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0 pointscalciphus5y ago0 comments

My suspicion is that slack has hit the wall with their core product. User growth has flattened and that's why we're seeing a pivot to random experiments in layout and UI and no meaningful new features. Video conference is barely usable, but somehow adding user icons and a command pop-up (that doesn't support all their commands) all made it out to production.

The most meaningful thing they've had recently is the cross-org shared channel thing, which is awesome when it works but still onerous to manage. That was two years ago. And it doesn't open up that many new users, it just keeps people in slack longer (good for stickiness, bad for growth).

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wyclif5y ago

In those same four years where Slack’s user base tripled, Microsoft Teams claims it gained 115 million users, showing the world that product quality can’t save a startup when Big Tech wants a piece.

This is the important point: because of tech monopolies it is no longer possible to compete on software quality. This is why Congress needs to break them up.

sokoloff5y ago

I've done a lot of video calls since pandemic started, usually with our company's chosen vendor, but with some outside companies, it's on their system. It was only a couple weeks ago that I experienced my first Teams call ever, while I've had many external zoom calls, many Google, some Chime, some webex, and I've had many, many external Slack invites.

I wonder if Microsoft's Teams numbers were pumped up by it being freely included in O365 subs. "Oh you're a paying O365 customer; we'll just go ahead and count your included Teams sub as a Teams sub."

magicalhippo5y ago

I dunno. We got Office 365. If Slack was significantly better than Teams I'm pretty sure we'd pay for it.

As it stands it seems to be the other way around, at least for the features we care the most about (meetings, screen sharing, voice calls).

So I think it's possible to compete on quality, but it's definitely harder as a lot of people will get by with a lower-quality offering.

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