4 ms·

Will WhatsApp kill Slack?

19 points by mataug 12y ago

jpinkerton88 12y ago
please see http://andregarzia.com/posts/en/whatsappdoesntunderstandtheweb/ http://andregarzia.com/posts/en/whatsappdoesntunderstandthew...
- hoppi 12y ago
  Just because the application has huge flaws from a certain developers perspective doesn't mean other people will share the same view. I use whatsapp regulary along with my team to coordinate driver & share info/media quickly to allow the driver to do his/her job and vice versa. Having a desktop client is a god send for this as switching between computer/phone gets very tiresome. It won't replace slack but it makes life a whole lot easier. Slack is a lot more business orientated and that definitely shows whereas WhatsApp has the convenience factor for people eg. driving and giving us real time info.
dasil003 12y ago
So the author hasn't even used Slack but assumes that a web version of WhatsApp will be its equivalent? Slack is already more expensive than HipChat, Campfire, IRC, yet it is dominating those, why? Because it's worth it. The implementation and UX for company teams (especially technical teams) is so far beyond what other apps offer that the cost is a minor bullet point. WhatsApp is great as a personal instant messenger, but for them to be better than Slack at what Slack does they would have to design for two radically different use cases, and the result would almost assuredly be mediocrity.
- hesselink 12y ago
  We've used Campfire and are now using HipChat. What are the things that Slack offers over these?
  - emirb 12y ago
    I use it everyday and it helps a lot when you connect it to various services (github, trello etc.) It offers dozens of them: https://slack.com/integrations https://slack.com/integrations
    - gitdude 12y ago
      love to understand why slack is better - is it primarily because of integrations? or is it something more?
    - ryantownsend 12y ago
      Ditto this, the integrations are really the icing on the cake for Slack. We've even written notifications from our own applications to push into Slack, so we get notified on everything from continuous integration test results and deployments through to analytics and sales figures.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    Used Hipchat at my last gig, Slack now at my fully remote startup position. You could not pay me to go back to Hipchat. It's not just the UX. Slack is more reliable on mobile, and Slack search is incredibly good compared to Hipchat (archives, context in the Mac GUI, etc).
  - mbesto 12y ago
    I use both HipChat and Slack everyday. Honestly, I don't feel Slack is as massive of an upgrade as people claim it to be. A few things that make Slack stick out: 1. It's got a SlackBot that does a lot of functions for you (like /hangouts etc). You can do all of this with GitHub's Hubot if you want, but it requires your own maintenance. 2. It's "media" posting (sharing links) and search are slightly better. But these are simply more cosmetic preferences than total usability upgrade. 3. I find Slack's mobile app much better (responsive, less buggy) but that's more of a technical implementation. I think HipChat's dev team has simply become less focused on supporting it (speculation). 4. Slack has built-in private groups and #hashtags for organizing conversations and topics better. My general conclusion is that Slack has a much higher value for non-tech folks. I'm technical, so I'm fairly indifferent. There are some quirks that I don't like about Slack, and I personally prefer some of the elements of HipChat over it.
- bcarr 12y ago
  IMO, the only way that WhatsApp could even compete with the value created by Slack would be by giving away the product to its international user base. And on top of that, you'd have to assume that the same user base is too lazy to download a free app for their phone, which I think is pretty safe to assume isn't the case in the slightest.
- JonoBB 12y ago
  You can't join multiple groups/teams with HipChat, which is one of the most absurd design assumptions I've encountered. This was completely unusable for us, and many others. For reference, have a look at their uservoice thread, which has been running for a few years and has a few thousand votes
intopieces 12y ago
Yes, WhatsApp has a massive adoption rate, but it will need to vastly improve its web interface and generally make their service look and feel more professional, as well as more collaborative. When I think of Whatsapp, I think of messages between individuals. Slack, for my company, replaced IRC, which is much more of a chat room aggregator.
emirb 12y ago
WhatsApp and Slack are similar applications with totally different user base, so no, WhatsApp will not kill Slack, nor it will "attack" its user at all.
makeitstop 12y ago
Stopped reading this infantile crap. "super awesome!" "super difficult" Like reading the diary of a teenage girl.
- cylinder 12y ago
  The constant use of the adjective "super" is easily the worst thing to come out of hipsterism. Yuck.
  - dasil003 12y ago
    The worst thing to come out of "hipsterism" is the dilution of the term hipster to be utterly meaningless, and frequently used describe any person that one dislikes for any reason. The word "super" is just a word. People have been using it for a long time.
    - cylinder 12y ago
      Nope. Wasn't being regularly used to describe anything until recently.
mccr8 12y ago
Kind of odd seeing a company that charges $3 a month per user being too cheap to pay $6 a month per user. If everybody has their attitude, their business model is in trouble.
danielsamuels 12y ago
No.
- nosideeffects 12y ago
  +1
shenaor 12y ago
WhatsApp was pretty cool, I disabled the notifications to message at my own accord. All was good until facebook bought it. Now it has annoying pop-up telling me to enable my notifications. I refuse!!!
rvanmil 12y ago
I know a lot of HN folks are very critical of Telegram, but I've been using it for team (and private) communication for quite a while now and it's great. It has clients for almost all platforms including a nice web client for all browsers.
- mironov 12y ago
  Same here. We use Telegram for team communication while everyone is out of the office. We've integrated it with github and CI, and now thinking about making this service public: http://telegram.jaconda.im http://telegram.jaconda.im
bdcravens 12y ago
Needs more exclamation marks.
josu 12y ago
Facebook and Skype have both a big userbase too and the option for group chats, how come they haven't killed Slack yet?
ojbyrne 12y ago
Betteridge's Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...) strikes again!
ctide 12y ago
Why is the deal breaker a cost that you don't have to pay? Slack works fine for free.
- LargeWu 12y ago
  The history in Slack's free version is limited to only 10,000 posts. If you have even a moderate number of active users, your history drops off pretty fast. My last job used Slack without paying, and wanting to find something in the history that had cycled out was almost a daily occurance.
jkoschei 12y ago
The exclamation marks made me think this was sarcastic.
martyz 12y ago
Slack is a tremendous collaborative tool for teams. WhatsApp is a tremendous tool to send photos to Grandma. I think they both have different target markets in mind.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
spacefight 12y ago
What I really don't get with the new WhatsApp web app and the embedded end-to-end encryption is the following: why on earth are they including 3rd party scripts with DOM access? <script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/webfont/1.5.10/webfont.js"></script> All online banking sites I use do not do this, for a reason.

19 points by mataug 12y ago

please see http://andregarzia.com/posts/en/whatsappdoesntunderstandtheweb/ http://andregarzia.com/posts/en/whatsappdoesntunderstandthew...

hoppi 12y ago
Just because the application has huge flaws from a certain developers perspective doesn't mean other people will share the same view. I use whatsapp regulary along with my team to coordinate driver & share info/media quickly to allow the driver to do his/her job and vice versa. Having a desktop client is a god send for this as switching between computer/phone gets very tiresome. It won't replace slack but it makes life a whole lot easier. Slack is a lot more business orientated and that definitely shows whereas WhatsApp has the convenience factor for people eg. driving and giving us real time info.

dasil003 12y ago

So the author hasn't even used Slack but assumes that a web version of WhatsApp will be its equivalent? Slack is already more expensive than HipChat, Campfire, IRC, yet it is dominating those, why? Because it's worth it. The implementation and UX for company teams (especially technical teams) is so far beyond what other apps offer that the cost is a minor bullet point. WhatsApp is great as a personal instant messenger, but for them to be better than Slack at what Slack does they would have to design for two radically different use cases, and the result would almost assuredly be mediocrity.

hesselink 12y ago
We've used Campfire and are now using HipChat. What are the things that Slack offers over these?
- emirb 12y ago
  I use it everyday and it helps a lot when you connect it to various services (github, trello etc.) It offers dozens of them: https://slack.com/integrations https://slack.com/integrations
  - gitdude 12y ago
    love to understand why slack is better - is it primarily because of integrations? or is it something more?
  - ryantownsend 12y ago
    Ditto this, the integrations are really the icing on the cake for Slack. We've even written notifications from our own applications to push into Slack, so we get notified on everything from continuous integration test results and deployments through to analytics and sales figures.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  Used Hipchat at my last gig, Slack now at my fully remote startup position. You could not pay me to go back to Hipchat. It's not just the UX. Slack is more reliable on mobile, and Slack search is incredibly good compared to Hipchat (archives, context in the Mac GUI, etc).
- mbesto 12y ago
  I use both HipChat and Slack everyday. Honestly, I don't feel Slack is as massive of an upgrade as people claim it to be. A few things that make Slack stick out: 1. It's got a SlackBot that does a lot of functions for you (like /hangouts etc). You can do all of this with GitHub's Hubot if you want, but it requires your own maintenance. 2. It's "media" posting (sharing links) and search are slightly better. But these are simply more cosmetic preferences than total usability upgrade. 3. I find Slack's mobile app much better (responsive, less buggy) but that's more of a technical implementation. I think HipChat's dev team has simply become less focused on supporting it (speculation). 4. Slack has built-in private groups and #hashtags for organizing conversations and topics better. My general conclusion is that Slack has a much higher value for non-tech folks. I'm technical, so I'm fairly indifferent. There are some quirks that I don't like about Slack, and I personally prefer some of the elements of HipChat over it.
bcarr 12y ago
IMO, the only way that WhatsApp could even compete with the value created by Slack would be by giving away the product to its international user base. And on top of that, you'd have to assume that the same user base is too lazy to download a free app for their phone, which I think is pretty safe to assume isn't the case in the slightest.
JonoBB 12y ago
You can't join multiple groups/teams with HipChat, which is one of the most absurd design assumptions I've encountered. This was completely unusable for us, and many others. For reference, have a look at their uservoice thread, which has been running for a few years and has a few thousand votes

intopieces 12y ago

Yes, WhatsApp has a massive adoption rate, but it will need to vastly improve its web interface and generally make their service look and feel more professional, as well as more collaborative. When I think of Whatsapp, I think of messages between individuals. Slack, for my company, replaced IRC, which is much more of a chat room aggregator.

emirb 12y ago

WhatsApp and Slack are similar applications with totally different user base, so no, WhatsApp will not kill Slack, nor it will "attack" its user at all.

makeitstop 12y ago

Stopped reading this infantile crap. "super awesome!" "super difficult" Like reading the diary of a teenage girl.

cylinder 12y ago
The constant use of the adjective "super" is easily the worst thing to come out of hipsterism. Yuck.
- dasil003 12y ago
  The worst thing to come out of "hipsterism" is the dilution of the term hipster to be utterly meaningless, and frequently used describe any person that one dislikes for any reason. The word "super" is just a word. People have been using it for a long time.
  - cylinder 12y ago
    Nope. Wasn't being regularly used to describe anything until recently.

mccr8 12y ago

Kind of odd seeing a company that charges $3 a month per user being too cheap to pay $6 a month per user. If everybody has their attitude, their business model is in trouble.

danielsamuels 12y ago

No.

nosideeffects 12y ago
+1

shenaor 12y ago

WhatsApp was pretty cool, I disabled the notifications to message at my own accord. All was good until facebook bought it. Now it has annoying pop-up telling me to enable my notifications. I refuse!!!

rvanmil 12y ago

I know a lot of HN folks are very critical of Telegram, but I've been using it for team (and private) communication for quite a while now and it's great. It has clients for almost all platforms including a nice web client for all browsers.

mironov 12y ago
Same here. We use Telegram for team communication while everyone is out of the office. We've integrated it with github and CI, and now thinking about making this service public: http://telegram.jaconda.im http://telegram.jaconda.im

bdcravens 12y ago

Needs more exclamation marks.

josu 12y ago

Facebook and Skype have both a big userbase too and the option for group chats, how come they haven't killed Slack yet?

ojbyrne 12y ago

Betteridge's Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...) strikes again!

ctide 12y ago

Why is the deal breaker a cost that you don't have to pay? Slack works fine for free.

LargeWu 12y ago
The history in Slack's free version is limited to only 10,000 posts. If you have even a moderate number of active users, your history drops off pretty fast. My last job used Slack without paying, and wanting to find something in the history that had cycled out was almost a daily occurance.

jkoschei 12y ago

The exclamation marks made me think this was sarcastic.

martyz 12y ago

Slack is a tremendous collaborative tool for teams. WhatsApp is a tremendous tool to send photos to Grandma. I think they both have different target markets in mind.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

spacefight 12y ago

What I really don't get with the new WhatsApp web app and the embedded end-to-end encryption is the following: why on earth are they including 3rd party scripts with DOM access? <script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/webfont/1.5.10/webfont.js"></script> All online banking sites I use do not do this, for a reason.