Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN? You've done that a lot, and we ban accounts that do it repeatedly. I don't want to ban you, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN more as intended from now on, we'd be grateful.
I am having trouble understanding the myriad communications/chat apps out there that don't seem to do much more than what we older folk used to do on USENET.
Then there's all the clones of more modern platforms. Things like Whatsup.
It just seems to me there are, as a friend of mine used to say, "too many useless duplicates". Meaning, most of it is a huge waste of time.
So, what am I missing about Slack specifically? What unique differentiation makes this worthy of anyone investing their nest egg on their stock?
I honestly want to know. BTW, I have used Slack. I think it's horrible. I don't see much improvement over, say, a phpBB site (which can be deployed privately inside of a network or on the internet).
phpBB and USENET are not the right comparisons; Slack is comparable to IRC: real-time chat. It's not the only one, it's just one of the most successful re-implementations.
Slack is great at managing "read/unread" state across my 4 devices even in messy mobile networking situations. Good threading tools allow conversations to remain sandboxed and not gum up entire channels. Do these improvements justify the valuation? Maybe not, especially given how many other comms apps have a similar feature set. But for the vast majority of realtime modern workplace communication use-cases, IRC or a bulletin board will not cut it
I’ve missed important messages at critical times due to their mobile app not providing me notification as configured (ios). Syncing across devices is handled nicely though.
Some smaller companies essentially run customer service directly through Slack. It can be pretty nifty in that a customer support message thread can easily be rerouted to a developer if it involves a bug, attached to an issue, which then notifies the customer service team that the bug is resolved once the code branch is pushed to master and deployed.
Other use cases can be simple things like notifying teams when you get new subscribers, reporting metrics/charts that are displayed in a thread versus pushed via email (allowing newly joined channel members, etc. to scroll through.
I'm not saying any of these are game changes by themselves, but they each bring incremental value.
As someone who tracks system outages of Saas for my company, Slack has been really bad the last few months.
I’m consistently seeing problems on the back end that manifest to users of the service.
Critical functions like direct messages, search, mentions, app integration, app approvals are always popping up in their system status feed.
The only reason Slack caught on was businesses prior to that had AIM, Skype, or Hangouts at their disposal. AIM was agnostic across devices but depended on the user to set it up. Skype was either the personal version or the business version but you then were locked into using that to communicate. Hangouts requires Google services, which not a lot of businesses had.
Slack came out of nowhere and offered a myriad of services. It integrated with a lot and made it like AIM from 2008 when I used it at a company I worked for.
Slack seems to have something going on internally on the dev side because the consistent errors I see daily indicate they’re fixing something. Either addressing long term problems or just day to day fires.
I’ve considered Mattermost self hosted for my org. Works just like Slack but I can manage updates and I own all the data we put into it.
> The only reason Slack caught on was businesses prior to that had AIM, Skype, or Hangouts at their disposal.
At least in the case of AIM, that’s not true, as aol switched to using slack from aim internally quite a bit before aim was decommissioned. Aim was absolute garbage for work communication and pretty much every team started using slack organically before the company bought an enterprise license.
Desktop only applications that allow you to chat in rooms/channels/teams but just as, if not more buggier/slower/featureless than irc/aol on a computer and modem i had over 10 years ago. Can someone explain to me why anyone would use this outside of work or was it simply not designed for personal use?
On mobile it’s essentially a chat application that you’re forced to use for work, most likely on your personal cell phone. I’m willing to be convinced of the enormous valuation.
I just don’t understand investing in chat app companies. Throughout my life the popular chat app has totally changed every few years: ytalk, aim, icq, msn messenger, yahoo messenger, gtalk, bbm, skype, fb messenger, sms, group me, iMessage, whats app, slack, discord
What is the chance that people will still be using slack in a few years. Esp considering mattermost is free and discord people argue is better today.
It’s great they tried to build a biz on office chat, but it seems overpriced considering it’s just another chat app
19 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 61.8 ms ] thread> Revenue: $145 million, vs. $140.7 million as expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv.
So they beat estimates in both cases and the stock fell? Am i misreading this?
I am having trouble understanding the myriad communications/chat apps out there that don't seem to do much more than what we older folk used to do on USENET.
Then there's all the clones of more modern platforms. Things like Whatsup.
It just seems to me there are, as a friend of mine used to say, "too many useless duplicates". Meaning, most of it is a huge waste of time.
So, what am I missing about Slack specifically? What unique differentiation makes this worthy of anyone investing their nest egg on their stock?
I honestly want to know. BTW, I have used Slack. I think it's horrible. I don't see much improvement over, say, a phpBB site (which can be deployed privately inside of a network or on the internet).
Other use cases can be simple things like notifying teams when you get new subscribers, reporting metrics/charts that are displayed in a thread versus pushed via email (allowing newly joined channel members, etc. to scroll through.
I'm not saying any of these are game changes by themselves, but they each bring incremental value.
I’m consistently seeing problems on the back end that manifest to users of the service.
Critical functions like direct messages, search, mentions, app integration, app approvals are always popping up in their system status feed.
The only reason Slack caught on was businesses prior to that had AIM, Skype, or Hangouts at their disposal. AIM was agnostic across devices but depended on the user to set it up. Skype was either the personal version or the business version but you then were locked into using that to communicate. Hangouts requires Google services, which not a lot of businesses had.
Slack came out of nowhere and offered a myriad of services. It integrated with a lot and made it like AIM from 2008 when I used it at a company I worked for.
Slack seems to have something going on internally on the dev side because the consistent errors I see daily indicate they’re fixing something. Either addressing long term problems or just day to day fires.
I’ve considered Mattermost self hosted for my org. Works just like Slack but I can manage updates and I own all the data we put into it.
Interested to hear what others are using.
At least in the case of AIM, that’s not true, as aol switched to using slack from aim internally quite a bit before aim was decommissioned. Aim was absolute garbage for work communication and pretty much every team started using slack organically before the company bought an enterprise license.
Adding chat history and search was game changing.
What is the chance that people will still be using slack in a few years. Esp considering mattermost is free and discord people argue is better today.
It’s great they tried to build a biz on office chat, but it seems overpriced considering it’s just another chat app