{"id":42130,"date":"2024-02-15T16:09:29","date_gmt":"2024-02-15T21:09:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=42130"},"modified":"2024-02-15T16:09:29","modified_gmt":"2024-02-15T21:09:29","slug":"slack-at-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/15\/slack-at-10\/","title":{"rendered":"Slack at 10"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elizabeth Lopatto<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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That’s one reason why Slack, the workplace chat app that formally launched 10 years ago today, is so unusual. Slack was the rare piece of enterprise software that spread through word of mouth, because it was actually, you know, good.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Slack was not the only text-based communications software. Besides Skype chat and Gchat, there were also other startups<\/a>: HipChat, Yammer, and Campfire. Slack tested out these products to see what didn’t work with them and discovered two things they could improve on: notifications and keeping a person’s place when they switched between mobile and desktop. That meant that even though Slack wasn’t doing head-to-head marketing — or indeed, any marketing at all — customers kept leaving other platforms and coming to Slack because it worked better.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Because so many people were using Slack in their work lives, some of its features started leaking out. For instance, Slack introduced emoji reactions — to reduce noise, people could just respond with a checkmark to show they’d read something. This spread from Slack back into consumer software. Tapbacks on iMessage feel like a response to Slack. Even Facebook, which had a like button, didn’t add other options until later. “I think we were the first to do it on a broad basis within the workplace,” Rodgers says. “We saw reactions show up everywhere within a couple years. I can remember one day opening GitHub of all things, and they had a reaction bar.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Personally, I find Slack to be worse than forums and mailing lists.<\/p>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n