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In the 90s Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was extremely popular, you connect to a public server, and join a #channel and chat with people, send files, share links et

by bossx 11y ago

In the 90s Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was extremely popular, you connect to a public server, and join a #channel and chat with people, send files, share links etc. There were thousands of ways to extend IRC, through custom clients, bots, scripts. Slack builds upon a lot of core concepts that IRC had but differs in a few ways. 1) Simplicity, you can get up and running in a few minutes and have your whole team connected. 2) Managed hosting, maintenance and client updates 3) Excellent UX, features are intuitive and new features are introduced with guidance 4) Cross platform support and fast mobile clients 5) Integrations, being able to push and pull data across you apps from the place your entire team can communicate is incredibly powerful. The discoverability and ease of deployment (some can be deployed in a few minutes). I think they have a great position in the SMB market. Surprisingly some enterprise organizations still use IRC internally due to the control they have over server/data etc. There is probably an opportunity for Slack to develop an on-premise solution for enterprise.

distances 11y ago
I was a bit hesitant first when our company first started using Flowdock (a Slack competitor), but it turned out to be just great. For example: flows (or chat rooms) with inbox for integrations to e-mail, GitHub, CI and so on -- discussion can be directly related to a certain item, such as a failed build! And of course, discussion threads. This is something Slack still doesn't have, and is a one of the reasons to stay with Flowdock instead. Everyone knows what happens with IRC channels when there's hundreds of people and multiple simultaneous discussions. Good luck trying to follow the conversation if you weren't following it realtime. That said, it sadly seems that Slack will eat the whole pie, and it is probably the most future-proof choice at the moment.

by bossx 11y ago

distances 11y ago

I was a bit hesitant first when our company first started using Flowdock (a Slack competitor), but it turned out to be just great. For example: flows (or chat rooms) with inbox for integrations to e-mail, GitHub, CI and so on -- discussion can be directly related to a certain item, such as a failed build! And of course, discussion threads. This is something Slack still doesn't have, and is a one of the reasons to stay with Flowdock instead. Everyone knows what happens with IRC channels when there's hundreds of people and multiple simultaneous discussions. Good luck trying to follow the conversation if you weren't following it realtime. That said, it sadly seems that Slack will eat the whole pie, and it is probably the most future-proof choice at the moment.