6 ms·

We abandoned hipchat because the latest app was horrible; constant signouts, lost configurations, sso issues. Skype is also a mess right now; with chat applica

We abandoned hipchat because the latest app was horrible; constant signouts, lost configurations, sso issues. Skype is also a mess right now; with chat application bugs, UX issues (why does the freakin' mute button move around) calls that can't be joined or start cyloning, participants are suddenly dropped mid call. Throw in the spying allegations ... Hangouts is great for video but is a really clunky experience otherwise. With everbody dropping the ball, there certainly is room for Slack to come in and take control of this space.

Mandatum 11y ago
I found the usability of Hipchat pretty subpar vs Slack as well. Things like editing or deleting messages, extensibility with integration, alerts and syncing across devices.. Snippets!? Come on! These should be basic, foundation features. Once you go Slack..
scrollaway 11y ago
We're trying out Discord for work here. It's mostly targeted at gaming, but it feels far more like a "better Slack with voice chat" from my side. With that said, shoot them an email first if you want to use them at a large company ... it's not an enterprise product.
- striking 11y ago
  Seconding Discord. It rocks for real time communication and works very well in a browser, with rock solid native apps. And they send you really friendly emails. edit: heh. Apparently I tried posting it to HN before. Perhaps they're going a little hard on the "for gamers" branding when it could really be for anyone.
  - whistlerbrk 11y ago
    Indeed, the React community moved from Slack to Discord. Slack has made it clear they are a tool for small teams. I don't necessarily see this announcement as a change from that.
    - madeofpalk 11y ago
      Rather, Slack isn't a tool for a 8000-person community.
      - tinco 11y ago
        8000 people? Is it like a forum with many threads and topics going on or is it really like an IRC chat room with 8000 people in it? Is this the biggest react community? Is being on Discord something they prefer to being on reddit or perhaps a forum?
        madeofpalk 11y ago
        I exaggerated a bit - they have 7656 at the moment (after being 'shut down'). It was the mostly-official place to discuss react, flux, webpack, other tech and libraries in the react ecosystem etc. In it's peak, there were lots of channels for all the different parts and facets, including geo-oriented channels as well. Now, its mostly just the dancing shark gif http://i.imgur.com/I2CBRBZ.png http://i.imgur.com/I2CBRBZ.png
        pbowyer 11y ago
        > 8000 people? Is it like a forum with many threads and topics going on or is it really like an IRC chat room with 8000 people in it? I'm a member of the UX Slack (https://www.designerhangout.co/ https://www.designerhangout.co/) who have ~6k members, and it's pretty active. It's a cross between a forum and IRC, and (from a user perspective) fails pretty badly because of it :) A major reason is Slack's limit of 10000 messages per free Slack. So conversations get lost within 2-3 days, there's no way to find them unless you've starred them. With no threading discussions don't happen well - there's a lot of noise (like IRC) which can't be filtered out. Summary: No way to organise/archive knowledge (same q's again and again); noise of IRC interspersed w discussions, Slack's hard limit of visible messages.
        jhgg 11y ago
        Ever consider moving to Discord? No chat history limit there.
- topfun 11y ago
  After trying slack we decided to use rocket chat. It is a very good piece of open source software.
- samirageb 11y ago
  +1. To my knowledge Discord is and will always be intended for gamers for the forseeable future. They don't have the infrastructure to support enterprise expectations like LDAP/SSO, dedicated account managers, support hotlines, guaranteed SLAs (although I know their tech team is highly competent), etc.
- JD557 11y ago
  I just took a look at Discord and it's really funny how it seems more of a Slack/Skype alternative than a TeamSpeak/Mumble alternative, even though they try to target the gaming market. For example, there is no way to self-host a Discord server. While that might be OK for Slack/Skype users, some TeamSpeak/Mumble users might not like that.
  - Kiro 11y ago
    It hasn't stopped it from becoming widely popular in the gaming community though. All gaming-related projects I follow are on Discord. This includes streamers and guilds.
tempestn 11y ago
My thoughts exactly. Since adopting Slack, the only time we use anything else is Hangouts for videoconferencing. Even using the attached chat in the hangout feels clunkier than using Slack chat during a videoconference. When you really feel it is when Slack goes down and you have to go back to using something else. There are just so many little details in the presentation that make a text chat in Slack feel right. Adding videoconferencing to their platform is the logical next step. In an ideal world they'll find a way to improve on video chat similarly! I'd be plenty happy though with an experience comparable to hangouts, but without leaving Slack.
boling11 11y ago
Zoom (zoom.us) is really good for video conferences. It's got a slightly clunky interface, but the excellent audio quality and graceful fallback are clutch.
draw_down 11y ago
Skype is absolutely a disaster, but it's the only video chat solution I've seen that handles audio well at all (things like echo detection). The super-expensive fancy solutions like Cisco's offering are probably better, but I haven't tried. All the web-based tools seem to be different UIs on top of the same fundamental technology. I think Slack is nice and they generally seem to understand how to make software for humans, so I really hope they pull this off.
- manyxcxi 11y ago
  You would think that... But at $10k per room for video conferencing, it was a disaster half the time, phantom calls, all kind of problems. I can't tell you how many times we just put my laptop at the end of the table and fired up Skype or a Google Hangout. We've pretty much abandoned Skype for anything and use Hangouts when we need group video, otherwise it's just FaceTime. I'll be happy to see how Slack integrates voice/video. If the quality is 80% of Hangouts and the experience is better, I'll take it.
thirdsun 11y ago
That was my first thought as well - in light of recent discussions here on HN concerning just how terrible Skype seems to be these days (I wouldn't know) it feels like an obvious next step for Slack. Good for them.
seanp2k2 11y ago
Hangouts is great for video if you don't need things like readable smaller text on presentations or detail in design reviews when casting your screen. Our designers hate it and our customers are always asking things like "what's that button say? I can't read it". We used to use BlueJeans which had much better video quality, but the in-room systems were an order of magnitude more expensive than chromebox for meetings.

Mandatum 11y ago

I found the usability of Hipchat pretty subpar vs Slack as well. Things like editing or deleting messages, extensibility with integration, alerts and syncing across devices.. Snippets!? Come on! These should be basic, foundation features. Once you go Slack..

scrollaway 11y ago

We're trying out Discord for work here. It's mostly targeted at gaming, but it feels far more like a "better Slack with voice chat" from my side. With that said, shoot them an email first if you want to use them at a large company ... it's not an enterprise product.

striking 11y ago
Seconding Discord. It rocks for real time communication and works very well in a browser, with rock solid native apps. And they send you really friendly emails. edit: heh. Apparently I tried posting it to HN before. Perhaps they're going a little hard on the "for gamers" branding when it could really be for anyone.
- whistlerbrk 11y ago
  Indeed, the React community moved from Slack to Discord. Slack has made it clear they are a tool for small teams. I don't necessarily see this announcement as a change from that.
  - madeofpalk 11y ago
    Rather, Slack isn't a tool for a 8000-person community.
    - tinco 11y ago
      8000 people? Is it like a forum with many threads and topics going on or is it really like an IRC chat room with 8000 people in it? Is this the biggest react community? Is being on Discord something they prefer to being on reddit or perhaps a forum?
      - madeofpalk 11y ago
        I exaggerated a bit - they have 7656 at the moment (after being 'shut down'). It was the mostly-official place to discuss react, flux, webpack, other tech and libraries in the react ecosystem etc. In it's peak, there were lots of channels for all the different parts and facets, including geo-oriented channels as well. Now, its mostly just the dancing shark gif http://i.imgur.com/I2CBRBZ.png http://i.imgur.com/I2CBRBZ.png
      - pbowyer 11y ago
        > 8000 people? Is it like a forum with many threads and topics going on or is it really like an IRC chat room with 8000 people in it? I'm a member of the UX Slack (https://www.designerhangout.co/ https://www.designerhangout.co/) who have ~6k members, and it's pretty active. It's a cross between a forum and IRC, and (from a user perspective) fails pretty badly because of it :) A major reason is Slack's limit of 10000 messages per free Slack. So conversations get lost within 2-3 days, there's no way to find them unless you've starred them. With no threading discussions don't happen well - there's a lot of noise (like IRC) which can't be filtered out. Summary: No way to organise/archive knowledge (same q's again and again); noise of IRC interspersed w discussions, Slack's hard limit of visible messages.
        jhgg 11y ago
        Ever consider moving to Discord? No chat history limit there.
topfun 11y ago
After trying slack we decided to use rocket chat. It is a very good piece of open source software.
samirageb 11y ago
+1. To my knowledge Discord is and will always be intended for gamers for the forseeable future. They don't have the infrastructure to support enterprise expectations like LDAP/SSO, dedicated account managers, support hotlines, guaranteed SLAs (although I know their tech team is highly competent), etc.
JD557 11y ago
I just took a look at Discord and it's really funny how it seems more of a Slack/Skype alternative than a TeamSpeak/Mumble alternative, even though they try to target the gaming market. For example, there is no way to self-host a Discord server. While that might be OK for Slack/Skype users, some TeamSpeak/Mumble users might not like that.
- Kiro 11y ago
  It hasn't stopped it from becoming widely popular in the gaming community though. All gaming-related projects I follow are on Discord. This includes streamers and guilds.

tempestn 11y ago

My thoughts exactly. Since adopting Slack, the only time we use anything else is Hangouts for videoconferencing. Even using the attached chat in the hangout feels clunkier than using Slack chat during a videoconference. When you really feel it is when Slack goes down and you have to go back to using something else. There are just so many little details in the presentation that make a text chat in Slack feel right. Adding videoconferencing to their platform is the logical next step. In an ideal world they'll find a way to improve on video chat similarly! I'd be plenty happy though with an experience comparable to hangouts, but without leaving Slack.

boling11 11y ago

Zoom (zoom.us) is really good for video conferences. It's got a slightly clunky interface, but the excellent audio quality and graceful fallback are clutch.

draw_down 11y ago

Skype is absolutely a disaster, but it's the only video chat solution I've seen that handles audio well at all (things like echo detection). The super-expensive fancy solutions like Cisco's offering are probably better, but I haven't tried. All the web-based tools seem to be different UIs on top of the same fundamental technology. I think Slack is nice and they generally seem to understand how to make software for humans, so I really hope they pull this off.

manyxcxi 11y ago
You would think that... But at $10k per room for video conferencing, it was a disaster half the time, phantom calls, all kind of problems. I can't tell you how many times we just put my laptop at the end of the table and fired up Skype or a Google Hangout. We've pretty much abandoned Skype for anything and use Hangouts when we need group video, otherwise it's just FaceTime. I'll be happy to see how Slack integrates voice/video. If the quality is 80% of Hangouts and the experience is better, I'll take it.

thirdsun 11y ago

That was my first thought as well - in light of recent discussions here on HN concerning just how terrible Skype seems to be these days (I wouldn't know) it feels like an obvious next step for Slack. Good for them.

seanp2k2 11y ago

Hangouts is great for video if you don't need things like readable smaller text on presentations or detail in design reviews when casting your screen. Our designers hate it and our customers are always asking things like "what's that button say? I can't read it". We used to use BlueJeans which had much better video quality, but the in-room systems were an order of magnitude more expensive than chromebox for meetings.