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 luck to get users. How were the people at Slack not thinking "Holy shit, people are paying for this!" the entire time like it was a dream. 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.
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 isn't a world away from IRC or email - but it's enough better that people want to use it, that's good. I'm not sure where all the hate comes from.
They did far more than "added a pretty UI". I used IRC for years, and getting it to do the things I use Slack for (mobile interface, file transfers, a half dozen API integrations, near instant search, etc etc) was either painful or impossible.
Also, if all it took was a pretty UI, companies like Hipchat would have been the winner years ago. I mean, Slack has a better UI in my opinion than Hipchat, but it's an example of taking the basics of IRC and slapping an interface of it.
Besides that though, I agree this letter was pretty stupid.
Slack is winning exactly for the same reason that the iPhone did, and you're misjudging it for the same reason that a lot of people misjudged Apple: It's all about execution. The first iPhone had the same features as previous phones, but those features were executed so much better than the competition. Slack is the same way. It's an evolutionary product with a revolutionary execution, and should be rightly praised for being innovative in an industry that often moves in surprisingly slow ways — which the state of IRC, HipChat, Skype etc. shows needed serious disruption.
And as with the iPhone, Slack is facing the same problem: Once you've shown how things _can_ be done, everyone else will jump on the same wandwagon.
(I realize you didn't say anything that contradicts the above; this is more about the dismissive attitude towards leaders like Slack.)
>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 something new. Most slower to react companies are still using Lync, and probably won't ever switch to Slack.
The reason I use Slack is because it is better than any of the alternatives, but I wouldn't hesitate to switch to something better if it comes around.
I know from a technical standpoint Slack is just a pretty UI on top of IRC. However, consider for instance, one of the Slack teams I use on a daily basis is a law firm. The difference of getting users at a non-tech company, such as a law firm, to use a chat client like Slack vs an IRC client is a huge chasm.
I've been guilty several times myself of saying UIs or veneers over long existing technology isn't that impressive and dismissing companies that do so, but companies have made billions doing just that.
> 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.
It is kind of amazing that Slack are the only chat system out of dozens our hundreds who can make a UI that doesn't suck (I wouldn't even call Slack good), but evidence would suggest it's true.
> Yes, that scrappy startup Microsoft will not have too much trouble implementing a chat room and they don't need luck to get users.
Well they've tried four or five times and always managed to screw it up.
Yes, Slack's core tech has been around for decades now, and that it is pretty much a gussied up IRC with some bots. But they found that IRC is awesome for what it does and they found that businesses needed something like IRC with bots. Luck is for sure what they have, but they also followed it up. A favorite site of mine recently had a post on follow-through [0]. I'll quote the part that is relevant to Slack:
"There’s a dearth of people who know, or have the will, to do the stupidly easy stuff to be charming and successful. Let me give you just one example. Both off the air and on, guests of my podcast will tell me, “I can tell you actually read my book before this interview and I really appreciate that. It’s so rare.” I don’t bring this up to toot my own horn, but rather to point out how ridiculous it is that this might even be something worthy of mention! An interviewer reading someone’s work before asking them questions about it would seem like the barest of bare minimum job requirements — a prerequisite rather than something above and beyond. And yet the majority of podcasters aren’t even taking care of this most basic of basics. There are tons of people doing what you want to do, but how are they executing? In 90% of cases, not as well as they could be. That’s your opening. And such openings are absolutely everywhere." (emphasis from the source)
Slack is this to a T. It's simple stuff, but they followed through with it. They spent time on the code, on iterating, on making sure it was not just ok, but good. And as a result they are not eating Ramen anymore. Is MS going to squish them? Who knows?! What we do know is that Slack is capable of following through with this product and the MS has a history of not being able to do so. I'd put the money into Slack over MS in the long run. But we will have to wait and see if MS will dump enough cash into their competitor to squish them out before MS runs out of follow-through and bureaucratic stamina.
Agree that "it's a chat room" but it's also a chat room that's pretty well entrenched at this point, hooked into a lot of people's entire operational workflows thanks to API hooks and bots, etc.
In short, they are entrenched and have done a great job of ensuring that the cost of switching is high enough that it's going to take a lot of justification to get somebody to take the time to make the move.
All they really have to do is avoid a colossal screw up.
Your absolutely right. There is really nothing innovative here. But never underestimate the power of eye-candy.
Think about apple products. You could throw your hands up and say "but there's nothing innovative here! they just built a pretty UI on top of BSD and people have been using Unix operating systems for 50 years!". True, but it's the pretty UI that connects it to the masses.
Slack took a concept that has been done to death (a chat server) and made it useable and accessible. I remember years ago installing pidgin, psi and adium at work because they all ran on different operating system and som guru had to configure an XMPP server somewhere in the company. Then at home i'd fire up mirc to work on some open source. My daughter would come home and hop onto yahoo chat so she could send terrible looking ascii/emoji bling to all her friends.
Yesterday i came into work and some guy came over and saw i had slack up and said, "whoa i love slack, do we have a company server for this?" I said, "yep". He said "send me an invite! i'm gonna go get my boss on this". That sort of emotional reaction to a product I think is what makes something a success.
I a chat room innovative? no. But i think success can't really be wholly described in terms of innovation either. Somehow software has to connect with real people (iXXX - because i own it?) and get people to buy into it like a brand of blue jeans.
We have IRC at work. Some people suggested switching to an open-source slack clone - with IRC integration! But... why? IRC works fine. It'd just be one more thing to maintain.
(My firm is largely made up of old school unix hackers. I can see the appeal of something with a better UI and better integration than IRC for some, but when half the company are the type to run CLI IRC clients, it seems unnecessary.)
Also worth checking out the history of MindAlign [0] corporate group chat software. It's been around since pre-2000 (originally built in house by UBS) and has supported channels, offline chat history, bots and embeddable status widgets for years. So it's true, Slack isn't all that innovative - although they've done a much better sales job as MindAlign was only ever used (and still is) by a tiny number of companies!
The fun thing is that Microsoft bought the product back in 2007 and sold it again pretty quickly but not before taking a bunch of the code and using it in their own group chat product (never as effectively as the original app, perhaps until now Slack have come along and shown them how valuable a product like that can be...)
I think you're under estimating the amount of time and effort that goes into to making an ergonomic and approachable user interface, that both your technical teams and nontechnical teams enjoy using.
Sure someone can replicate it, but I think you're underestimating the value of it. Like IRC could have the best features in the world but for the users who do not find it approachable it may as well not exist.
> I'm sure Slack will continue with much success now that they have their user base
If they don't add something that is innovative I'm not so sure. I see companies and people who raved about it 10 months dropping it just as fast all around me.
Yes, it's IRC with a pretty interface. But that interface is comfy and useful. Juggling multiple devices is seamless. It keeps your history and you can search it.
Not rocket science, sure, but not bad either. It's a step up from IRC.
The big difference for me is that with Slack anyone can create their own network with their own plethora of channels. You can't really compare it with traditional IRC where everyone is on the same IRC network.
I thought the same thing with VNC. GotoMyPC took something that was free, improved it, then made a fortune on it. While the technology improvements were notable, I think their success was derived from marketing.
Not only that, on those days doing an IRC like server and chat client was a common programming exercise at the network programming classes on the university I attending.
I remember thinking this to myself about five billion times back when Twitter blew up right as we were all busy writing Twitter-like Rails apps for fun. Timing is everything.
IIRC IRC doesn't switch messages to your phone when you close your computer. In fact I think IRC messages don't even tell the sender that you're offline.
The Bloomberg Terminal lock-in strikes me as a similar walled garden of sorts and ripe for upstarts to break the grasp in time. Not overnight, of course, but in time.
Or it is "time", or marketing, or just because it is mobile first.
You could say the same about what's app, Instagram and others. Maybe it is not just about the big picture. Maybe they are successful because of small things like knowing they will always work when you need.
1) They decided to mess with a company having $500B in-cash
2) Which decided to attack their low barrier-to-entry market
3) And took the unusual revealing step of building its own instead of buying
4) And is playing in its comfort zone (productivity tools, Office, API, cloud-scale integration points : azure, azure marketplace etc...)
5) While having a pool of 90M trustful paying customers and the ability to provide them the same offering for free in less than 1 second.
The worst they could do was to help Microsoft define this offering as a direct competition. But this is just what they did with this arrogant and high-schoolish "Welcome" letter.
What really has me roll my eyes here is the way they think that they can be frontal with a corporation like Microsoft playing in its comfort zone and having the dollars we know they have.
This will cost them a lot. You can't easily backtrack from that and even if they somehow manage to do it, by the time they get there, Teams will have already seized a good chunk of their user base.
When Steve Jobs "Welcomed IBM" with a full page ad, it was fun. It fit the vibe of who he was and the slightly rebellious marketing campaigns Apple was running. Slack's "Welcome Microsoft" letter felt weird. It felt disconnected from the company and product many of us love and use every day. Might have been stronger to silently add a feature to Slack that lets you communicate with Microsoft Team's members.
Slack's letter appears to betray defensiveness and fear of competition, rather than a tongue-in-cheek attitude like Apple's ad did. I think that's why it seems weird.
ICQ, AIM, MSN Messenger and IRC were all entrenched at different points in time.
To give a parallel, so were Teamspeak, Ventrillo, Mumble, Raidcall, Xfire or whatever have you (for gaming at least).
Chat rooms and VOIP solutions are commodities and have been for a decade or more. Sure, some companies do some more value-add than others in terms of service and support, but at the end of the day it's still a commodity and no amount of rationalization and wishful thinking will change that.
Which is why their mimicking of Apple ad seems condescending and arrogant. Personal PCs were at the top of the technological know-how in the early 80s. Glorified chat rooms haven't been new or high tech for 20 years (IRC is how old?). In fact the only innovation in recent years seems to be end-to-end encryption, which Microsoft seems to be on board with.
Our entire company switched to Slack within basically a day. While that's a big selling point for Slack's ease of use, it also means it'd be easy to switch away to a competitor within a day too.
My prior experience with some of the now leadership of Slack indicates that they don't have sufficient moral authority for this kind of commentary anyway.
Between this and the debate around the new macbooks/surface-studio, Microsoft is having very good week in terms on gaining some mindshare and good-will from the technorati and the (traditionally) anti-microsoft press.
Slack is great. I'm part of many slack communities and until they move I'll stay (although they are all in the free-tier). While the many millions who are already part of the O365 subscription base (and who probably don't even know slack or why they need them) won't have reason to start a community on Slack I think Slack is safe in the short-run with those who don't pay the "MS-tax" or those who are already part of existing slack communities.
And while Slack is a great product (as the IRC on steroids that it is) it is easy to replicate and so MS now did.
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.
The essential issue here is this - starting with the Fortune 500, how far down the business size stack do you have to go before this question stops being a laughing out loud no-brainer:
"Shall we buy more-or-less the same chat application
from Microsoft or Slack?"
Surprised by the tone of this. It's Slack declaring cultural war to Microsoft. All values subverted, what is praise is actually negative admiration (envy basically), probably based on fear. Kind of gramscian stuff what they did. Very unexpected and unnecessary. Unless they wanted to do some noise because of marketing? I guess they got scared but doesn't sound like Slack needs that. Wonder why they bought this battle this soon.
[+] [-] Mc_Big_G|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Latty|9 years ago|reply
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 isn't a world away from IRC or email - but it's enough better that people want to use it, that's good. I'm not sure where all the hate comes from.
[+] [-] jonheller|9 years ago|reply
Also, if all it took was a pretty UI, companies like Hipchat would have been the winner years ago. I mean, Slack has a better UI in my opinion than Hipchat, but it's an example of taking the basics of IRC and slapping an interface of it.
Besides that though, I agree this letter was pretty stupid.
[+] [-] lobster_johnson|9 years ago|reply
And the iPhone was just a phone with a pretty UI.
Slack is winning exactly for the same reason that the iPhone did, and you're misjudging it for the same reason that a lot of people misjudged Apple: It's all about execution. The first iPhone had the same features as previous phones, but those features were executed so much better than the competition. Slack is the same way. It's an evolutionary product with a revolutionary execution, and should be rightly praised for being innovative in an industry that often moves in surprisingly slow ways — which the state of IRC, HipChat, Skype etc. shows needed serious disruption.
And as with the iPhone, Slack is facing the same problem: Once you've shown how things _can_ be done, everyone else will jump on the same wandwagon.
(I realize you didn't say anything that contradicts the above; this is more about the dismissive attitude towards leaders like Slack.)
[+] [-] mackmgg|9 years ago|reply
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 something new. Most slower to react companies are still using Lync, and probably won't ever switch to Slack.
The reason I use Slack is because it is better than any of the alternatives, but I wouldn't hesitate to switch to something better if it comes around.
[+] [-] harryjo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buckbova|9 years ago|reply
> Slack could have done what most companies do when a competitor rips them off, and said nothing.
Someone competing in your space is NOT ripping you off.
[+] [-] nkw|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lmm|9 years ago|reply
It is kind of amazing that Slack are the only chat system out of dozens our hundreds who can make a UI that doesn't suck (I wouldn't even call Slack good), but evidence would suggest it's true.
> Yes, that scrappy startup Microsoft will not have too much trouble implementing a chat room and they don't need luck to get users.
Well they've tried four or five times and always managed to screw it up.
[+] [-] Balgair|9 years ago|reply
Yes, Slack's core tech has been around for decades now, and that it is pretty much a gussied up IRC with some bots. But they found that IRC is awesome for what it does and they found that businesses needed something like IRC with bots. Luck is for sure what they have, but they also followed it up. A favorite site of mine recently had a post on follow-through [0]. I'll quote the part that is relevant to Slack:
"There’s a dearth of people who know, or have the will, to do the stupidly easy stuff to be charming and successful. Let me give you just one example. Both off the air and on, guests of my podcast will tell me, “I can tell you actually read my book before this interview and I really appreciate that. It’s so rare.” I don’t bring this up to toot my own horn, but rather to point out how ridiculous it is that this might even be something worthy of mention! An interviewer reading someone’s work before asking them questions about it would seem like the barest of bare minimum job requirements — a prerequisite rather than something above and beyond. And yet the majority of podcasters aren’t even taking care of this most basic of basics. There are tons of people doing what you want to do, but how are they executing? In 90% of cases, not as well as they could be. That’s your opening. And such openings are absolutely everywhere." (emphasis from the source)
Slack is this to a T. It's simple stuff, but they followed through with it. They spent time on the code, on iterating, on making sure it was not just ok, but good. And as a result they are not eating Ramen anymore. Is MS going to squish them? Who knows?! What we do know is that Slack is capable of following through with this product and the MS has a history of not being able to do so. I'd put the money into Slack over MS in the long run. But we will have to wait and see if MS will dump enough cash into their competitor to squish them out before MS runs out of follow-through and bureaucratic stamina.
[0]http://www.artofmanliness.com/2016/10/10/myth-scarcity-12-st...
[+] [-] brightball|9 years ago|reply
In short, they are entrenched and have done a great job of ensuring that the cost of switching is high enough that it's going to take a lot of justification to get somebody to take the time to make the move.
All they really have to do is avoid a colossal screw up.
[+] [-] geofft|9 years ago|reply
And they didn't even add it, Metalab did. http://metalab.co/projects/slack/
[+] [-] ascotan|9 years ago|reply
Think about apple products. You could throw your hands up and say "but there's nothing innovative here! they just built a pretty UI on top of BSD and people have been using Unix operating systems for 50 years!". True, but it's the pretty UI that connects it to the masses.
Slack took a concept that has been done to death (a chat server) and made it useable and accessible. I remember years ago installing pidgin, psi and adium at work because they all ran on different operating system and som guru had to configure an XMPP server somewhere in the company. Then at home i'd fire up mirc to work on some open source. My daughter would come home and hop onto yahoo chat so she could send terrible looking ascii/emoji bling to all her friends.
Yesterday i came into work and some guy came over and saw i had slack up and said, "whoa i love slack, do we have a company server for this?" I said, "yep". He said "send me an invite! i'm gonna go get my boss on this". That sort of emotional reaction to a product I think is what makes something a success.
I a chat room innovative? no. But i think success can't really be wholly described in terms of innovation either. Somehow software has to connect with real people (iXXX - because i own it?) and get people to buy into it like a brand of blue jeans.
[+] [-] greenshackle2|9 years ago|reply
(My firm is largely made up of old school unix hackers. I can see the appeal of something with a better UI and better integration than IRC for some, but when half the company are the type to run CLI IRC clients, it seems unnecessary.)
[+] [-] barnabee|9 years ago|reply
The fun thing is that Microsoft bought the product back in 2007 and sold it again pretty quickly but not before taking a bunch of the code and using it in their own group chat product (never as effectively as the original app, perhaps until now Slack have come along and shown them how valuable a product like that can be...)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MindAlign
[+] [-] akst|9 years ago|reply
Sure someone can replicate it, but I think you're underestimating the value of it. Like IRC could have the best features in the world but for the users who do not find it approachable it may as well not exist.
[+] [-] tluyben2|9 years ago|reply
If they don't add something that is innovative I'm not so sure. I see companies and people who raved about it 10 months dropping it just as fast all around me.
[+] [-] Florin_Andrei|9 years ago|reply
Yes, it's IRC with a pretty interface. But that interface is comfy and useful. Juggling multiple devices is seamless. It keeps your history and you can search it.
Not rocket science, sure, but not bad either. It's a step up from IRC.
[+] [-] Kiro|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iblaine|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pjmlp|9 years ago|reply
Not only that, on those days doing an IRC like server and chat client was a common programming exercise at the network programming classes on the university I attending.
[+] [-] hyperbovine|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hrayr|9 years ago|reply
If only luck made slack, then doesn't that mean Microsoft will need to be equally lucky to succeed?
[+] [-] kevando|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 6stringmerc|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vit05|9 years ago|reply
Or it is "time", or marketing, or just because it is mobile first.
You could say the same about what's app, Instagram and others. Maybe it is not just about the big picture. Maybe they are successful because of small things like knowing they will always work when you need.
[+] [-] inthewoods|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cm2187|9 years ago|reply
I'd like to see them succeed with skype first. I still can't message someone using a mac from a pc...
[+] [-] oldmanjay|9 years ago|reply
Let's take this somewhere. So what if it's just luck? What useful information can we glean from your dismissal?
[+] [-] r2dnb|9 years ago|reply
1) They decided to mess with a company having $500B in-cash
2) Which decided to attack their low barrier-to-entry market
3) And took the unusual revealing step of building its own instead of buying
4) And is playing in its comfort zone (productivity tools, Office, API, cloud-scale integration points : azure, azure marketplace etc...)
5) While having a pool of 90M trustful paying customers and the ability to provide them the same offering for free in less than 1 second.
The worst they could do was to help Microsoft define this offering as a direct competition. But this is just what they did with this arrogant and high-schoolish "Welcome" letter.
What really has me roll my eyes here is the way they think that they can be frontal with a corporation like Microsoft playing in its comfort zone and having the dollars we know they have.
This will cost them a lot. You can't easily backtrack from that and even if they somehow manage to do it, by the time they get there, Teams will have already seized a good chunk of their user base.
[+] [-] fairpx|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twblalock|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antisthenes|9 years ago|reply
To give a parallel, so were Teamspeak, Ventrillo, Mumble, Raidcall, Xfire or whatever have you (for gaming at least).
Chat rooms and VOIP solutions are commodities and have been for a decade or more. Sure, some companies do some more value-add than others in terms of service and support, but at the end of the day it's still a commodity and no amount of rationalization and wishful thinking will change that.
Which is why their mimicking of Apple ad seems condescending and arrogant. Personal PCs were at the top of the technological know-how in the early 80s. Glorified chat rooms haven't been new or high tech for 20 years (IRC is how old?). In fact the only innovation in recent years seems to be end-to-end encryption, which Microsoft seems to be on board with.
[+] [-] nilkn|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshu|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JustSomeNobody|9 years ago|reply
Hubris is rarely a good quality.
[+] [-] CptJamesCook|9 years ago|reply
It's hard to imagine that anyone who read this came away with a positive perception of Slack.
[+] [-] 627467|9 years ago|reply
Slack is great. I'm part of many slack communities and until they move I'll stay (although they are all in the free-tier). While the many millions who are already part of the O365 subscription base (and who probably don't even know slack or why they need them) won't have reason to start a community on Slack I think Slack is safe in the short-run with those who don't pay the "MS-tax" or those who are already part of existing slack communities.
And while Slack is a great product (as the IRC on steroids that it is) it is easy to replicate and so MS now did.
[+] [-] fcc_authorized|9 years ago|reply
Ah, Silicon Valley. Where growing slowly is the same as being already dead
[+] [-] metilda|9 years ago|reply
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dear%20microsoft&sort=byPopula...
[+] [-] binarytransform|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] muad|9 years ago|reply
A native ui for IRC with some extra features.
Their valuation is laughable and is a prime example of the bubble forming in vc tech.
[+] [-] wubalub|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lifeisstillgood|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sebastianconcpt|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _pmf_|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] romanovcode|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rrdharan|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mbarty|9 years ago|reply
Ref: Paul graham : Microsoft is Dead http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html
[+] [-] romanovcode|9 years ago|reply