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>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

by mackmgg 10y ago

>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.

toomuchtodo 10y ago
It's also crazy easy to dump your Slack history out of Slack, as well as use their Discovery API, to have a competing service interrogate your team configuration and replicate it in a new service. Maybe not one click import, but it wouldn't be painful to move. Perhaps an open source utility will be written that can package all of the content and metadata required for your chat service up as a JSON bundle for import elsewhere. https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/201658943-Export-your-team-s-Slack-history https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/201658943-Export-yo... https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/204897248-Guide-to-Slack-data-exports https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/204897248-Guide-to-...
- mi100hael 10y ago
  IIRC that's an option when spinning up a Mattermost server.
rch 10y ago
Slack just needs to deliver an on-prem version in the next 6 months. I'm happy they have a reason to bother now.
kbenson 10y ago
> The problem is, Slack has a user base consisting mainly of people willing to switch to the "next big thing" pretty quickly. I'm not so sure. I got us using Slack at work, and that was after about 12 months of hearing ads for it. It is IRC plus a slick UI and integrated bots, but putting all that together with a web UI and a dedicated client and phone apps makes it multiple times better than regular IRC for the common person. I don't use twitter. I only started actually using my Facebook account I've had for many years last week, after finally deciding it's curring me off from people to not use it. I've never used Instagram or Snapchat or any of those other newer things. I'm not what you would call "people willing to switch to the next big thing". Quite the opposite in fact. At this point, the new users of slack are hearing about it from other people that are themselves 3-4 people removed from those early adopters. That said, Slack isn't a perfect snowflake. It's a simple idea executed well. The reason I was so for it once I finally bothered to check it out is because my prior experience with IRC let me immediately see the value they had created by combining IRC and all the extras for IRC together in a nice package, and made it accessible to less technical people. > 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. Same here on why I use it, but I would hesitate switching (given most my usage is work related). If Google had a good competitor, we would probably switch, since it was our solution to crappy support for what we need in Hangouts, as all our other stuff is in Google Apps. I imagine a lot of people/companies might feel the same way with MS if their stack is dominated by MS products. For those that already have a fairly heterogeneous environment, there's probably less reason to switch to the major names, but I imagine those groups are already fairly on board with trying new tools to find what works best, so have little allegiance. Edit: s/seeing ads/hearing ads/. I think a really good case could be made that Slack was genius to market on podcasts as much as they did, and on the ones they did, and that might have been instrumental to their growth.
- NDizzle 10y ago
  Have you ever looked at Discord? Slack isn't the only choice if you want a nice UI that works on all of your devices. https://discordapp.com/ https://discordapp.com/
  - kbenson 10y ago
    No, but from looking at it now that's likely because they've targeted themselves towards more informal (game) voice chat. It actually looks like it could be a good contender in this space if they decided to not only compare themselves to voice chat systems[1] (Skype, Ventrilo, Teamspeak), and didn't specifically market to gamers. That is, assuming the service is good, since I haven't tried it. 1: https://discordapp.com/features https://discordapp.com/features
    - vehementi 10y ago
      My gaming group switched from Slack to Discord. Not having history is the only negative, otherwise it's basically an upgrade for our usage. It uses the same codecs as mumble and lets you have all your shit in one place, so you can see who's online playing what, join voice channels with them and have chat. You can also join an unlimited number of communities which are essentially just tabs all in the same experience. It's zero effort to spin up a new group for a new game or group of friends, and you can just paste a link that gets people talking with no registration needed at first. Can't say enough good things about discord!
    - iamatworknow 10y ago
      It works very well in the context of games. Skype can can awkward for gaming and Vent/Teamspeak require someone to pay for a dedicated server (not an issue for the HN crowd, but for your typical gamer it is). Discord is free, has better audio quality than other services (in my opinion), in-game overlays, the ability to connect to multiple servers/groups at once...it's pretty slick. I think they would do well to continue focusing on the gamer market.
    - rudolf0 10y ago
      I think Discord is on a path to be a suitable replacement for IRC, Slack, and Skype. They still need some polishing, but once they fix some bugs and add good support for history and searching, I think it'll be fantastic.
throwaway1892 10y ago
An existing problem would be all the integration/bots builts into slack, even if they exist for the alternative, that kind of change is not trivial.
- gbin 10y ago
  That is one of the reason we should encourage people to use a "generic" bot, not one shot integrations. Disclaimer: I am one of the creator of Errbot that was designed for this specific purpose (be chat system independent)
empath75 10y ago
I'm on 4 or 5 different slack teams. There are network effects in slack, even if the cost of moving your company is minor, nobody is going to switch to another product unless it's an order of magnitude better. People who are totally active directory and exchange are going to use Teams. Nobody else is.

by mackmgg 10y ago

toomuchtodo 10y ago

It's also crazy easy to dump your Slack history out of Slack, as well as use their Discovery API, to have a competing service interrogate your team configuration and replicate it in a new service. Maybe not one click import, but it wouldn't be painful to move. Perhaps an open source utility will be written that can package all of the content and metadata required for your chat service up as a JSON bundle for import elsewhere. https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/201658943-Export-your-team-s-Slack-history https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/201658943-Export-yo... https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/204897248-Guide-to-Slack-data-exports https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/204897248-Guide-to-...

mi100hael 10y ago
IIRC that's an option when spinning up a Mattermost server.

rch 10y ago

Slack just needs to deliver an on-prem version in the next 6 months. I'm happy they have a reason to bother now.

kbenson 10y ago

> The problem is, Slack has a user base consisting mainly of people willing to switch to the "next big thing" pretty quickly. I'm not so sure. I got us using Slack at work, and that was after about 12 months of hearing ads for it. It is IRC plus a slick UI and integrated bots, but putting all that together with a web UI and a dedicated client and phone apps makes it multiple times better than regular IRC for the common person. I don't use twitter. I only started actually using my Facebook account I've had for many years last week, after finally deciding it's curring me off from people to not use it. I've never used Instagram or Snapchat or any of those other newer things. I'm not what you would call "people willing to switch to the next big thing". Quite the opposite in fact. At this point, the new users of slack are hearing about it from other people that are themselves 3-4 people removed from those early adopters. That said, Slack isn't a perfect snowflake. It's a simple idea executed well. The reason I was so for it once I finally bothered to check it out is because my prior experience with IRC let me immediately see the value they had created by combining IRC and all the extras for IRC together in a nice package, and made it accessible to less technical people. > 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. Same here on why I use it, but I would hesitate switching (given most my usage is work related). If Google had a good competitor, we would probably switch, since it was our solution to crappy support for what we need in Hangouts, as all our other stuff is in Google Apps. I imagine a lot of people/companies might feel the same way with MS if their stack is dominated by MS products. For those that already have a fairly heterogeneous environment, there's probably less reason to switch to the major names, but I imagine those groups are already fairly on board with trying new tools to find what works best, so have little allegiance. Edit: s/seeing ads/hearing ads/. I think a really good case could be made that Slack was genius to market on podcasts as much as they did, and on the ones they did, and that might have been instrumental to their growth.

NDizzle 10y ago
Have you ever looked at Discord? Slack isn't the only choice if you want a nice UI that works on all of your devices. https://discordapp.com/ https://discordapp.com/
- kbenson 10y ago
  No, but from looking at it now that's likely because they've targeted themselves towards more informal (game) voice chat. It actually looks like it could be a good contender in this space if they decided to not only compare themselves to voice chat systems[1] (Skype, Ventrilo, Teamspeak), and didn't specifically market to gamers. That is, assuming the service is good, since I haven't tried it. 1: https://discordapp.com/features https://discordapp.com/features
  - vehementi 10y ago
    My gaming group switched from Slack to Discord. Not having history is the only negative, otherwise it's basically an upgrade for our usage. It uses the same codecs as mumble and lets you have all your shit in one place, so you can see who's online playing what, join voice channels with them and have chat. You can also join an unlimited number of communities which are essentially just tabs all in the same experience. It's zero effort to spin up a new group for a new game or group of friends, and you can just paste a link that gets people talking with no registration needed at first. Can't say enough good things about discord!
  - iamatworknow 10y ago
    It works very well in the context of games. Skype can can awkward for gaming and Vent/Teamspeak require someone to pay for a dedicated server (not an issue for the HN crowd, but for your typical gamer it is). Discord is free, has better audio quality than other services (in my opinion), in-game overlays, the ability to connect to multiple servers/groups at once...it's pretty slick. I think they would do well to continue focusing on the gamer market.
  - rudolf0 10y ago
    I think Discord is on a path to be a suitable replacement for IRC, Slack, and Skype. They still need some polishing, but once they fix some bugs and add good support for history and searching, I think it'll be fantastic.

throwaway1892 10y ago

An existing problem would be all the integration/bots builts into slack, even if they exist for the alternative, that kind of change is not trivial.

gbin 10y ago
That is one of the reason we should encourage people to use a "generic" bot, not one shot integrations. Disclaimer: I am one of the creator of Errbot that was designed for this specific purpose (be chat system independent)

empath75 10y ago

I'm on 4 or 5 different slack teams. There are network effects in slack, even if the cost of moving your company is minor, nobody is going to switch to another product unless it's an order of magnitude better. People who are totally active directory and exchange are going to use Teams. Nobody else is.