5 ms·

OT: I am the only one who thinks Slack is overrated? There are use cases where a group chat is important and crucial but almost every chat product out there ha

OT: I am the only one who thinks Slack is overrated? There are use cases where a group chat is important and crucial but almost every chat product out there has a proper group chat. Even with weaker APIs than Slack they are still ok to use. Moreover: - Slack is the huge distraction and greatly improves ADD - The admin UI is like a forest full of trees, slow, crowded, littered with settings and options, has more pages than Wikipedia, finding the right setting is a ten minutes task if you are not used to Slack; this is my major gripe with Slack which drives me nuts every time - Why do I have to create new accounts with email verification with every new Slack channel? - While people post a lot of crap on Slack (memes, gifs, jokes) important stuff is still handled over email or respective ticketing systems; so now I have many topics in Slack, email and Trello - Slack is def. good for socializing but again--every other group chat is good enough for socializing - Ok there is second use case: echo chambers for token ICOs and obviously there are many at the moment - As a side note: 95% of startups and SMBs use G Suite/G Mail as their mail server which includes Google Chat which has group chat and all the features 95% of us need, which is integrated in everything (such as the address book or search works seamlessly with chat and email messages); why aren't folks just using this? Why the hassle of setting up another tool, setting up roles, team members in the horrible admin pages of Slack? Just to have an ADD powerhouse called Slack in the company? I really don't get it and if I miss something please enlighten me, I want to understand why I need Slack With their market share and their API they have reached a nice network effect without a doubt. But the question is, is it a winner-takes-it-all market and will they ever find somebody who will buy them at that valuation.

e40 9y ago
Slack is the huge distraction and greatly improves ADD Then you are using it wrong and you have your notifications set incorrectly.
sunaden 9y ago
I think that any kind of chat is as distracting as you let it be, I would not blame that to Slack. However, I totally agree your UI points however for me it applies to Slack overall. Having a thread open on one side, middle being a war between people who use threads to reply and the others using mentions to reply and the left sidebar with bots/apps/direct messages/channels/starred things/all unreads is getting a bit populated too.
lmm 9y ago
Can you suggest a pre-Slack groupchat, free-to-use, whose (cross-platform) UX doesn't suck? It seems like a pretty low bar but somehow no-one ever managed it until Slack (Skype was almost there for a while but their UX was never great and it declined over time especially on *nix ; AIM actually got it right but only after everyone had already left). Just basic stuff like: notification when mentioned specifically but not on every message, working history, doing the right thing when logged in on multiple devices. (Discord has replaced Slack for me and my friends now, but it only came along afterwards).
- thinbeige 9y ago
  > Can you suggest a pre-Slack groupchat, free-to-use, whose (cross-platform) UX doesn't suck? There were many before Slack, e.g. HipChat but as said the in G-Mail integrated chat has an excellent group chat (assuming your organization uses the GSuite). Nowadays, a group chat is just a commodity which many other products include.
  - lmm 9y ago
    HipChat always cost money. GChat had no native client on the desktop, and broke its userbase by initially supporting federation and then taking it away.
    - bqe 9y ago
      HipChat has a free tier.
      - lmm 9y ago
        Ok technically you're right, but the free tier (which only predates Slack by a couple of months) was limited to 5 users, so it cost money for most use cases.
    - ptman 9y ago
      Google Talk for Windows : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Talk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Talk
IceDane 9y ago
No, I also think it's massively overrated. I hate the interface, how I have to login and create accounts for each channel and so on. I'd rather just use discord tbh, but IRC is simplest. What in earth is some glorified chat room software going to do with enough money to have an impact on a small country's economy? It's insane. Someone argued elsewhere in the comments that IRC and such is inaccessible for normal users. Sure, but who are the people that are using slack? Definitely not normal users. I don't think slack will last only catering to developers and such, because for example discord has a massive user base of average janes and joes and I honestly can't see what slack offers that's better.
- inthewoods 9y ago
  >What in earth is some glorified chat room software going to do with enough money to have an impact on a small country's economy? It's insane. Not when you consider who they are going to be competing with. Microsoft and Google will make their products essentially free as part of their Office Suites.
  - ryanSrich 9y ago
    I don't use MSFT teams, but I've seen a demo and it looks far superior to Slack. I imagine they'll be using some of those funds to shore up feature parity with MSFT. I wouldn't be too worried about Google. Hangouts and Chat are by far the worst products I've ever used. I can't think of a single piece of software I loathe more than Hangouts.
    - inthewoods 9y ago
      They're supposed to be significantly improving them both - we'll see. I think it would be hard for them to justify spending something like $10b for Slack when it doesn't help move the needle on competing with Facebook.
- epicide 9y ago
  > I have to login and create accounts for each channel No you don't. It's per "team". Assuming that's what you meant: how many teams do you honestly use? Sure, it's not ideal for a bunch of little communities. As you said, Discord is good for that. For a business, I haven't seen anything that even compares with Slack. I'm not sure what you consider a "normal user" (I'd argue that there is no such thing). If you mean non-technical users, then there are plenty of non-technical users in a business that need to communicate. For most businesses, they outnumber the technical people and rely on good communication tools more. For work, Discord would be terrible for me since I can't have more than one username (to my knowledge). I want to keep my personal chats/username/status separate from my work ones. Different people need different solutions. BTW I'm focusing in on the business use case as that seems to be who Slack targets. They are trying to sell to people that have used Skype and Lync (or whatever they are calling it this week) and hated it. EDIT: also, building a decent chat app is a very difficult problem. I imagine they will use that money to maintain the various clients they have and try to keep adding communication features (as they have been doing).
brown9-2 9y ago
The fact that your teammates post crap or are not great at communicating is not the fault of Slack. > - Why do I have to create new accounts with email verification with every new Slack channel? I think you are misunderstanding the difference between a Slack instance and a channel, but it does seem silly that it treats your login as a distinct thing on every instance. I get the impression they never thought the free version would be used so widely or that people would join and use 12 different "teams".
paulcole 9y ago
>- While people post a lot of crap on Slack (memes, gifs, jokes) important stuff is still handled over email or respective ticketing systems; so now I have many topics in Slack, email and Trello This isn't a Slack problem it's a culture problem in your company.

e40 9y ago

Slack is the huge distraction and greatly improves ADD Then you are using it wrong and you have your notifications set incorrectly.

sunaden 9y ago

I think that any kind of chat is as distracting as you let it be, I would not blame that to Slack. However, I totally agree your UI points however for me it applies to Slack overall. Having a thread open on one side, middle being a war between people who use threads to reply and the others using mentions to reply and the left sidebar with bots/apps/direct messages/channels/starred things/all unreads is getting a bit populated too.

lmm 9y ago

Can you suggest a pre-Slack groupchat, free-to-use, whose (cross-platform) UX doesn't suck? It seems like a pretty low bar but somehow no-one ever managed it until Slack (Skype was almost there for a while but their UX was never great and it declined over time especially on *nix ; AIM actually got it right but only after everyone had already left). Just basic stuff like: notification when mentioned specifically but not on every message, working history, doing the right thing when logged in on multiple devices. (Discord has replaced Slack for me and my friends now, but it only came along afterwards).

thinbeige 9y ago
> Can you suggest a pre-Slack groupchat, free-to-use, whose (cross-platform) UX doesn't suck? There were many before Slack, e.g. HipChat but as said the in G-Mail integrated chat has an excellent group chat (assuming your organization uses the GSuite). Nowadays, a group chat is just a commodity which many other products include.
- lmm 9y ago
  HipChat always cost money. GChat had no native client on the desktop, and broke its userbase by initially supporting federation and then taking it away.
  - bqe 9y ago
    HipChat has a free tier.
    - lmm 9y ago
      Ok technically you're right, but the free tier (which only predates Slack by a couple of months) was limited to 5 users, so it cost money for most use cases.
  - ptman 9y ago
    Google Talk for Windows : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Talk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Talk

IceDane 9y ago

No, I also think it's massively overrated. I hate the interface, how I have to login and create accounts for each channel and so on. I'd rather just use discord tbh, but IRC is simplest. What in earth is some glorified chat room software going to do with enough money to have an impact on a small country's economy? It's insane. Someone argued elsewhere in the comments that IRC and such is inaccessible for normal users. Sure, but who are the people that are using slack? Definitely not normal users. I don't think slack will last only catering to developers and such, because for example discord has a massive user base of average janes and joes and I honestly can't see what slack offers that's better.

inthewoods 9y ago
>What in earth is some glorified chat room software going to do with enough money to have an impact on a small country's economy? It's insane. Not when you consider who they are going to be competing with. Microsoft and Google will make their products essentially free as part of their Office Suites.
- ryanSrich 9y ago
  I don't use MSFT teams, but I've seen a demo and it looks far superior to Slack. I imagine they'll be using some of those funds to shore up feature parity with MSFT. I wouldn't be too worried about Google. Hangouts and Chat are by far the worst products I've ever used. I can't think of a single piece of software I loathe more than Hangouts.
  - inthewoods 9y ago
    They're supposed to be significantly improving them both - we'll see. I think it would be hard for them to justify spending something like $10b for Slack when it doesn't help move the needle on competing with Facebook.
epicide 9y ago
> I have to login and create accounts for each channel No you don't. It's per "team". Assuming that's what you meant: how many teams do you honestly use? Sure, it's not ideal for a bunch of little communities. As you said, Discord is good for that. For a business, I haven't seen anything that even compares with Slack. I'm not sure what you consider a "normal user" (I'd argue that there is no such thing). If you mean non-technical users, then there are plenty of non-technical users in a business that need to communicate. For most businesses, they outnumber the technical people and rely on good communication tools more. For work, Discord would be terrible for me since I can't have more than one username (to my knowledge). I want to keep my personal chats/username/status separate from my work ones. Different people need different solutions. BTW I'm focusing in on the business use case as that seems to be who Slack targets. They are trying to sell to people that have used Skype and Lync (or whatever they are calling it this week) and hated it. EDIT: also, building a decent chat app is a very difficult problem. I imagine they will use that money to maintain the various clients they have and try to keep adding communication features (as they have been doing).

brown9-2 9y ago

The fact that your teammates post crap or are not great at communicating is not the fault of Slack. > - Why do I have to create new accounts with email verification with every new Slack channel? I think you are misunderstanding the difference between a Slack instance and a channel, but it does seem silly that it treats your login as a distinct thing on every instance. I get the impression they never thought the free version would be used so widely or that people would join and use 12 different "teams".

paulcole 9y ago

>- While people post a lot of crap on Slack (memes, gifs, jokes) important stuff is still handled over email or respective ticketing systems; so now I have many topics in Slack, email and Trello This isn't a Slack problem it's a culture problem in your company.