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A few months ago slack's early plan was posted here. From day one this was the goal - they knew it was just a chat app so they had to make it feel like somethi

A few months ago slack's early plan was posted here. From day one this was the goal - they knew it was just a chat app so they had to make it feel like something different. Its one of the best marketing coups in recent history and I'd love to see more analysis on how it was pulled off.

ironjunkie 8y ago
It also see it as a hugely successful marketing coup. As an early employee of a startup, I remember the day we had to setup the initial infrastructure. For the majority in the room, Slack was an absolute requirement. They didn't wanted to have the ability to chat, they wanted to specifically use Slack, like a badge of honor.
greglindahl 8y ago
I was involved in the early days of IRC, and personally, I'm amazed at how great Slack is. I parachuted into an org which had a not-great email culture and took up Slack as a replacement. It was amazingly great.
- slededit 8y ago
  I wish I could find the original document. They do spend about 1/8th talking about how it has to be a great experience. But the majority of the document discusses how they aren't a chat app, they had a broader vision of team communication. And so you don't compare Slack to IRC because IRC is "just" a chat app while Slack is for "collaboration". In the early days of Slack we had Office Communicator in Microsoft. But because they thought of themselves as essentially MSN messenger for business they didn't do the things Slack did with their clear vision. Ultimately both apps existed to send text/files/images to people in realtime but Slack communicated a vision of how this should work while the rest just let you figure it out yourself.
  - andygcook 8y ago
    Not sure, but perhaps you are referencing the article from Stewart Butterfield, We Don’t Sell Saddles Here: https://medium.com/@stewart/we-dont-sell-saddles-here-4c59524d650d https://medium.com/@stewart/we-dont-sell-saddles-here-4c5952...
    - slededit 8y ago
      Yes! Thank you.
- u801e 8y ago
  > I was involved in the early days of IRC, and personally, I'm amazed at how great Slack is. At my company, we used to use IRC for internal communication and have since transitioned to Slack. The primary difference I see is that in chat, we see reactions to certain messages, in-line paste snippets, and links that use a slack redirect service. I don't really see much utility in reactions. In-line paste snippets could just as well be a link I could click on to display the image or document in an external application I launch. And the slack redirect service makes it much harder to search my browser history for the document I was looking for. I've also noticed that in the browser I use (Firefox), slack will, after a few days of using it in the same tab, become very laggy and non-responsive. This requires me to close the tab and open a new one to free up whatever resources were causing it to slow down so much. This was never a problem in the local application I used for my IRC client. I'm not very impressed with Slack.
GuiA 8y ago
> Its one of the best marketing coups in recent history and I'd love to see more analysis on how it was pulled off Steward Butterfield pushed private beta invites to his well connected Silicon Valley social media friends, who then imposed it in their startups because “it’s what everyone else is doing, it’s going to revolutionize communication”. Rinse, repeat. Source: a social media ninja wizard friend of Butterfield worked in the same startup as I did in the private beta days. I found it to be yet another internal chat app at the time, but my CEO drank the kool aid right away.
- komali2 8y ago
  To be fair, it now has actual useful zero setup functionality like screen sharing and file sharing. Before that though yea I didn't get the point.
wuliwong 8y ago
I think it's far less about marketing and more about lowering the barrier to entry. I work at a real estate company. They were using Slack before I got here and did not have a single technical person on staff. This company would have never considered IRC if Slack didn't exist.

ironjunkie 8y ago

It also see it as a hugely successful marketing coup. As an early employee of a startup, I remember the day we had to setup the initial infrastructure. For the majority in the room, Slack was an absolute requirement. They didn't wanted to have the ability to chat, they wanted to specifically use Slack, like a badge of honor.

greglindahl 8y ago

I was involved in the early days of IRC, and personally, I'm amazed at how great Slack is. I parachuted into an org which had a not-great email culture and took up Slack as a replacement. It was amazingly great.

slededit 8y ago
I wish I could find the original document. They do spend about 1/8th talking about how it has to be a great experience. But the majority of the document discusses how they aren't a chat app, they had a broader vision of team communication. And so you don't compare Slack to IRC because IRC is "just" a chat app while Slack is for "collaboration". In the early days of Slack we had Office Communicator in Microsoft. But because they thought of themselves as essentially MSN messenger for business they didn't do the things Slack did with their clear vision. Ultimately both apps existed to send text/files/images to people in realtime but Slack communicated a vision of how this should work while the rest just let you figure it out yourself.
- andygcook 8y ago
  Not sure, but perhaps you are referencing the article from Stewart Butterfield, We Don’t Sell Saddles Here: https://medium.com/@stewart/we-dont-sell-saddles-here-4c59524d650d https://medium.com/@stewart/we-dont-sell-saddles-here-4c5952...
  - slededit 8y ago
    Yes! Thank you.
u801e 8y ago
> I was involved in the early days of IRC, and personally, I'm amazed at how great Slack is. At my company, we used to use IRC for internal communication and have since transitioned to Slack. The primary difference I see is that in chat, we see reactions to certain messages, in-line paste snippets, and links that use a slack redirect service. I don't really see much utility in reactions. In-line paste snippets could just as well be a link I could click on to display the image or document in an external application I launch. And the slack redirect service makes it much harder to search my browser history for the document I was looking for. I've also noticed that in the browser I use (Firefox), slack will, after a few days of using it in the same tab, become very laggy and non-responsive. This requires me to close the tab and open a new one to free up whatever resources were causing it to slow down so much. This was never a problem in the local application I used for my IRC client. I'm not very impressed with Slack.

GuiA 8y ago

> Its one of the best marketing coups in recent history and I'd love to see more analysis on how it was pulled off Steward Butterfield pushed private beta invites to his well connected Silicon Valley social media friends, who then imposed it in their startups because “it’s what everyone else is doing, it’s going to revolutionize communication”. Rinse, repeat. Source: a social media ninja wizard friend of Butterfield worked in the same startup as I did in the private beta days. I found it to be yet another internal chat app at the time, but my CEO drank the kool aid right away.

komali2 8y ago
To be fair, it now has actual useful zero setup functionality like screen sharing and file sharing. Before that though yea I didn't get the point.

wuliwong 8y ago

I think it's far less about marketing and more about lowering the barrier to entry. I work at a real estate company. They were using Slack before I got here and did not have a single technical person on staff. This company would have never considered IRC if Slack didn't exist.