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But there were already other comparable solutions that existed and had adoption at the time -- eg. HipChat. I get why something like Slack or HipChat beat IRC,

by lgas 4y ago

But there were already other comparable solutions that existed and had adoption at the time -- eg. HipChat. I get why something like Slack or HipChat beat IRC, but what did Slack do differently than the existing offerings that enabled it to beat them all out so easily?

ydnaclementine 4y ago
Arguably one difference between hipchat and slack in 2015 (when I was using hipchat) was slack nailed their design/UX. In turn it influenced the later generation of chat programs (discord, microsoft teams, etc). And they have good marketing.
dasil003 4y ago
My company switched to Slack pretty early (mid 2014). IMHO the secret sauce was the volume and quality of integrations so you could pretty quickly turn it into a real-time feed/joint timeline of, well, everything.
- jen20 4y ago
  The other secret sauce Slack had in 2014 was that hipchat was _constantly_ in a state of outage. There’s probably an opportunity given then number of outages Slack now sees.
atombender 4y ago
Having used both at the time, it was all about UX and marketing. Back in roughly 2015-2016, some of friends were using Slack at their company and were making fun of how antiquated and uncool HipChat was — even though HipChat had all the same functionality. HipChat had the advantage of being a fast, native app, while Slack was a slow Electron wrapper around a web page. But Slack nailed the UX. It had the aesthetics of a generation of "post-Web 2.0" apps that were coming out that were more real-time and shipping as Electron apps. HipChat just looked old school. Pretty soon my company was on Slack, too. It also helped that Slack quickly got support for a much richer set of integrations with other apps. HipChat had a bunch, but I think Slack realized this would be the number one way to beat the competition, and they spent a ton of effort on building out this side of the platform. Slack, of course, also had the advantage of focus; HipChat was made by Atlassian, who had a lot of different products to spread their focus more thinly. Around the same time we saw a similar battle between Google Hangouts and "old school" apps like WebEx and GoToMeeting. The latter were/are native apps, rock stable, but fundamentally uncool. Hangouts was browser-based and super flaky, but somehow cool because they were the latest generation of web UX. What's interesting right now is that Zoom, a thoroughly clunky and uncool native app (very similar to WebEx or GoToMeeting in that sense) has somehow gained enormous market share, despite the existence of decently mature web-based alternatives. Maybe because Google managed to mess up its chat/videoconferencing so badly.
- quartesixte 4y ago
  Zoom’s media blitz at the start of the pandemic + phone number style meeting IDs is what propelled them to the top. No log-in required — just enter the 10 digit code and your name.
- andrewf 4y ago
  I think Hangouts beat WebEx because you could invite someone to a meeting and they didn't need to download or install anything to join. And I think Zoom beat Hangouts because you could invite someone to a meeting and they didn't need to create an account to join.
- charrondev 4y ago
  My company was using Hipchat in 2016 but it was also an web browser (maybe it was nw.js?) wrapper with the following deficiencies compared to slack and we were very glad when they got acquired and we switched: - Horrible text editor compared to slack (no inline code, no syntax highlighting, lists barely worked, undo barely worked) - notification preferences (per channel) we’re lacking. - no threading support - UI was laggy compared to slack. - there was an very limited set of emojis. - no good mobile app. - few and limited integrations (notably I use GitHub, Jira, and Outlook integrations for slack). Still hipchat was far better than Teams is today.
derwiki 4y ago
Threads get a lot of credit, but I think a big big value add was custom emojis--hard to understate the value of transforming local workplace memes/jokes into emojis and make them instantly accessible to anyone else in your workspace.
- tanseydavid 4y ago
  I am experiencing some form of Poe's Law reading this one. Particularly due to the choice of the word "understate."

by lgas 4y ago

ydnaclementine 4y ago

Arguably one difference between hipchat and slack in 2015 (when I was using hipchat) was slack nailed their design/UX. In turn it influenced the later generation of chat programs (discord, microsoft teams, etc). And they have good marketing.

dasil003 4y ago

My company switched to Slack pretty early (mid 2014). IMHO the secret sauce was the volume and quality of integrations so you could pretty quickly turn it into a real-time feed/joint timeline of, well, everything.

jen20 4y ago
The other secret sauce Slack had in 2014 was that hipchat was _constantly_ in a state of outage. There’s probably an opportunity given then number of outages Slack now sees.

atombender 4y ago

Having used both at the time, it was all about UX and marketing. Back in roughly 2015-2016, some of friends were using Slack at their company and were making fun of how antiquated and uncool HipChat was — even though HipChat had all the same functionality. HipChat had the advantage of being a fast, native app, while Slack was a slow Electron wrapper around a web page. But Slack nailed the UX. It had the aesthetics of a generation of "post-Web 2.0" apps that were coming out that were more real-time and shipping as Electron apps. HipChat just looked old school. Pretty soon my company was on Slack, too. It also helped that Slack quickly got support for a much richer set of integrations with other apps. HipChat had a bunch, but I think Slack realized this would be the number one way to beat the competition, and they spent a ton of effort on building out this side of the platform. Slack, of course, also had the advantage of focus; HipChat was made by Atlassian, who had a lot of different products to spread their focus more thinly. Around the same time we saw a similar battle between Google Hangouts and "old school" apps like WebEx and GoToMeeting. The latter were/are native apps, rock stable, but fundamentally uncool. Hangouts was browser-based and super flaky, but somehow cool because they were the latest generation of web UX. What's interesting right now is that Zoom, a thoroughly clunky and uncool native app (very similar to WebEx or GoToMeeting in that sense) has somehow gained enormous market share, despite the existence of decently mature web-based alternatives. Maybe because Google managed to mess up its chat/videoconferencing so badly.

quartesixte 4y ago
Zoom’s media blitz at the start of the pandemic + phone number style meeting IDs is what propelled them to the top. No log-in required — just enter the 10 digit code and your name.
andrewf 4y ago
I think Hangouts beat WebEx because you could invite someone to a meeting and they didn't need to download or install anything to join. And I think Zoom beat Hangouts because you could invite someone to a meeting and they didn't need to create an account to join.
charrondev 4y ago
My company was using Hipchat in 2016 but it was also an web browser (maybe it was nw.js?) wrapper with the following deficiencies compared to slack and we were very glad when they got acquired and we switched: - Horrible text editor compared to slack (no inline code, no syntax highlighting, lists barely worked, undo barely worked) - notification preferences (per channel) we’re lacking. - no threading support - UI was laggy compared to slack. - there was an very limited set of emojis. - no good mobile app. - few and limited integrations (notably I use GitHub, Jira, and Outlook integrations for slack). Still hipchat was far better than Teams is today.

derwiki 4y ago

Threads get a lot of credit, but I think a big big value add was custom emojis--hard to understate the value of transforming local workplace memes/jokes into emojis and make them instantly accessible to anyone else in your workspace.

tanseydavid 4y ago
I am experiencing some form of Poe's Law reading this one. Particularly due to the choice of the word "understate."