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Slack Platform Launch

slackhq.com

41–50 of 226 posts

Re: Slack Platform Launch

#41
post #4

Please guys, no. Don't build your startup on top of another platform. Remember Facebook? Remember Twitter? That 80M is a farce by the VCs that actually re-contributes back into Slack, not so much for you.

It's a risk of failure. There may be other benefits that outweigh that risk. I don't know why you'd make a general rule about that.

Re: Slack Platform Launch

#42
post #4

Please guys, no. Don't build your startup on top of another platform. Remember Facebook? Remember Twitter? That 80M is a farce by the VCs that actually re-contributes back into Slack, not so much for you.

People are going to get riled up about this statement since it is vague. Better to say: don't build a missing feature on top of a "platform." You will be consumed.

Now, if there is "synergy" with that integration, then it makes sense, but this assumes you have a profitable standalone business to begin with.

If your app is another way to poke people, you will lose. If your app was the first way to post pictures on twitter, you're screwed.

Re: Slack Platform Launch

#43
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> does a new business really need Slack? How many man-hours am I going to spend fracking around Rocket Chat, Mattermost, and Sandstorm? I think I'd much prefer just paying Slack to worry about that for my hypothetical new business with 10 employees. 6.67 * 10 * 12 = $800/annum. Peanuts. Especially compared to the value of my time or my employees time.

Less than 30 minutes for your tech team. 1) Install Sandstorm (curl https://install.sandstorm.io | bash) 2) Install Rocket Chat (one click) 3) Set up a domain. Done Regarding maintenance: I set it up 2 months ago and it's still running smoothly.

This is how long it takes to spin something like this up, but you're forgetting maintenance, domain knowledge, internal documentation, etc.

People underestimate the costs of "rolling your own" or even going FOSS. It's absolutely never "set it and forget it."

Most of these services that charge nominal fees ($5 - $100/mo) are interesting because you don't have to control your own support procedure and ostensibly they're build to scale.

Re: Slack Platform Launch

#44

2 points: 1. Remember when Dropbox was dumb, because rsync? (Bunch of naysayers here citing fee alternatives). From what I'm seeing, bots and integrations are great and here to stay. Businesses will gladly pay money in exchange for time and complexity not spent rolling your own. 2. This seems like a boon for us happy slack users!

Will somebody please explain the use cases for slack bots to me? If they are basically glorified command line scripts, the I get it. But are there genuine and important use cases that require/can benefit from a richer dialogue?

Re: Slack Platform Launch

#45

No need to build your entire startup on Slack but a solid integration can drive serious initial revenue for your startup especially if you do not get a lot of direct traffic. "One click install" is what helped Woocommerce and others get massive growth on the back of Wordpress through top exposure in the plugin directory. Slack is still very much at the bottom of the growth curve. I have seen electrical contractors wh…

I'm sure I can accomplish this with a simple Google search (and I'm going to do that next) but I do want to put a request out there. I'd love to see some use cases of successful, complex Slack integrations and how the organization has saved time/money by making Slack a part of their workflow. It seems to be a tool built for developers, at least I see a lot advocates that are developers. I want to know how personnel across multiple departments feel about using the tool.

Re: Slack Platform Launch

#46
Can someone who uses slack comment on the value over skype for example?

It seems like text chat is hard to get wrong, and with so many options, I wonder why (real) people choose slack specifically.

Re: Slack Platform Launch

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With free self-hosted open source alternatives like Rocket Chat and Mattermost entering the scene, along with easy internal installation from Sandstorm, does a new business really need Slack?

It does if there's a whole ecosystem of bots and services built on top of slack that don't run on the alternatives.

For sure! I wonder which services people love in Slack that aren't available in Rocket Chat. So far in this thread there aren't many details. Bots are mentioned, and that's available in Rocket Chat too via Hubot.

Re: Slack Platform Launch

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question -- how how is it been a revelation? It seems to be very similar to HipChat, which was just an iteration on previous chat systems.

Hipchat is awful and Slack is phenomenal. I mean I know that probably isn't what you want to hear but it's so hard to describe it any other way. UX/integrations/apps/speed/etc might all be the answer but it was visceral for me.

At least on Windows slack has pretty terrible performance. I wish i could go back to hipchat. I regularly experience perceptible lag when typing, which doesn't happen anywhere else.

EDIT: This is a fairly recent problem. A month or two ago, I had never experienced this.

Re: Slack Platform Launch

#50

Slack is great and all, but I personally don't feel like it's revolutionary. It's just an iterative improvement over a chat client, nothing groundbreaking there.

As in most other popular things, there's little actual substance undergirding Slack. Slack lives off hot air. Lucky for them, I suppose.
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