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Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

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Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#641

Post by tomp »

Grue3 wrote: post #617
emtel wrote: post #295

Anybody who thinks they know for sure that slack can't possibly be worth $16B should go back and read some threads from around the Facebook IPO (like this one https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4320585 ). It's very easy to write reasonable sounding things - making accurate predictions about the future is much harder.

Well, I've been saying Snapchat can't possibly be worth $29bn when it did IPO. And surprise, it lost most of this value. Snapchat is a lot like Slack - it's a feature, not a product. Once Facebook copied the feature, Snapchat was doomed. Same will happen with Slack (in this case I think MSFT will be its undoer).

Indeed... Same (possible) holds for PayPal.

I really don't understand why companies like Snapchat and PayPal don't do the reverse - add Facebook-feature to their product! Surely Snapchat would be more useable if it had profiles, friends, etc. (i.e. if it became Facebook-lite, in other words, Instagram clone). Sure, (some) users will revolt, but you don't need to force it down their throat... make it opt-in, or privacy-preserving, or something, and make sure that it's genuinely useful!

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#643

Post by ashelmire »

solidasparagus wrote: post #322
loeg wrote: post #302

It's just crazy to many of us that a reinvented IRC is suddenly "not dead" and in vogue again. Not unbelievable, just kind of surprising how quickly text chat on a channel format was cloned, rebranded, and valued for billions.

Slack didn't clone text chat. They took the best parts of text chat, Facebook (reactions), Reddit (threads, edits) and terminals (simple UI for applications) and merged them into a single tool. I'm currently using HipChat and the difference is night and day. Slack makes large, busy chat rooms coherent in a way that just isn't possible with other text chats. And because of that, it opens new completely new possibiliti…

That was a great ad for Slack, but I don't think it's true. I've never had any issues with any other chat app. Many people still use Facebook chat and IRC and the functionality is basically identical between each of the new chat apps (well, except you can do way more with IRC).

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#644

Post by jdworrells »

granshaw wrote: post #568
Sahhaese wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The death of the protocol. People no longer release protocols, they release products. The open net, the open web has truly died. I wonder sometimes what we're missing because the conditions that let the web grow out of the internet have disappeared. What next leap are we missing?

There’s no money to be made in creating and building on open protocols. Without money to be made there’s no funding. Without funding there’s no way to create great experiences. Without great experiences nobody will use the thing. Pretty straightforward, really

Great experiences are dependent on funding? Going back to IRC, many of us had great experiences on there. USENET was a fountain of great experiences. All text mode. Or do you mean "great experiences" as in the kind of thing depicted in Subaru commercials where they are selling the car as a gateway to beautiful mountaintop sunsets and beach picnics?

Great experiences come from true utility and functionality. Not putting lipstick on a pig and calling it The Next Best Thing That Will Make You Happy And Productive.

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#645

Post by el_cujo »

ccantana wrote: post #621
beatgammit wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with the UX of IRC? IRC is a protocol, not a specific client, and it supports a wide variety of server and client plugins. We had a really nice IRC going productively for a year or two, but we scrapped it because only our software developer used it and other people in the company preferred something else (they used a mix of email, Google chat/hangouts, and text). The nice thing about IRC is that everyone…

> What's wrong with the UX of IRC? One sentence later: > ...we scrapped it because only our software developer used it and other people in the company preferred something else (they used a mix of email, Google chat/hangouts, and text). Clearly something was wrong with the UX if only one person was willing to use it? This place is a parody of itself sometimes.

I think they may have left off the "s" from developers, based on context it seems like there must have been multiple people who liked it enough to build plugins. Sounds more like a "developers vs. management" kind of thing rather than "our one IT guy tried to sell the whole company on IRC".

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#646

Post by sureaboutthis »

ebiester wrote: post #627
sureaboutthis wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I predict that, one year from now, few people will be talking about Slack and, two years from now, Slack will be teetering on insolvency.

Those 50 largest customers are unlikely to move away within the next two years, and neither are most businesses. I can see someone worry about growth, but they're not going away in 2 years.

Two years ago, those 50 customers weren't using Slack at all. It will be just as easy for them to leave.

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#647

Post by tombert »

monsieurbanana wrote: post #629
hackerpacker wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, I don't think anyone accused slack, with multi-megabyte webpages and even worse mobile app, of being a great experience. I think I used it once, and said no more.

I've met only a few programmers IRL that complained about slack, and even then it was for ideological reasons, not user experience reasons. Everyone else, most programmers and all non-programmers I know like the user experience. I haven't had any real issues with desktop or mobile apps either.

I use Slack for work, and while it was an order of magnitude better than the dumpster-fire of Hipchat (which it replaced for our team), I still think that the interface is kind of "meh".

Custom emojis are fun, inline markdown is useful, but it takes a lot of memory for something that, to me, seems like it should be lightweight. We've had IM since the 80's, after all. There's a part of me that has a visceral reaction to seeing an IM client taking more than 100mb of memory (though to be fair they seem to be getting improving that a lot.

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#648

Post by dopeboy »

ashelmire wrote: post #643
solidasparagus wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack didn't clone text chat. They took the best parts of text chat, Facebook (reactions), Reddit (threads, edits) and terminals (simple UI for applications) and merged them into a single tool. I'm currently using HipChat and the difference is night and day. Slack makes large, busy chat rooms coherent in a way that just isn't possible with other text chats. And because of that, it opens new completely new possibiliti…

That was a great ad for Slack, but I don't think it's true. I've never had any issues with any other chat app. Many people still use Facebook chat and IRC and the functionality is basically identical between each of the new chat apps (well, except you can do way more with IRC).

I want to respectfully challenge this - many people do still use those tools and still will. But the user experience in Slack is objectively better, especially with large rooms with frequent content (as the OP mentions).

I lived in IRC in the late 90s and early 2000s. IRC is fantastic and open and federated. But if I want to get things done with a team, I'll pick Slack everytime.

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#649

Post by antidaily »

ashelmire wrote: post #643
solidasparagus wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack didn't clone text chat. They took the best parts of text chat, Facebook (reactions), Reddit (threads, edits) and terminals (simple UI for applications) and merged them into a single tool. I'm currently using HipChat and the difference is night and day. Slack makes large, busy chat rooms coherent in a way that just isn't possible with other text chats. And because of that, it opens new completely new possibiliti…

That was a great ad for Slack, but I don't think it's true. I've never had any issues with any other chat app. Many people still use Facebook chat and IRC and the functionality is basically identical between each of the new chat apps (well, except you can do way more with IRC).

Lowly Skype does just about everything Slack does. Though, they added "channels" after Slack.

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#650

Post by granshaw »

jdworrells wrote: post #644
granshaw wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no money to be made in creating and building on open protocols. Without money to be made there’s no funding. Without funding there’s no way to create great experiences. Without great experiences nobody will use the thing. Pretty straightforward, really

Great experiences are dependent on funding? Going back to IRC, many of us had great experiences on there. USENET was a fountain of great experiences. All text mode. Or do you mean "great experiences" as in the kind of thing depicted in Subaru commercials where they are selling the car as a gateway to beautiful mountaintop sunsets and beach picnics? Great experiences come from true utility and functionality. Not putti…

Try to get the average office worker to use IRC today and see how far that gets you. It really behooves Engineers to put themselves in the shoes of actual users once in a while
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