Slack Faces Giant Tech Rivals • Hacker News Board

Re: Slack Faces Giant Tech Rivals

#51

Post by jonwachob91 » Mon, Apr 17, 2017, 2:30 PM UTC

cmahler7 wrote: post #18

I really hate the way tech is trending. Startups have basically become free market validation for the tech kings. They can just wait to see what works, then copy it and kill the startup that did it first. With tech more than any other industry the rich get richer. Combined with how tight the big tech companies have gotten with Washington DC and they've basically become too big to fail.

When did we start ignoring the reality that startup's need something unique about them to survive? When did startups become entitled to not having competition? When did BigCo decide to bow down to startups and stop focusing on survival?

Re: Slack Faces Giant Tech Rivals

#52

Post by majewsky » Mon, Apr 17, 2017, 4:51 PM UTC

bitexploder wrote: post #32

csydas wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like(d) slack as much as the next person when my last workplace used it, but we used it over gchat for some reason, right around when Hangouts had just been early released for Google Business/Apps for Education Users. Slack was slick, nice, and definitely fun, but we already had a chat system that more-or-less did the same thing. I don't think that Slack's issue is so much that other companies are just copying it,…

I don't think it is fair to classify them as just a "fancy IRC". I see technical people myself included think of them that way, but why isn't a slightly fancier IRC dominant? Seamless mobile clients, integrations, animated gifs, etc. Slack has a lot of small but very sticky features.

Exactly. My workplace is currently evaluating Slack and Microsoft Teams vs. "bolt on chat to the existing internal social network". I'm presently trying to figure out how to explain to the engineers running the evaluation that the value of Slack cannot must be understood by the quality of execution, not just as the sum of its features.

"How will we get people to use Slack if it does not have $feature [1]?" - "But hundreds of people are already using it, so your point is moot."

[1] e.g. SSO integration

Re: Slack Faces Giant Tech Rivals

#53

Post by sjg007 » Mon, Apr 17, 2017, 9:12 PM UTC

cmahler7 wrote: post #18

I really hate the way tech is trending. Startups have basically become free market validation for the tech kings. They can just wait to see what works, then copy it and kill the startup that did it first. With tech more than any other industry the rich get richer. Combined with how tight the big tech companies have gotten with Washington DC and they've basically become too big to fail.

"Startups have basically become free market validation for the tech kings."

This is not a new thing..

Re: Slack Faces Giant Tech Rivals

#54

Post by mercer » Tue, Apr 18, 2017, 1:01 PM UTC

seppin wrote: post #41

mathattack wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing new here. Look at Netscape, eventually being surpassed by Internet Explorer. (Which in turn was surpassed by Safari and Chrome) It's very hard for large companies to do large scale decentralized R&D, so they copy and buy companies that are doing it. This isn't an awful thing. In many cases the original technologists get acquired. If the market is big enough, big players will want in too.

so who buys slack ?

Atlassian or Microsoft. Although I hope not.

Re: Slack Faces Giant Tech Rivals

#55

Post by wheelerwj » Tue, Apr 18, 2017, 3:51 PM UTC

chrischen wrote: post #33

wheelerwj wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had this thought the other day, even though I doubt it's original, and it seems like income inequality is growing to be so massive that its impossible, or at least much harder, to build a business anymore. If you hit a creative idea and get customers, you're either going to get bought up by the giants or be competing with giants. Even bigger, more established companies like slack or NYT find themselves between a ro…

How is journalism wrecked by social? By social you mean social (aka fake) news?

did you read the article? journalist aren't making money because they cant run ads.that means professional journalist won't be able to survive anymore.