6 ms·

Slack Chats

107 points by bleakgadfly 12y ago

joekinley 12y ago
So it's basically another internet forum?
- Kiro 12y ago
  How few seconds did you spend on the site? Your comment makes no sense.
- hrktb 12y ago
  A lot of things are basically internet fora I think. If it was a stupid concept to start with I'd understand sceptism. But new takes on top of IRC seems a good idea, and from the time I spend chatting on my projects, I'd welcome a solution that would bring even 10% more efficiency to the current process.
- prottmann 12y ago
  Yes, like reddit, ycombinator, facebook, whatsapp and all others.
  - mozillas 12y ago
    Most of reddit is open. No account required, no invite required to read. Same for HN. Facebook is closed.
ishener 12y ago
I get 403 forbiden
- kokey 12y ago
  Someone from South Africa also reported that he gets the same.
davidw 12y ago
Right now, the top post is about how FoundationDB got acquired and promptly taken out of circulation. This is currently 2nd, and is written with the idea of helping people form communities on top of a proprietary system. Slack seems like it might be a good thing for companies, but for public stuff, I'll continue to stick with IRC. I'll add: this site seems like a cool idea and good work by whoever created it, but I'm just averse to building on that particular foundation.
- asb 12y ago
  Building on this - what happened to Mibbit? Axod used to post on HN regularly with really impressive load and growth stats https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=axod https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=axod. It seems that after Freenode blocked it, progress rather stalled. To me, with some UI polish mibbit could very well have solved many of the IRC UI issues
  - davidw 12y ago
    Yeah, that was kind of lame on Freenode's part. There are plenty of fairly accessible IRC clients though.
  - GreaterFool 12y ago
    I've been using a free version of irccloud.com and as far as web-based IRC clients go, it is fantastic. The paid plan is rather expensive though. $5/month for access to an IRC client is a bit much. I have a DigitalOcean VM from which I connect through irssi; I access that using Chrome Secure Shell. That's my basic setup. And $5/month per user for the team plan would quickly add up! So irccloud for work would simply be too expensive; and that's just the client. Private IRC server (as a service) won't be cheap either. Or could run it myself but then I'd also have to maintain it myself. Slack hits the sweet spot. There's nothing to maintain, the barrier to entry for non-technical people is low. The apps are great and so is the web version. It evokes the feeling of IRC and adds convenience of instant messaging (e.g. @-mentions, notifications; irccloud does mentions and notifications too which makes it really good). So yeah, Slack is a cage, but a golden one. With a comfortable plush sofa and freshly brewed coffee. I can hang out there with friends and do some work...
wamatt 12y ago
Maybe this is a silly question, but how do you login? If one needs to be invited, is that a standard process the visitor can initiate?
- fnayr 12y ago
  It seems to require an invite from the owner of the community or members. The owner either gives you their contact details or require you get an invite from one of the members directly. This is frustrating for me, an iOS dev wanting to join the iosdevelopers slack, because it requires an invite, and I'm a solo dev. So, though I have apps with millions of downloads and a decent amount of iOS dev experience, I don't really have anyone I know in the community.
- burger_moon 12y ago
  I clicked on a discussion and at the bottom was a register button which directed me to a new page with another link at the bottom to register with twitter. Seemed to work for me.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
benjamincburns 12y ago
It may look like it, but this isn't the Slack (team chat sold at slack.com) you're thinking of. Top post on there right now: A quick note from Jeff Morris Jr. (founder of Slack Chats): Slack Chats was created to help you meet interesting new people. We are not created by, affiliated with, or supported by Slack Technologies, Inc. Thanks for your awesome support! :) I smell a rebranding coming. If it wasn't for that post I would've assumed this was something from Slack Technologies. Even the logo is so similar... Worse yet, this is building negative brand recognition for Slack Technologies at the moment, as the UI polish isn't what we'd expect from the Slack team, and their page isn't keeping up w/ HN traffic.
- organsnyder 12y ago
  Yep. I'd expect them to receive a cease & desist letter within the day. The real Slack doesn't have a choice if they wish to protect their trademark.
  - jeffmorrisjr 12y ago
    Hey Guys, Jeff Morris Jr. here (founder of Slack Chats). I've spoken with the Slack Team and they are big fans of this product. In fact, I've had several team members email me to thank me for building this product. I included the note as the top post to clearly state that this isn't an official Slack product. The site drives traffic to Slack and I do not make a single dollar off of it (despite many offers from advertisers). Hope this helps! Jeff
    - 07a 12y ago
      How do you reconcile the comments you have received with the company's very recent public statement that "these communities are not something we have the capacity to support given the growth in our existing business."? [1] [1] http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/03/24/slack-is-quietly-unintentionally-killing-irc/ http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/03/24/slack-is-quietly-un...
      - 12y ago
joshfarrant 12y ago
I'm a big fan of Slack, so hopefully this turns into something interesting. Shameless plug: If you use Slack on Chrome my Chrome Extension, #Clicky, may be of some use to you, it's the fastest way to share your current page to Slack! https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clicky-for-slack/bllgmdlgbbmijcoecbnmgeoekhebgmac https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clicky-for-slack/b...
- benjamincburns 12y ago
  This isn't from the team which produced the "Slack" to which you're likely referring.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - joshfarrant 12y ago
    I'm aware it's not from the same team, but they're both built for use with Slack (https://slack.com https://slack.com), I'm not sure how many other communication platforms called 'Slack' there are!
mundanevoice 12y ago
Is it me or is it very very slow?
- chippy 12y ago
  It's not just you. But this may not be indicative of the slack experience.
  - ipedrazas 12y ago
    Not sure "Slack experience" is the best way of describing it :)
buro9 12y ago
What's the privacy policy for Slack Chats? I cannot find one on that domain, but I wonder if it's the same as the one on Slack.com https://slack.com/privacy-policy https://slack.com/privacy-policy . That policy isn't aimed at protection of end user data, but rather at compliance with regulations around corporate communications.
- icebraining 12y ago
  Slack Chats seems to be just a directory of Slack groups; I doubt they're getting any of the chat data.
- benjamincburns 12y ago
  > I cannot find one on that domain, but I wonder if it's the same as the one on Slack.com https://slack.com/privacy-policy https://slack.com/privacy-policy Not the same company. See my other post(s).
saurik 12y ago
Multiple people here seem to be confused by this project, drawing conclusions about Slack itself from its functionality and performance, or in one case trying to reason about its privacy policy based on the one from Slack.com. Despite leaning heavily on Slack's name, this is not an official project: it is some random designer who threw together a website that exposes people to Slack's product for a purpose (public chats) which Slack currently does not support: both implicitly in the way they set up their features and pricing, and explicitly when asked, such as for the article that came out about them in The Next Web today. > I asked the company how it felt about these communities popping up even though it’s not exactly sanctioned and a press relations person told me that “it’s great that people are putting Slack to good use” but unfortunately “these communities are not something we have the capacity to support given the growth in our existing business.” http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/03/24/slack-is-quietly-unintentionally-killing-irc/ http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/03/24/slack-is-quietly-un... I would say "using other people's names in confusing ways that border on impersonation should maybe be illegal", but of course it is: Slack is definitely popular enough in this space to deserve implicit trademark status. (And, before someone invokes the standard whine of "you can't own a word like Slack", trademarks are not about "owning words": they are about protecting people—the people who see the word, not the people who use the word—from being deceived, either on purpose or on accident, by someone using a name within the same highly-restricted context in a way that is confusing.) (edit: I am glad to see benjamincburns also noted this in his comment elsewhere on this post. I noticed his comment after I had written my comment, and I figured I provide some useful detail on this not even being a sanctioned use, so I decided to leave my additional comment. He is also soon a great service now of replying to some of the people to clear up confusion.)
- benjamincburns 12y ago
  > I would say "using other people's names in confusing ways that border on impersonation should maybe be illegal" ... I think this is a textbook example of trademark infringement all wrapped up in a nice neat little package. It shows how brand protection shouldn't really care about the intent of the infringing party. It's so overt I'd have to assume it was due to naivety, but that doesn't make it any less damaging. The fact that it just doesn't "feel" like a service that might follow from the team who brought us Slack-the-team-chat-product just serves to establish Slack Technologies' ownership of their brand, and their need to protect it. If their marketing and PM teams have seen this, I'm sure they're cringing. That's not to say that it doesn't offer value. I'm sure that if the branding issue wasn't so overt, we'd all be cheering it on as a Show HN style MVP.
BinaryIdiot 12y ago
I'm finding this app very, very slow and kinda quirky. I also noticed it'll let you send comments to the server and even response positively without being logged into the system but I don't see the comments actually being displayed so I'm guessing they're silently being ignored?
petercooper 12y ago
So the thing I've wondered about.. if you create an interesting community on Slack, what's to stop them pulling the rug from under your feet and eventually start charging everyone? Their free offering is really good and I hope the paid users will subsidize it forever, but then I've seen what has happened with other services over the years..
- dexterdog 12y ago
  Slack doesn't strike me as the kind of company that would do that. So many of the users of the general group slacks also use it at their place of work. Slacks pricing model doesn't work for this in the sense that if they wanted to charge for everybody then every user would have to once for every slack that they are a member of which would kill the large public slacks.
mozillas 12y ago
What if HN would have been a private Slack Chat?
Ono-Sendai 12y ago
If someone wants a website with realtime chatting, per subject, with snappy performance, then they can try my website: http://suprsede.com/ http://suprsede.com/ </plug>
ChikkaChiChi 12y ago
This isn't Slack; it's a site created on http://postatic.com http://postatic.com which seems to be an online community generator. I think the reason this is getting so much traction on HN is because of a false association.
07a 12y ago
I'm concerned that websites which abuse Slack like this are going to ruin Slack's free tier for those of us who rely on it for more legitimate purposes. I cannot possibly comprehend the mindset behind someone who would choose to use Slack for these purposes when IRC has existed since the 80s and accomplishes the same task much better. Nor do I understand why we are leaching onto Slack when Hipchat has existed with a similar free tier for a while now. And it is abuse. From the company itself: "these communities are not something we have the capacity to support given the growth in our existing business." [1] [1] http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/03/24/slack-is-quietly-unintentionally-killing-irc/ http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/03/24/slack-is-quietly-un...
- psychometry 12y ago
  Have you used the Slack desktop and mobile apps? It's patently false to claim that IRC does these things just as well. There's nothing abusive about a company becoming successful by providing a better UX than an ancient alternative technology.
- lowboy 12y ago
  I haven't seen a cross-platform IRC client that is as nice as Slack. The embeds and integrations are nice and I like being able to edit typos. Having seamless integration between my desktop, phone, and tablet is great.
- s73v3r 12y ago
  "I cannot possibly comprehend the mindset behind someone who would choose to use Slack for these purposes when IRC has existed since the 80s and accomplishes the same task much better." Define "better". For many people, Slack is easier to use, has a better UI, and is better supported on mobile devices.
doomspork 12y ago
You should look into a 500 Internal Error page, right now you're spitting out a stacktrace and code: rel= http://www.slackchats.com/%3Ca%20href=

Slack Chats

107 points by bleakgadfly 12y ago

joekinley 12y ago

So it's basically another internet forum?

Kiro 12y ago
How few seconds did you spend on the site? Your comment makes no sense.
hrktb 12y ago
A lot of things are basically internet fora I think. If it was a stupid concept to start with I'd understand sceptism. But new takes on top of IRC seems a good idea, and from the time I spend chatting on my projects, I'd welcome a solution that would bring even 10% more efficiency to the current process.
prottmann 12y ago
Yes, like reddit, ycombinator, facebook, whatsapp and all others.
- mozillas 12y ago
  Most of reddit is open. No account required, no invite required to read. Same for HN. Facebook is closed.

ishener 12y ago

I get 403 forbiden

kokey 12y ago
Someone from South Africa also reported that he gets the same.

davidw 12y ago

Right now, the top post is about how FoundationDB got acquired and promptly taken out of circulation. This is currently 2nd, and is written with the idea of helping people form communities on top of a proprietary system. Slack seems like it might be a good thing for companies, but for public stuff, I'll continue to stick with IRC. I'll add: this site seems like a cool idea and good work by whoever created it, but I'm just averse to building on that particular foundation.

asb 12y ago
Building on this - what happened to Mibbit? Axod used to post on HN regularly with really impressive load and growth stats https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=axod https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=axod. It seems that after Freenode blocked it, progress rather stalled. To me, with some UI polish mibbit could very well have solved many of the IRC UI issues
- davidw 12y ago
  Yeah, that was kind of lame on Freenode's part. There are plenty of fairly accessible IRC clients though.
- GreaterFool 12y ago
  I've been using a free version of irccloud.com and as far as web-based IRC clients go, it is fantastic. The paid plan is rather expensive though. $5/month for access to an IRC client is a bit much. I have a DigitalOcean VM from which I connect through irssi; I access that using Chrome Secure Shell. That's my basic setup. And $5/month per user for the team plan would quickly add up! So irccloud for work would simply be too expensive; and that's just the client. Private IRC server (as a service) won't be cheap either. Or could run it myself but then I'd also have to maintain it myself. Slack hits the sweet spot. There's nothing to maintain, the barrier to entry for non-technical people is low. The apps are great and so is the web version. It evokes the feeling of IRC and adds convenience of instant messaging (e.g. @-mentions, notifications; irccloud does mentions and notifications too which makes it really good). So yeah, Slack is a cage, but a golden one. With a comfortable plush sofa and freshly brewed coffee. I can hang out there with friends and do some work...

wamatt 12y ago

Maybe this is a silly question, but how do you login? If one needs to be invited, is that a standard process the visitor can initiate?

fnayr 12y ago
It seems to require an invite from the owner of the community or members. The owner either gives you their contact details or require you get an invite from one of the members directly. This is frustrating for me, an iOS dev wanting to join the iosdevelopers slack, because it requires an invite, and I'm a solo dev. So, though I have apps with millions of downloads and a decent amount of iOS dev experience, I don't really have anyone I know in the community.
burger_moon 12y ago
I clicked on a discussion and at the bottom was a register button which directed me to a new page with another link at the bottom to register with twitter. Seemed to work for me.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

benjamincburns 12y ago

It may look like it, but this isn't the Slack (team chat sold at slack.com) you're thinking of. Top post on there right now: A quick note from Jeff Morris Jr. (founder of Slack Chats): Slack Chats was created to help you meet interesting new people. We are not created by, affiliated with, or supported by Slack Technologies, Inc. Thanks for your awesome support! :) I smell a rebranding coming. If it wasn't for that post I would've assumed this was something from Slack Technologies. Even the logo is so similar... Worse yet, this is building negative brand recognition for Slack Technologies at the moment, as the UI polish isn't what we'd expect from the Slack team, and their page isn't keeping up w/ HN traffic.

organsnyder 12y ago
Yep. I'd expect them to receive a cease & desist letter within the day. The real Slack doesn't have a choice if they wish to protect their trademark.
- jeffmorrisjr 12y ago
  Hey Guys, Jeff Morris Jr. here (founder of Slack Chats). I've spoken with the Slack Team and they are big fans of this product. In fact, I've had several team members email me to thank me for building this product. I included the note as the top post to clearly state that this isn't an official Slack product. The site drives traffic to Slack and I do not make a single dollar off of it (despite many offers from advertisers). Hope this helps! Jeff
  - 07a 12y ago
    How do you reconcile the comments you have received with the company's very recent public statement that "these communities are not something we have the capacity to support given the growth in our existing business."? [1] [1] http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/03/24/slack-is-quietly-unintentionally-killing-irc/ http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/03/24/slack-is-quietly-un...
    - 12y ago

joshfarrant 12y ago

I'm a big fan of Slack, so hopefully this turns into something interesting. Shameless plug: If you use Slack on Chrome my Chrome Extension, #Clicky, may be of some use to you, it's the fastest way to share your current page to Slack! https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clicky-for-slack/bllgmdlgbbmijcoecbnmgeoekhebgmac https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clicky-for-slack/b...

benjamincburns 12y ago
This isn't from the team which produced the "Slack" to which you're likely referring.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- joshfarrant 12y ago
  I'm aware it's not from the same team, but they're both built for use with Slack (https://slack.com https://slack.com), I'm not sure how many other communication platforms called 'Slack' there are!

mundanevoice 12y ago

Is it me or is it very very slow?

chippy 12y ago
It's not just you. But this may not be indicative of the slack experience.
- ipedrazas 12y ago
  Not sure "Slack experience" is the best way of describing it :)

buro9 12y ago

What's the privacy policy for Slack Chats? I cannot find one on that domain, but I wonder if it's the same as the one on Slack.com https://slack.com/privacy-policy https://slack.com/privacy-policy . That policy isn't aimed at protection of end user data, but rather at compliance with regulations around corporate communications.

icebraining 12y ago
Slack Chats seems to be just a directory of Slack groups; I doubt they're getting any of the chat data.
benjamincburns 12y ago
> I cannot find one on that domain, but I wonder if it's the same as the one on Slack.com https://slack.com/privacy-policy https://slack.com/privacy-policy Not the same company. See my other post(s).

saurik 12y ago

Multiple people here seem to be confused by this project, drawing conclusions about Slack itself from its functionality and performance, or in one case trying to reason about its privacy policy based on the one from Slack.com. Despite leaning heavily on Slack's name, this is not an official project: it is some random designer who threw together a website that exposes people to Slack's product for a purpose (public chats) which Slack currently does not support: both implicitly in the way they set up their features and pricing, and explicitly when asked, such as for the article that came out about them in The Next Web today. > I asked the company how it felt about these communities popping up even though it’s not exactly sanctioned and a press relations person told me that “it’s great that people are putting Slack to good use” but unfortunately “these communities are not something we have the capacity to support given the growth in our existing business.” http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/03/24/slack-is-quietly-unintentionally-killing-irc/ http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/03/24/slack-is-quietly-un... I would say "using other people's names in confusing ways that border on impersonation should maybe be illegal", but of course it is: Slack is definitely popular enough in this space to deserve implicit trademark status. (And, before someone invokes the standard whine of "you can't own a word like Slack", trademarks are not about "owning words": they are about protecting people—the people who see the word, not the people who use the word—from being deceived, either on purpose or on accident, by someone using a name within the same highly-restricted context in a way that is confusing.) (edit: I am glad to see benjamincburns also noted this in his comment elsewhere on this post. I noticed his comment after I had written my comment, and I figured I provide some useful detail on this not even being a sanctioned use, so I decided to leave my additional comment. He is also soon a great service now of replying to some of the people to clear up confusion.)

benjamincburns 12y ago
> I would say "using other people's names in confusing ways that border on impersonation should maybe be illegal" ... I think this is a textbook example of trademark infringement all wrapped up in a nice neat little package. It shows how brand protection shouldn't really care about the intent of the infringing party. It's so overt I'd have to assume it was due to naivety, but that doesn't make it any less damaging. The fact that it just doesn't "feel" like a service that might follow from the team who brought us Slack-the-team-chat-product just serves to establish Slack Technologies' ownership of their brand, and their need to protect it. If their marketing and PM teams have seen this, I'm sure they're cringing. That's not to say that it doesn't offer value. I'm sure that if the branding issue wasn't so overt, we'd all be cheering it on as a Show HN style MVP.

BinaryIdiot 12y ago

I'm finding this app very, very slow and kinda quirky. I also noticed it'll let you send comments to the server and even response positively without being logged into the system but I don't see the comments actually being displayed so I'm guessing they're silently being ignored?

petercooper 12y ago

So the thing I've wondered about.. if you create an interesting community on Slack, what's to stop them pulling the rug from under your feet and eventually start charging everyone? Their free offering is really good and I hope the paid users will subsidize it forever, but then I've seen what has happened with other services over the years..

dexterdog 12y ago
Slack doesn't strike me as the kind of company that would do that. So many of the users of the general group slacks also use it at their place of work. Slacks pricing model doesn't work for this in the sense that if they wanted to charge for everybody then every user would have to once for every slack that they are a member of which would kill the large public slacks.

mozillas 12y ago

What if HN would have been a private Slack Chat?

Ono-Sendai 12y ago

If someone wants a website with realtime chatting, per subject, with snappy performance, then they can try my website: http://suprsede.com/ http://suprsede.com/ </plug>

ChikkaChiChi 12y ago

This isn't Slack; it's a site created on http://postatic.com http://postatic.com which seems to be an online community generator. I think the reason this is getting so much traction on HN is because of a false association.

07a 12y ago

I'm concerned that websites which abuse Slack like this are going to ruin Slack's free tier for those of us who rely on it for more legitimate purposes. I cannot possibly comprehend the mindset behind someone who would choose to use Slack for these purposes when IRC has existed since the 80s and accomplishes the same task much better. Nor do I understand why we are leaching onto Slack when Hipchat has existed with a similar free tier for a while now. And it is abuse. From the company itself: "these communities are not something we have the capacity to support given the growth in our existing business." [1] [1] http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/03/24/slack-is-quietly-unintentionally-killing-irc/ http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/03/24/slack-is-quietly-un...

psychometry 12y ago
Have you used the Slack desktop and mobile apps? It's patently false to claim that IRC does these things just as well. There's nothing abusive about a company becoming successful by providing a better UX than an ancient alternative technology.
lowboy 12y ago
I haven't seen a cross-platform IRC client that is as nice as Slack. The embeds and integrations are nice and I like being able to edit typos. Having seamless integration between my desktop, phone, and tablet is great.
s73v3r 12y ago
"I cannot possibly comprehend the mindset behind someone who would choose to use Slack for these purposes when IRC has existed since the 80s and accomplishes the same task much better." Define "better". For many people, Slack is easier to use, has a better UI, and is better supported on mobile devices.

doomspork 12y ago

You should look into a 500 Internal Error page, right now you're spitting out a stacktrace and code: rel= http://www.slackchats.com/%3Ca%20href=