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Decent analysis of their original pitch deck: https://www.slideteam.net/blog/slacks-original-pitch-deck https://www.slideteam.net/blog/slacks-original-pitch-dec

by flarg 4y ago

Decent analysis of their original pitch deck: https://www.slideteam.net/blog/slacks-original-pitch-deck https://www.slideteam.net/blog/slacks-original-pitch-deck The key problem they tried to solve was to keep distributed teams in sync, according to the above link, and for that it really does work, I think because it has the Channels concept and also because it isn't some "crazy open source hacker thing". Nothing that IRC doesn't have, but they sold it better. Google Chat is still my favourite just because it integrates nicely with Google office apps. Teams is pretty buggy. Skype is largely dead. But the killer feature of Google Chat is that you know it is private, whereas you always get the feeling that Slack is not.

tuukkah 4y ago
Yes, the admins in your Slack can access your private discussions. For real privacy, you need end-to-end encryption such as Signal. Regarding IRC, I don't remember having e.g. threads or reactions. It's difficult to add features like that when the messages don't even have an id.
PainfullyNormal 4y ago
It's worth noting that the only real competition in that market at the time was Hipchat, which Slack eventually bought.
ramchip 4y ago
> Nothing that IRC doesn't have, but they sold it better. I think that's really underselling Slack, between threads, attachments, code snippets, reactions, etc. For example a Slack pattern I've seen multiple times is teams offering an help channel for their internal users, with one thread per question, and using reaction icons to track which have been answered. It works amazingly well even with thousands of users. I like IRC, but I think it would be really chaotic in comparison.
- flarg 4y ago
  I mean there are going to be a lot of creative approaches to something ubiquitous, I agree. But even IRC you can create your own channel and invite people to it. Slack is slicker, but the whole use case is still dramatically underserved.
- stevekemp 4y ago
  That's a fair comment, but remember that threads didn't exist in early-slack. Personally I love IRC, but at the same time I've not used it seriously in many many years. Slack? It has problems, but I've used it daily across multiple companies. My biggest "win" with Slack is going offline for an hour, or more, a day, to avoid the notification-fatigue.

by flarg 4y ago

tuukkah 4y ago

Yes, the admins in your Slack can access your private discussions. For real privacy, you need end-to-end encryption such as Signal. Regarding IRC, I don't remember having e.g. threads or reactions. It's difficult to add features like that when the messages don't even have an id.

PainfullyNormal 4y ago

It's worth noting that the only real competition in that market at the time was Hipchat, which Slack eventually bought.

ramchip 4y ago

> Nothing that IRC doesn't have, but they sold it better. I think that's really underselling Slack, between threads, attachments, code snippets, reactions, etc. For example a Slack pattern I've seen multiple times is teams offering an help channel for their internal users, with one thread per question, and using reaction icons to track which have been answered. It works amazingly well even with thousands of users. I like IRC, but I think it would be really chaotic in comparison.

flarg 4y ago
I mean there are going to be a lot of creative approaches to something ubiquitous, I agree. But even IRC you can create your own channel and invite people to it. Slack is slicker, but the whole use case is still dramatically underserved.
stevekemp 4y ago
That's a fair comment, but remember that threads didn't exist in early-slack. Personally I love IRC, but at the same time I've not used it seriously in many many years. Slack? It has problems, but I've used it daily across multiple companies. My biggest "win" with Slack is going offline for an hour, or more, a day, to avoid the notification-fatigue.