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We use Slack at work, and everyone we work with uses Slack, and we all work together with Slack Connect. I suspect if we moved to a competitor that’s pretty muc
by mcintyre1994 8mo ago
We use Slack at work, and everyone we work with uses Slack, and we all work together with Slack Connect. I suspect if we moved to a competitor that’s pretty much the main impact we’d see, and it wouldn’t be good unless everyone else work with moved too. I think that network effect is probably the only meaningful differentiation in that space.
- mbreese 8mo agoYou could also look at it as: in order for a Slack competitor to compete with Slack's network effects, the new program will need to offer an easy way to extend chat workspaces with external collaborators. It's not impossible, but it does make Slack's moat explicitly clear.
- haute_cuisine 8mo agoThe problem here is that companies artificially limit integrations, so it's impossible to exchange messages between different providers like how email works.
- SoftTalker 8mo agoWe really need some legal requirements similar to "right to repair" for machinery. We need "right to integrate" for software. I don't know how you'd pull it off, or how much support for integrations would be "enough" but it would allow competitors to cross these network effect lock-in moats that large players are able to build.
- mbreese 8mo agoI’ve always thought that the proper competitor to Slack/Twitter/etc… was a protocol not another service. Protocols enable competition, services just shift the market to another service.