Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft • Hacker News Board

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#41

Post by throwaway1892 » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:27 PM UTC

buckbova wrote: post #8

Mc_Big_G wrote: post #3

It'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…

Agreed, they may have done it better than most or marketed their product better but nothing compelling here. > Slack could have done what most companies do when a competitor rips them off, and said nothing. Someone competing in your space is NOT ripping you off.

But does copying the UI is ripping someone off?

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#42

Post by draw_down » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:27 PM UTC

I can't believe this has become a scandal. It's a bit tone-deaf. Okay. There are worse things.

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#43

Post by kbenson » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:28 PM UTC

mackmgg wrote: post #14

Mc_Big_G wrote: post #3

It'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…

>I'm sure Slack will continue with much success now that they have their user base, so good for them, but to delude themselves into thinking no one can do it as good as they do is a bit naive. The problem is, Slack has a user base consisting mainly of people willing to switch to the "next big thing" pretty quickly. That's how they got to Slack, but there's nothing preventing those people from leaving to move onto som…

> The problem is, Slack has a user base consisting mainly of people willing to switch to the "next big thing" pretty quickly.

I'm not so sure. I got us using Slack at work, and that was after about 12 months of hearing ads for it. It is IRC plus a slick UI and integrated bots, but putting all that together with a web UI and a dedicated client and phone apps makes it multiple times better than regular IRC for the common person.

I don't use twitter. I only started actually using my Facebook account I've had for many years last week, after finally deciding it's curring me off from people to not use it. I've never used Instagram or Snapchat or any of those other newer things. I'm not what you would call "people willing to switch to the next big thing". Quite the opposite in fact. At this point, the new users of slack are hearing about it from other people that are themselves 3-4 people removed from those early adopters.

That said, Slack isn't a perfect snowflake. It's a simple idea executed well. The reason I was so for it once I finally bothered to check it out is because my prior experience with IRC let me immediately see the value they had created by combining IRC and all the extras for IRC together in a nice package, and made it accessible to less technical people.

> The reason I use Slack is because it is better than any of the alternatives, but I wouldn't hesitate to switch to something better if it comes around.

Same here on why I use it, but I would hesitate switching (given most my usage is work related). If Google had a good competitor, we would probably switch, since it was our solution to crappy support for what we need in Hangouts, as all our other stuff is in Google Apps. I imagine a lot of people/companies might feel the same way with MS if their stack is dominated by MS products. For those that already have a fairly heterogeneous environment, there's probably less reason to switch to the major names, but I imagine those groups are already fairly on board with trying new tools to find what works best, so have little allegiance.

Edit: s/seeing ads/hearing ads/. I think a really good case could be made that Slack was genius to market on podcasts as much as they did, and on the ones they did, and that might have been instrumental to their growth.

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#44

Post by draw_down » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:28 PM UTC

fcc_authorized wrote: post #17

> Or maybe it will evaporate into the ether, like Yammer, which Microsoft spent $1.2 billion on to seemingly no effect whatsoever. Ah, Silicon Valley. Where growing slowly is the same as being already dead

Nah, that thing was a clunker its whole life. They spent the billion because Twitter was much more fearsome at the time.

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#45

Post by fizzbatter » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:28 PM UTC

Latty wrote: post #27

Mc_Big_G wrote: post #3

It'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…

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 Slack.

There's no hate coming from me - i'm just a realist. Slack didn't do anything amazing. It just did things right. Which is unfortunate for all of us users, as it took so many years to do things right. Unfortunately for slack though, they showed what is a good UX.. how hard do you think it is to copy that UX? Not easy, sure, but the template is there. Spend some time copying Slack, and i think you can manage to make Slack.Clone.

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#46

Post by throwaway1892 » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:29 PM UTC

mackmgg wrote: post #14

Mc_Big_G wrote: post #3

It'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…

>I'm sure Slack will continue with much success now that they have their user base, so good for them, but to delude themselves into thinking no one can do it as good as they do is a bit naive. The problem is, Slack has a user base consisting mainly of people willing to switch to the "next big thing" pretty quickly. That's how they got to Slack, but there's nothing preventing those people from leaving to move onto som…

An existing problem would be all the integration/bots builts into slack, even if they exist for the alternative, that kind of change is not trivial.

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#47

Post by twblalock » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:29 PM UTC

fairpx wrote: post #4

When Steve Jobs "Welcomed IBM" with a full page ad, it was fun. It fit the vibe of who he was and the slightly rebellious marketing campaigns Apple was running. Slack's "Welcome Microsoft" letter felt weird. It felt disconnected from the company and product many of us love and use every day. Might have been stronger to silently add a feature to Slack that lets you communicate with Microsoft Team's members.

Slack's letter appears to betray defensiveness and fear of competition, rather than a tongue-in-cheek attitude like Apple's ad did. I think that's why it seems weird.

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#48

Post by zzguy » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:29 PM UTC

_pmf_ wrote: post #11

Microsoft 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

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#49

Post by ryanto » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:30 PM UTC

dionidium wrote: post #23

nilkn wrote: post #9

Our 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.

Team communication tools don't suffer the same network-effect downsides to switching that other social apps do. The decision to switch can be made by one person. Everybody else is responding to a mandate.

While the decision can be made by one person, I'm not sure this is true. There is a big switching cost for most team tools.

* There's going to be a lot of discussion and consensus building. Most of the team is going to have an opinion on the subject.

* Setting up new accounts for team members, teaching team members how to use the new tool, and change management all take time.

* Most teams have integrations within their chat apps, these will have to be switched or re-implemented to use new APIs.

I think it's fair to say that most team tools have good moats. The longer the team has used a tool the stronger the moat becomes.

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#50

Post by throwaway1892 » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:31 PM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #34

brightball wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree that "it's a chat room" but it's also a chat room that's pretty well entrenched at this point, hooked into a lot of people's entire operational workflows thanks to API hooks and bots, etc. In short, they are entrenched and have done a great job of ensuring that the cost of switching is high enough that it's going to take a lot of justification to get somebody to take the time to make the move. All they really h…

Chat-bots are a dime a dozen on IRC.

The problem is not if chat-bots exist in any system, but rather, does the chat-bot you need exists and how hard is it to change your integration (and perhaps workflow).