51–60 of 301 posts
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If they give it away for free (as part of office365), is that not effectively anticompetitive behaviour?
Well, now that slack has so "genuinely" welcomed microsoft as a competitor, I don't think they can turn around and argue the opposite for the same offering.
"But, your honor, Slack told the world they welcome competition from us in this infamous letter from November 2016!"
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…
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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…
Adding a backlog to IRC is something that has been around almost as long as IRC. Bots to sit in channels to passively log; bots which act to send messages to people who are presently offline, at the time at which they come online again; and so on. Adding a log to IRC isn't particularly innovative. Slack's value is almost entirely in its user engagement, not its technology.
Who gives a damn about innovative? It may have been obvious and simple, but if no one else is doing it well, and they do, sneering at it seems dumb. They made a good call, and are profiting from it.
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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…
I've had a persistent to IRC backlog since 1998. This is a simple task for anyone who reads a site that is called "hacker news".
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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…
Adding a backlog to IRC is something that has been around almost as long as IRC. Bots to sit in channels to passively log; bots which act to send messages to people who are presently offline, at the time at which they come online again; and so on. Adding a log to IRC isn't particularly innovative. Slack's value is almost entirely in its user engagement, not its technology.
Nor was it obvious that if someone put it together properly it would achieve commercial success. I was theoretically in the right place at the right time to have put together something like Slack at my job, but there was no desire to invest enough to do that and eventually the entire product was EOL'ed a couple of years before Slack was released, not just because the product itself was not doing well but the entire market segment was not doing well. Commercial IM products have not done well historically, because it was difficult to do enough better than the free stuff to get people to pay.
What Slack may demonstrate is that, indeed, there was a market there all along, it's just the activation energy was higher than almost anyone was prepared to pay.
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.
I felt a sort of haughtiness in the letter, like "you don't understand what chat is, but we do, and if you look at our success, you will never understand what chat is, but we will." This was not a letter of advice, but instead a letter of intimidation.
But if I give them the benefit of doubt, maybe it was just an ad. Nothing more. Nothing less. One that touted the underlying coolness of Slack and the platonic posture of Microsoft.
In all of this, Slack misses the point of Office 365 chat, e.g. tie users together when working on Office products, and build collaboration features for Office users. Maybe Slack slacked off on what the market was requiring now and was not able to keep itself up to date with what companies like Microsoft needed.
Slack-like chat in an integrated offering isn't new. Zoho has offered this for some time: https://www.zoho.com/chat/
When practically every office employee on the planet is your customer, it is kind of different.
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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…
I've had a persistent to IRC backlog since 1998. This is a simple task for anyone who reads a site that is called "hacker news".
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>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 comm…