Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

Post by kbenson » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:39 PM UTC

NDizzle wrote: post #60

kbenson wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Have you ever looked at Discord? Slack isn't the only choice if you want a nice UI that works on all of your devices. https://discordapp.com/

Post by hiou » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:39 PM UTC

harryjo wrote: post #16

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…

Time to update the old canard. "If you could have invented Slack... you would have invented Slack." Execution is everything.

Post by mi100hael » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:41 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #19

mackmgg wrote: post #14

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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…

It's also crazy easy to dump your Slack history out of Slack, as well as use their Discovery API, to have a competing service interrogate your team configuration and replicate it in a new service. Maybe not one click import, but it wouldn't be painful to move. Perhaps an open source utility will be written that can package all of the content and metadata required for your chat service up as a JSON bundle for import e…

Post by KevanM » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:41 PM UTC

Eridrus wrote: post #63

Latty wrote: post #27

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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…

Slack is undoubtedly better than IRC, but so is Flowdock or HipChat and the other players that existed in this space before. Slack's innovation was getting a huge funding round, blowing it on advertising to mainstream non-tech markets and trying to build a competitive moat with 3rd party integrations that other developers are incentivized to make on their own due to Slack's large user base.

Post by fizzbatter » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:44 PM UTC

reitanqild wrote: post #62

fizzbatter wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I can't think of a single feature they've done that is innovative. This reminds me a lot of HN dismissing Dropbox on the original show HN or something: "We have git, rsync, FTP. We can hack something like this together in an afternoon." Except that was before Dropbox went ahead to become a huge success. This time we are saying this after Slack has already established itself. :-]