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Adding a backlog to IRC is something that has been around almost as long as IRC. Bots to sit in channels to passively log; bots which act to send messages to p

by dleslie 10y ago

Adding a backlog to IRC is something that has been around almost as long as IRC. Bots to sit in channels to passively log; bots which act to send messages to people who are presently offline, at the time at which they come online again; and so on. Adding a log to IRC isn't particularly innovative. Slack's value is almost entirely in its user engagement, not its technology.

Latty 10y ago
Bots? It's awkward. In Slack, you scroll up. No bot is going to be as simple to use and obvious as that. If you do manage to integrate it that well, you will need to set up the bot, which is a separate service, get your clients to understand the bot, etc... It's like suggesting a tin can with strings to solve a communication problem. A rough, imperfect solution. Who gives a damn about innovative? It may have been obvious and simple, but if no one else is doing it well, and they do, sneering at it seems dumb. They made a good call, and are profiting from it.
- kzisme 10y ago
  I'm sure OP was using bots as an example - IRC bouncers exist ,and if that's too technical for you then there are multiple other solutions.
  - Latty 10y ago
    Sure, and none of those solutions are as good as 'scroll up' after clicking five buttons to make a slack team. By quite a way.
    - donum 10y ago
      When I used a Bouncer, all messages that I missed just were there after logging in. I could just scroll up. Easy!
      - kzisme 10y ago
        Bouncers are really "Set it and forget it"... Pings show up - if you desperately need phone notifications there are many apps/solutions to deal with that too. (but lets be real...nobody ~really~ wants notifications outside of work)
    - ue_ 10y ago
      With a bouncer you literally just scroll up.
jerf 10y ago
As far as I know, all the pieces to make Slack have been around for a while. But nobody ever put them together properly. So the fact that all the pieces existed doesn't count for very much in the end. Nor was it obvious that if someone put it together properly it would achieve commercial success. I was theoretically in the right place at the right time to have put together something like Slack at my job, but there was no desire to invest enough to do that and eventually the entire product was EOL'ed a couple of years before Slack was released, not just because the product itself was not doing well but the entire market segment was not doing well. Commercial IM products have not done well historically, because it was difficult to do enough better than the free stuff to get people to pay. What Slack may demonstrate is that, indeed, there was a market there all along, it's just the activation energy was higher than almost anyone was prepared to pay.
- dimino 10y ago
  What people are saying is that not only have the pieces to make Slack been around for awhile, but IRC has implemented those pieces successfully for 20 years. The only "innovation" Slack provided was the UI, and that's textbook "bad startup idea", because of how easy it is for someone else to step into the space.
  - Latty 10y ago
    Except, that's not true. As I pointed out with History, IRC does not do that. Even if you count hacks like bots or additional services, it doesn't do it well, easily, or as a core part of the thing that is there the second you set it up without extra effort.
    - dimino 10y ago
      I don't understand why people keep saying it's not "easy" or IRC doesn't do history "well"? ZNC or another bouncer is plenty easy to set up and configure, and you get a full history of all messages in a chat. Slack didn't innovate, it simplified. I called it a "UI" simplification, but you can call it whatever you like. They didn't innovate on technology, and that's a dangerous place to build your startup, because someone like Microsoft can eat your lunch and there's nothing you can do about it.

by dleslie 10y ago

Latty 10y ago

Bots? It's awkward. In Slack, you scroll up. No bot is going to be as simple to use and obvious as that. If you do manage to integrate it that well, you will need to set up the bot, which is a separate service, get your clients to understand the bot, etc... It's like suggesting a tin can with strings to solve a communication problem. A rough, imperfect solution. Who gives a damn about innovative? It may have been obvious and simple, but if no one else is doing it well, and they do, sneering at it seems dumb. They made a good call, and are profiting from it.

kzisme 10y ago
I'm sure OP was using bots as an example - IRC bouncers exist ,and if that's too technical for you then there are multiple other solutions.
- Latty 10y ago
  Sure, and none of those solutions are as good as 'scroll up' after clicking five buttons to make a slack team. By quite a way.
  - donum 10y ago
    When I used a Bouncer, all messages that I missed just were there after logging in. I could just scroll up. Easy!
    - kzisme 10y ago
      Bouncers are really "Set it and forget it"... Pings show up - if you desperately need phone notifications there are many apps/solutions to deal with that too. (but lets be real...nobody ~really~ wants notifications outside of work)
  - ue_ 10y ago
    With a bouncer you literally just scroll up.

jerf 10y ago

As far as I know, all the pieces to make Slack have been around for a while. But nobody ever put them together properly. So the fact that all the pieces existed doesn't count for very much in the end. Nor was it obvious that if someone put it together properly it would achieve commercial success. I was theoretically in the right place at the right time to have put together something like Slack at my job, but there was no desire to invest enough to do that and eventually the entire product was EOL'ed a couple of years before Slack was released, not just because the product itself was not doing well but the entire market segment was not doing well. Commercial IM products have not done well historically, because it was difficult to do enough better than the free stuff to get people to pay. What Slack may demonstrate is that, indeed, there was a market there all along, it's just the activation energy was higher than almost anyone was prepared to pay.

dimino 10y ago
What people are saying is that not only have the pieces to make Slack been around for awhile, but IRC has implemented those pieces successfully for 20 years. The only "innovation" Slack provided was the UI, and that's textbook "bad startup idea", because of how easy it is for someone else to step into the space.
- Latty 10y ago
  Except, that's not true. As I pointed out with History, IRC does not do that. Even if you count hacks like bots or additional services, it doesn't do it well, easily, or as a core part of the thing that is there the second you set it up without extra effort.
  - dimino 10y ago
    I don't understand why people keep saying it's not "easy" or IRC doesn't do history "well"? ZNC or another bouncer is plenty easy to set up and configure, and you get a full history of all messages in a chat. Slack didn't innovate, it simplified. I called it a "UI" simplification, but you can call it whatever you like. They didn't innovate on technology, and that's a dangerous place to build your startup, because someone like Microsoft can eat your lunch and there's nothing you can do about it.