4 ms·

While you are right that it's very similar to IRC etc you are completely missing the fundamental reason Slack et al are popular: user experience, especially for

by oskarth 11y ago

While you are right that it's very similar to IRC etc you are completely missing the fundamental reason Slack et al are popular: user experience, especially for non-technical people. Not everyone grew up on IRC with bouncers, irssi on a remote server, and their own server where they could upload attachments to in a single keystroke. Now it's true that there are new alternatives for non-technical people such as IRCCloud, but (a) it costs money for individuals (b) it's frankly not as good, UX-wise. Hence not as popular.

wh-uws 11y ago
THANK YOU. This is why slack is winning. They took many of the concepts of what makes irc great abd put a much better user experience on top. Why is that so hard for people to understand? This happens over and over again. - Google wasn't the first search engine. - Facebook wasn't the first social network. - Microsoft didn't build the first operating system. They all just did it in a way that appealed to mass amounts of users.
- babuskov 11y ago
  I have no idea why you were down-voted. It's the truth. Now, to answer why is it so hard to understand? Many people here are programmers/engineers and fail to understand how marketing and nice packaging can sell. Especially if they are old enough to know how IRC works. To extend what you wrote, I'd compare Slack with iPhone. All the tech. to build the iPhone was there, but Apple managed to put it all together in beautiful, easy to use package. Slack is the iPhone in its area.
  - nothrabannosir 11y ago
    Because it's a platitude that has been repeated ad nauseam, and we get it. The GP gets it. As he explains in OP's sister comment.
  - cromwellian 11y ago
    Think of it this way. Did the Web Browser need to be a proprietary closed protocol in order for the massive improvement over Gopher/WAIS or other end user hypertext information systems back then? No, Netscape/Mozilla didn't need to "own" HTTP and HTML completely, and turn the Web into a giant App Store in order to innovate in the Browser client, neither did Google, Apple, or MS. At various points, proprietary extensions were tried, and either failed, or got standardized when they became popular or proven their need. All Praise to Slack's UI, I love all the flourishes, like auto-detection of paste of code bits and offering to create snippets. I get it, I really do. I just don't think we need another messaging platform owned by a single company.
    - sly010 11y ago
      Actually, many features of the modern web (DOM, XmlHttpRequest, box-sizing: border-box) were implemented by IE first. Unfortunately it's not in the best interest of anyone capable of engineering open/distributed platforms to actually do so. Why would they? It's way easier and more profitable to create something on your own terms, something you can control. I would risk that it's better for the customer. People are flocking from WordPress to SquareSpace, from self hosted SMTP servers to Google, from private hosting to cloud hosting. Is this a good thing in the long term? I don't think so either, but doing it any other way would be heroism and we are short on heroes.
    - vincentleeuwen 11y ago
      I agree, but you can't blame them for trying to stretch their monopoly imo
  - matthewmacleod 11y ago
    Yes, we all know and agree with their statement, but it's also not what was being said. UI is absolutely important to getting users on to a platform It's also a totally distinct issue from the network used for communication. There's no reason we can't have a good UX with an open protocol too, and that's what was being talked about.
  - FatalBaboon 11y ago
    I think you're missing cromwellian's point: you could have made the same thing while upholding open values. For example if it was a rich client based on IRC, I could join in on a chat without being a slack customer. I could also be a customer of a competitor that would offer something similar, but more tailored to my usage. Now that would move the chat ecosystem further. But that is not happening, because Slack's business model is hegemonic: they want everyone to use Slack to maximize profits.
    - yoz-y 11y ago
      But then you would need to handle all the trouble that come from multiple clients. What if somebody makes a CLI client that does not support file transfers? The experience of official client's users would be worse because now they can't be sure that the other side can do the same things they do. If the protocol were to be upgraded then one would have to wait for all of the vendors to support the new features or we would end up working with the common denominator. Real world examples are hardly scarce, we see this thing in the open web with myriad (semi-) proprietary extensions. Samsung has also hard time getting developer support for their unique features. In the end, the end users would suffer because of inconsistencies. Open platforms are good, but in my opinion they will always lag in user experience behind well executed proprietary solutions.
      - FatalBaboon 11y ago
        Additional features that can't gracefully degrade would be a selling point for slack. "Your client does not seem to support video calls, we do, purchase an account here". When it comes to file transfers, a simple link to download the file from slack.com is a good degradation example. Once Slack is installed and the norm, you lose some choice. You're prisoner of the way they want chat to be. I'm sure glad Firefox exists, because otherwise I'd have to hop in the Chrome bandgwagon and sell my data and habits to Google without a choice. The competition there goes further of course, as Mozilla upholds different values, and competing teams try to make their products faster and better. And then, they fall. Look how Microsoft used to sell a product but now capitalizes on users' data. What will happen when Slack falls? What if I don't want my chat data hosted by some company, but in house, and my business partners use Slack? Where will the choices go?
cromwellian 11y ago
I understand why slack is popular, I use it. But Slack's success is it's UI, and that is not dependent on a centralized close protocol. We could have a rich ecosystem of competing chat clients over a distributed messaging bus, it's just that there's no economic viability in it. If SMTP were re-invented today, it would never be open and federated.
- wodenokoto 11y ago
  A big part of a good chat UI is the knowledge of how things looks in the other end. Real world friendships have ended because of how emoji are rendered differently on different phones.
  - 1stop 11y ago
    ... Did you just make that up? Slack could still have an awesome UX and be open, people would use it out of choice because it has the best UX.
    - oddvar 11y ago
      I agree. We're building https://matrix.org https://matrix.org (a free and open communication protocol) and we've realised that until we have a client with better UX than proprietary offerings, people just won't switch. We hope that a Matrix-enabled client (https://vector.im https://vector.im is looking promising) will get the UI/UX right - and thus actually offer an open and free solution where you can run your own server (should you choose) and own and control your own data!
      - lewisl9029 11y ago
        Wow. Vector is progressing along quite nicely! This new build has none of the rough edges that I remember from the last time I saw it. Congrats to the team for the awesome work! My biggest issue with Matrix still has to do with its privacy properties though. Homeservers simply know too much about their users. End to end encryption from clients to homeservers appears to be optional in Matrix (and even with e2e encryption, metadata will still be fully exposed to homeservers), and message histories are stored in plaintext at rest. Now, this probably won't be a huge problem in the ideal scenario where the Matrix network would be composed of a large number of small independent homeservers, but history has shown that decentralized systems that aren't fully decentralized tend to eventually converge towards centralization as it becomes more popular (just look at what happened to email). And in a world where Google, Facebook and Microsoft's homeservers might eventually have a combined market share of over 90%, the privacy aspects of Matrix leave a lot to be desired.
arca_vorago 11y ago
My problem is that instead of building FOSS tools to improve the interface to the tools we love and use daily (irc, gpg, irssi/erc, emacs/vim, screen/tmux, usenet, etc) what has happened is people like slack take advantage that the FOSS interface suffers and gives the standard user an easy interface in a proprietary system. There is no reason for slack to not be fully open and still offer the same stuff, my main concern these days is proprietary lock in, for a myriad of reasons including business and personal ones. As the surveillance engine grows, those of us who have gone through the pains of open-sourcing our workflows will be way ahead of everyone else... but I fear we aren't addressing this main issue which is ease of use/adoption for general user cases. And no, giving me an API does not make it open. Short story; we need better FOSS UI/UX.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

by oskarth 11y ago

wh-uws 11y ago

THANK YOU. This is why slack is winning. They took many of the concepts of what makes irc great abd put a much better user experience on top. Why is that so hard for people to understand? This happens over and over again. - Google wasn't the first search engine. - Facebook wasn't the first social network. - Microsoft didn't build the first operating system. They all just did it in a way that appealed to mass amounts of users.

babuskov 11y ago
I have no idea why you were down-voted. It's the truth. Now, to answer why is it so hard to understand? Many people here are programmers/engineers and fail to understand how marketing and nice packaging can sell. Especially if they are old enough to know how IRC works. To extend what you wrote, I'd compare Slack with iPhone. All the tech. to build the iPhone was there, but Apple managed to put it all together in beautiful, easy to use package. Slack is the iPhone in its area.
- nothrabannosir 11y ago
  Because it's a platitude that has been repeated ad nauseam, and we get it. The GP gets it. As he explains in OP's sister comment.
- cromwellian 11y ago
  Think of it this way. Did the Web Browser need to be a proprietary closed protocol in order for the massive improvement over Gopher/WAIS or other end user hypertext information systems back then? No, Netscape/Mozilla didn't need to "own" HTTP and HTML completely, and turn the Web into a giant App Store in order to innovate in the Browser client, neither did Google, Apple, or MS. At various points, proprietary extensions were tried, and either failed, or got standardized when they became popular or proven their need. All Praise to Slack's UI, I love all the flourishes, like auto-detection of paste of code bits and offering to create snippets. I get it, I really do. I just don't think we need another messaging platform owned by a single company.
  - sly010 11y ago
    Actually, many features of the modern web (DOM, XmlHttpRequest, box-sizing: border-box) were implemented by IE first. Unfortunately it's not in the best interest of anyone capable of engineering open/distributed platforms to actually do so. Why would they? It's way easier and more profitable to create something on your own terms, something you can control. I would risk that it's better for the customer. People are flocking from WordPress to SquareSpace, from self hosted SMTP servers to Google, from private hosting to cloud hosting. Is this a good thing in the long term? I don't think so either, but doing it any other way would be heroism and we are short on heroes.
  - vincentleeuwen 11y ago
    I agree, but you can't blame them for trying to stretch their monopoly imo
- matthewmacleod 11y ago
  Yes, we all know and agree with their statement, but it's also not what was being said. UI is absolutely important to getting users on to a platform It's also a totally distinct issue from the network used for communication. There's no reason we can't have a good UX with an open protocol too, and that's what was being talked about.
- FatalBaboon 11y ago
  I think you're missing cromwellian's point: you could have made the same thing while upholding open values. For example if it was a rich client based on IRC, I could join in on a chat without being a slack customer. I could also be a customer of a competitor that would offer something similar, but more tailored to my usage. Now that would move the chat ecosystem further. But that is not happening, because Slack's business model is hegemonic: they want everyone to use Slack to maximize profits.
  - yoz-y 11y ago
    But then you would need to handle all the trouble that come from multiple clients. What if somebody makes a CLI client that does not support file transfers? The experience of official client's users would be worse because now they can't be sure that the other side can do the same things they do. If the protocol were to be upgraded then one would have to wait for all of the vendors to support the new features or we would end up working with the common denominator. Real world examples are hardly scarce, we see this thing in the open web with myriad (semi-) proprietary extensions. Samsung has also hard time getting developer support for their unique features. In the end, the end users would suffer because of inconsistencies. Open platforms are good, but in my opinion they will always lag in user experience behind well executed proprietary solutions.
    - FatalBaboon 11y ago
      Additional features that can't gracefully degrade would be a selling point for slack. "Your client does not seem to support video calls, we do, purchase an account here". When it comes to file transfers, a simple link to download the file from slack.com is a good degradation example. Once Slack is installed and the norm, you lose some choice. You're prisoner of the way they want chat to be. I'm sure glad Firefox exists, because otherwise I'd have to hop in the Chrome bandgwagon and sell my data and habits to Google without a choice. The competition there goes further of course, as Mozilla upholds different values, and competing teams try to make their products faster and better. And then, they fall. Look how Microsoft used to sell a product but now capitalizes on users' data. What will happen when Slack falls? What if I don't want my chat data hosted by some company, but in house, and my business partners use Slack? Where will the choices go?

cromwellian 11y ago

I understand why slack is popular, I use it. But Slack's success is it's UI, and that is not dependent on a centralized close protocol. We could have a rich ecosystem of competing chat clients over a distributed messaging bus, it's just that there's no economic viability in it. If SMTP were re-invented today, it would never be open and federated.

wodenokoto 11y ago
A big part of a good chat UI is the knowledge of how things looks in the other end. Real world friendships have ended because of how emoji are rendered differently on different phones.
- 1stop 11y ago
  ... Did you just make that up? Slack could still have an awesome UX and be open, people would use it out of choice because it has the best UX.
  - oddvar 11y ago
    I agree. We're building https://matrix.org https://matrix.org (a free and open communication protocol) and we've realised that until we have a client with better UX than proprietary offerings, people just won't switch. We hope that a Matrix-enabled client (https://vector.im https://vector.im is looking promising) will get the UI/UX right - and thus actually offer an open and free solution where you can run your own server (should you choose) and own and control your own data!
    - lewisl9029 11y ago
      Wow. Vector is progressing along quite nicely! This new build has none of the rough edges that I remember from the last time I saw it. Congrats to the team for the awesome work! My biggest issue with Matrix still has to do with its privacy properties though. Homeservers simply know too much about their users. End to end encryption from clients to homeservers appears to be optional in Matrix (and even with e2e encryption, metadata will still be fully exposed to homeservers), and message histories are stored in plaintext at rest. Now, this probably won't be a huge problem in the ideal scenario where the Matrix network would be composed of a large number of small independent homeservers, but history has shown that decentralized systems that aren't fully decentralized tend to eventually converge towards centralization as it becomes more popular (just look at what happened to email). And in a world where Google, Facebook and Microsoft's homeservers might eventually have a combined market share of over 90%, the privacy aspects of Matrix leave a lot to be desired.

arca_vorago 11y ago

My problem is that instead of building FOSS tools to improve the interface to the tools we love and use daily (irc, gpg, irssi/erc, emacs/vim, screen/tmux, usenet, etc) what has happened is people like slack take advantage that the FOSS interface suffers and gives the standard user an easy interface in a proprietary system. There is no reason for slack to not be fully open and still offer the same stuff, my main concern these days is proprietary lock in, for a myriad of reasons including business and personal ones. As the surveillance engine grows, those of us who have gone through the pains of open-sourcing our workflows will be way ahead of everyone else... but I fear we aren't addressing this main issue which is ease of use/adoption for general user cases. And no, giving me an API does not make it open. Short story; we need better FOSS UI/UX.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]