Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft • Hacker News Board

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#81

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

mercer wrote: post #72

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…

Plus, Microsoft can throw engineering power at integrating their 'clone' with all their other tools. While I can't seem myself buying into their ecosystem anytime soon, that's a huge advantage that will be hard for Slack to compete with.

I'd imaginethe developers of the products integrating their own things into Slack would give more and better thingts than Microsoft integrating other products into their things. We'll have to see if people start shifting where they integrate.

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#82

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:46 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#83

Post by kirubakaran » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:46 PM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #51

hrayr wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Slack is going to look dumb if it ever sues Microsoft. "But, your honor, Slack told the world they welcome competition from us in this infamous letter from November 2016!"

I get your point, but, if an anti-trust suit ever happened, it would be DoJ that sues MS, not Slack.

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#84

Post by Latty » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:46 PM UTC

fizzbatter wrote: post #79

reitanqild wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. :-]

So what? you don't have to innovate to be a success, that's where a lot of HNers get stuck imo. Sure, i'm not calling Slack amazing - but i very clearly said i use slack, love it, pay for it and recommend it. I used Dropbox too. I don't think anyone here is claiming Slack isn't a massive success. Nor that the product is any less great because it's not innovative. A comment like: > This time we are saying this after S…

The general response in the thread was hoping that Slack would get gutted and dismissing it as trivial. Not being 'innovative' isn't a sin. Thinking there is nothing to learn from slack sounds like a mistaking to me.

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#85

Post by intoverflow2 » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:47 PM UTC

fizzbatter wrote: post #45

Latty wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>What slack did far more than UI, was UX. Top to bottom, it's a very nice UX. It's why i love Slack.

I don't think they even do that well, it's a complete nightmare finding anything on slack beyond the last 24 hours.

What Slack did well was branding and marketing.

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#86

Post by sciolistse » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:49 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/

Discords the voice chat works great and is super easy.. But without search there's just no way it could replace Slack for us.

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#87

Post by wubalub » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:50 PM UTC

I've been using skype for text messaging pretty constantly for the last 3 years, and I'm not sure why people hate it so. it has groups, 1-1 chat and video. Searching history can be a bit of a pain, but everything else seems to be there. Sometimes I wonder what I'm missing.

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#88

Post by 6stringmerc » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:53 PM UTC

mcphage wrote: post #26

harryjo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Execution is everything. Execution is a lot, but so is timing. Execution can be controlled, timing is mostly luck.

From a creative sector perspective, this claim holds a lot of merit as well. A correlative phrase I've heard is "Success is preparation meeting luck" because the sands of time are littered with well executed failures. In many fields!

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#89

Post by mikestew » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:53 PM UTC

zzguy wrote: post #48

_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

Lync, was the that the app whose Mac client I've never seen run without crashing shortly after startup, on multiple machines across multiple companies? That's right, I've never successfully used the Mac Lync client to send a message, despite having it installed on probably three or four machines over time.

That's not to say that Slack doesn't have a lot to worry about. But competition from Lync, or whatever the hell they call it this week, is not one of those things.

Re: Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft

#90

Post by asurty » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:54 PM UTC

Microsoft has lost my trust in them after what happened to me with Skype. I was one of the many victims who had their account hacked. The worst part was how their customer support handled the issue. They almost gave me an ulcer by trying to convince me that it was probably a virus on my computer causing the problem. Look at your own Skype forums people! Be transparent, own up to having problems, and fix it!

Communication is extremely important to me. That said, if all the employees in my company were only using 'Teams', 'Skype for business', 'Lync' or any other POS out of Microsoft then I'd be looking for a new job.