in large part because of transparent pricing. Because enterprise sales have such a long sales cycle, that transparent pricing gave people inside their enterprises the confidence to push for a product they knew their budget could afford, rather than spend large amounts of internal political capital getting colleagues to rally behind a solution that wasn't affordable for them to begin with. It makes adoption more risky and more difficult.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#202

Post by optimusclimb »

forkerenok wrote: post #97
optimusclimb wrote: post #5

Hipchat took standard IRC, and added some interface fluff, youtube links, and emojis. They achieved great market footprint. Then Slack starts up later - makes literally the same exact product, and manages to surpass, and eventually subsume Hipchat. Crazy.

> Crazy. Indeed so, if judging in a reference frame of gross oversimplifications and dismissing importance of details. I hate Slack, the client, the cloud lock-in. But I think they and those in between of golden IRC times and them did refine team chatting experience. Speaking of my own experience: it's now easier to follow discussions and way easier to form more complex messages (mostly thanks to markdown) that conve…

> Indeed so, if judging in a reference frame of gross oversimplifications and dismissing importance of details.

I'll admit, re: IRC - yes, that's a stretch and ignores details. It's more that Slack managed to kick Hipchat's butt so thoroughly that really surprised me.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#203

Post by insertnickname »

bluedino wrote: post #193
paranoidrobot wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the main benefits of Slack (to me, at least) is persistence, which you don't get from IRC. If I'm not connected to Slack, or even a member of a Slack channel - I can connect/join the channel and be able to get all of the history back to the beginning of the channel (or whatever Slack's limitation is). This makes it very easy to jump into the middle of a conversation and not worry you've missed some important c…

Persistence can be created the the right proxy/helper and clients

As much as I love IRC, this argument seems to me to not be that different from the "just use rsync/ftp" Dropbox argument. There is this IRCv3 extension proposal, though: https://github.com/ircv3/ircv3-specifications/pull/292

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#204

Post by slededit »

greglindahl wrote: post #199
slededit wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few months ago slack's early plan was posted here. From day one this was the goal - they knew it was just a chat app so they had to make it feel like something different. Its one of the best marketing coups in recent history and I'd love to see more analysis on how it was pulled off.

I was involved in the early days of IRC, and personally, I'm amazed at how great Slack is. I parachuted into an org which had a not-great email culture and took up Slack as a replacement. It was amazingly great.

I wish I could find the original document. They do spend about 1/8th talking about how it has to be a great experience. But the majority of the document discusses how they aren't a chat app, they had a broader vision of team communication. And so you don't compare Slack to IRC because IRC is "just" a chat app while Slack is for "collaboration".

In the early days of Slack we had Office Communicator in Microsoft. But because they thought of themselves as essentially MSN messenger for business they didn't do the things Slack did with their clear vision. Ultimately both apps existed to send text/files/images to people in realtime but Slack communicated a vision of how this should work while the rest just let you figure it out yourself.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#205

Post by ceruleanscott »

dawhizkid wrote: post #85

Interesting. I worked at a healthcare tech startup last year and the reason why we had to use Hipchat is because the self-hosted Hipchat Server was HIPAA-compliant and Slack does not have a HIPAA-compliant self-hosted option. Have no idea what they're going to do (or anyone who needs to comply with stricter regulatory guidelines that prevents use of cloud-based messaging apps).

Shameless self-promotion: We (Trillian) just received HITRUST certification, provide a BAA, and offer both a SaaS variant and the self-hosted Trillian Server product, both of which run over our own open IM protocol. We're not exactly a Slack/Hipchat clone (having been around for 18+ years, we're more of a traditional IM and group chat solution with some modern stuff like an API, chat bots, and federation capabilities) but have been getting great feedback in the healthcare space with our business offering. More: https://trillian.im/uses/hipaa-compliant-texting/

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#207

Post by ellyagg »

ironjunkie wrote: post #165

When is this overhype for Slack going to stop? It is a chat application with a slightly improved UI like it existed 30 years ago. This is a step in corporate IT that I really cannot fully understand. It seems that every company//startup has to use slack nowadays to pretend to be cool again. Everytime I have a serious conversation about the productivity gains or losses of Slack though, it is pretty clear to me that it…

You write and borrow plug-ins for Slack. With plug-ins, Slack becomes an extensible, configurable, fine-grained company alerts system. You adapt it to alert you about your latest website traffic, analytics goals, customer support requests, and bug tickets to triage.

When Slack is down for a few hours, I know start-ups that feel it in the gut.

As a social tool, Slack is one among many, but social tools for work are becoming huge because they enable passive knowledge transfer. Employees can spy on others' conversations to see who knows what and that knowledge makes companies more efficient.

Something's lost and something's gained in living every day, but Slack isn't a fad and it's not going anywhere.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#208

Post by smt88 »

philwelch wrote: post #200
mmanfrin wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two camps: the we-should-just-use-irc camp, and the we-need-every-feature camp. You fall in to the former, and I would bet that a lot of people here fall in to the former. However, many people fall in to the latter, and Slack handily beats the competition there. There is also an element of having nice and polished features baked in that appeals to many people. Want it on your phone? There's an app. Want to…

> There are two camps: the we-should-just-use-irc camp, and the we-need-every-feature camp. I'm firmly in the "email should be used for substantive discussions" camp, but ever since we got the bandwidth and CPU necessary for the internet to not be a primarily text-based medium, the illiterates took over and that was the end of that.

Email has a lot of problems, but the dealbreaker for my company is that it isn't secure.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#209

Post by rspeer »

bluedino wrote: post #193
paranoidrobot wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the main benefits of Slack (to me, at least) is persistence, which you don't get from IRC. If I'm not connected to Slack, or even a member of a Slack channel - I can connect/join the channel and be able to get all of the history back to the beginning of the channel (or whatever Slack's limitation is). This makes it very easy to jump into the middle of a conversation and not worry you've missed some important c…

Persistence can be created the the right proxy/helper and clients

This is a common refrain of IRC users who don't know what it's like to have real, convenient persistence that works for everyone.

Nobody has made persistent IRC channels that are as usable as newer chat products that don't try to be IRC.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#210

Post by brightball »

mmanfrin wrote: post #196
ironjunkie wrote: post #165

When is this overhype for Slack going to stop? It is a chat application with a slightly improved UI like it existed 30 years ago. This is a step in corporate IT that I really cannot fully understand. It seems that every company//startup has to use slack nowadays to pretend to be cool again. Everytime I have a serious conversation about the productivity gains or losses of Slack though, it is pretty clear to me that it…

There are two camps: the we-should-just-use-irc camp, and the we-need-every-feature camp. You fall in to the former, and I would bet that a lot of people here fall in to the former. However, many people fall in to the latter, and Slack handily beats the competition there. There is also an element of having nice and polished features baked in that appeals to many people. Want it on your phone? There's an app. Want to…

The different in the Linux/OSX comparison is that Linux is constantly improving. IRC hasn’t changed much in years.
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