WhatsApp for Work: Slack is Turning Into a Full-on Messaging App (protocol.com) 59
Forget email. The final frontier for Slack, as it tries to reimagine the way millions of people communicate at work, is the text message. From a report: Email is a useful tool but a blunt one. It mixes business communication with receipts and confirmation numbers, makes it easy to talk to anyone but also maybe makes it too easy to talk to anyone. But text messages? Not every professional relationship graduates to text-message levels of intimacy, but the ones that do are the ones that matter most. And you might have an assistant read and filter your email, but pretty much everybody checks their own texts. It's the highest, most elusive rung of the business communication ladder, and it's exactly what Slack wants to replace. Starting on Wednesday, any Slack user will be able to direct message any other Slack user. The new system is called Connect DMs, and works a bit like the messaging apps and buddy lists of old: Users send an invite to anyone via their work email address, and once the recipient accepts their new contact is added to their Slack sidebar. The conversations are tied to the users' organizations, but exist in a separate section of the Slack app itself.
Connect DMs turns Slack from an app for chatting with co-workers into an app for chatting with anyone. It puts Slack on par with both enterprise tools like Microsoft Teams and free consumer services like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. "When someone opens up their phone," said Ilan Frank, Slack's VP of product, "if they're connecting with their friends, they click on Facebook or WhatsApp. If they're connecting with someone they work with, regardless of where that person works, they should be clicking on Slack." That's a tricky thing to get right, both from a UI perspective and an IT one. But Slack is committed. This has been the plan since before Salesforce bought the company, and it feels even more urgent now. Slack needs this to work, in some ways, as Microsoft Teams and Zoom threaten to leave it behind. By expanding its purview, Slack gives users more reasons to try Slack, gives companies more reasons to adopt it, and makes Slack an even more central part of the modern workday.
Connect DMs turns Slack from an app for chatting with co-workers into an app for chatting with anyone. It puts Slack on par with both enterprise tools like Microsoft Teams and free consumer services like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. "When someone opens up their phone," said Ilan Frank, Slack's VP of product, "if they're connecting with their friends, they click on Facebook or WhatsApp. If they're connecting with someone they work with, regardless of where that person works, they should be clicking on Slack." That's a tricky thing to get right, both from a UI perspective and an IT one. But Slack is committed. This has been the plan since before Salesforce bought the company, and it feels even more urgent now. Slack needs this to work, in some ways, as Microsoft Teams and Zoom threaten to leave it behind. By expanding its purview, Slack gives users more reasons to try Slack, gives companies more reasons to adopt it, and makes Slack an even more central part of the modern workday.
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The GDPR says that anyone who wants to process my data needs my consent, there are a few exceptions, what facebook does is not one of them. I have not consented so what Zuck is doing is illegal - not that he cares at all. Ditto Google and those similar. They should be made to do so; hopefully what has started in Australia will be the start of legal push back.
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Not that I disagree with you, but from a practical perspective, there is no limit of corporate power today. Your only recourse is to either take them to court or stop using the platform. I personal
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You agreed when you accepted the ELU. You surrendered your GDPR rights when you accepted and continue to use the application with full knowledge of what happens.
I have never accepted any ELU from facebook - I do not use the scoundrels - so I have not surrendered any GDPR rights. But they still have their grubby hands on my data.
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You KNOW what those parenthesis really mean, c'mon.
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You KNOW what those parenthesis really mean, c'mon.
Totally offtopic but serious question: what exactly those parenthesis mean? That someone whose name is inside is Jewish?
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No. Your response is either disingenuous or ignorant. In case it's merely ignorant, I'll explain:
I have no love of Zuckerberg. Criticize him all you want for things he's done. His company is, I believe, a net negative for the world. But criticism should be focused on those things, not his religious background. The triple parentheses in this context [wikipedia.org] are a reference to the fact that he is Jewish. They are an unnecessary part of criticizing him and are the antisemitic aspect to which I am objecting.
That be
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I was wondering what you were complaining about, never having seen that definition. Haven't even finished my second cup of coffee and already learned something new this morning.
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wow! (Score:5, Funny)
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Wow! You know, I was thinking; that's just what I need, another chat app. Thank goodness!
Whatever isn't texting iPhone users is okay with me. Because the alternative is
Your Grandma loved "Wow! You know, I was thinking; that's just what I need, another chat app. Thank goodness!"
No thanks (Score:3)
I do not mind slack for work, I let it live on my phone bc I have it sent to silent. I do not want my personal comms on slack bc I do not want to enable notifications, bc then that will interfere with my personal time. Personal comms are more important and deserve notifications most of the time. When logged on my desktop I also do not want personal comms interrupting me during work. Even if they are silenced they are still right there and a mental annoyance. Having my most of my personal comms on my ph
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Just what I need... (Score:2)
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People aren't using what they have. [xmpp.org]
Re: Just what I need... (Score:2)
Email Sucks but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Email has a lot of problems, but it is an Open Protocol designed to communicate across networks, to different computers of different makes and models, with clients from a bunch of different makes and models.
I can send an email from Google Gmail service, to Yahoos Email service or even to an Email Server that I have setup on my home computer.
If I need to communicate with a different business or to just an individual. I can just send via an email address and they get the email. No need to make sure they are a member or added to a white list and all this other stuff.
Instant Messaging seems to be stuck on using someones server to communicate, where we need a good way to cross communicate across different networks and businesses and not just pay the same guy for all chatting services.
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E-mail is basically passing sticky notes around. IM is basically the telephone. Both are for getting messages around, but they are different for a reason.
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Chat was only "open" because AOL's programming staff were incompetent to keep Microsoft Messenger and everyone else from connecting to AIM users. They had to flail around for a couple of years before they finally able to keep the kids home on the farm without users of superior services crashing the party, and by that time they were on their way downhill as their customer base had forced them to open access to the Internet at large.
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Windows for Workgroups had a Messenger app that was designed for use on the corporate network, strictly text-only. Then someone realized that you could use an IP address rather than a NetBIOS name or domain user name and I could talk to my wife at home while I was at work. Eventually spammers realized it as well, which put an end to that, but by that time MSN Messenger had appeared so not many people missed it.
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...and then there's awful things like slack (or teams) 'channels' where you have not only one email inbox and one IM/DM inbox, but potentially dozens of groups/teams with potentially dozens of channels, each with messages that can be their own threads with hundreds of messages.
On the bright side, I'm never without a legitimate excuse for having missed a message. Oh, which thread/channel/group was that in? oh...my bad, i didn't see it among the 800 other spastic notifications I got today.
Like every viable
Re:Email Sucks but... (Score:5, Informative)
On the other hand, you can't reliably send email to Gmail, they randomly discard it as spam without SMTP time notification that they did so. Plus a number of other violations of the standards -- Gmail is far worse than even Exchange.
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On the other hand, you can't reliably send email to Gmail, they randomly discard it as spam without SMTP time notification that they did so.
Probably by design. I gave up using my own domain for email because Gmail would randomly drop my messages. So now I use Gmail.
Re: Email Sucks but... (Score:3)
XMPP (the protocol formerly known as jabber) for messaging, and WebRTC for video and voice chat.
It blows my mind that people prefer a proprietary whatsapp/viber/slack for this stuff when good, open options exist.
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It blows my mind that people prefer a proprietary whatsapp/viber/slack for this stuff when good, open options exist.
I set up a Jabber server for my work group about 15 years ago. It functioned well, and everyone in our group used it and seemed to find it useful for work communication.
But then one of the Windows guys showed the boss that, with MSN Messenger (IIRC - regardless, it was one of Microsoft's apps), you could send a "message" which was just a full-screen-high person leaning in from the side of the screen and waving. The boss decided that was really great, and suddenly the group was required to use the Microsoft
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Anyone can set up a XMPP instant messaging service in minutes - with or without 'federation' (using only one central server or various independent servers like email does)
But the temptation of locking your users into your own network and hoping to hit the critical network effect threshold is simply too much, and all IM networ
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This, for me, is a major appeal of Matrix. It works a lot like email in that you can have a login on someone else's big server, or you can set up and run your own server and have an account there, but messages can be exchanged between different servers just as with email.
XMPP (Jabber et al)
Messaging needs to be federated... (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh wait. Email was. We like to go backwards.
Just go away (Score:1, Offtopic)
Why is Slack still a thing? Just fuck off and die in a gutter somewhere.
GAK!!!! (Score:2)
Am I the only one that vomited a little after reading that article? What a load of crap.
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It was basically a regurgitated press release - so it's perfectly natural that you, in turn, would also regurgitate.
What is this...stupidity? (Score:2)
"Email...makes it easy to talk to anyone but also maybe makes it too easy to talk to anyone.pretty much everybody checks their own texts. It's the highest, most elusive rung of the business communication ladder, and it's exactly what Slack wants to replace"
Uh, and exactly how many people check their own emails? I'm not sharing my Inbox with a dozen other people, as if it's always been treated like a communal bathroom on a train.
Seriously, this is about the most delusional piece of bullshit I've ever read in my life. You call that, justification to build a new Inbox? Give me a fucking break. Stop sending so many emails and stop having so many senseless meetings that pointless middle managers demand to justify their worthless positions and let the workers g
Slack is slightly prettier IRC (Score:2)
Slack is IRC for millennials who've never heard of IRC and don't know or care about open protocols. I really wish Slack would go out of business.
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Looking forward to a BitchX client for slack.
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I had to use Slack for work and I used matterircd [github.com] to use Slack via an IRC client.
Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment (Score:1)
Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.
Yea, nah. (Score:2)
I give Slack credit for monetizing chat from within a sea of free chat services. However, in the past year Covid has given Teams a huge shot in the arm and I can't see why any company that subscribes to Microsoft's email service(most companies these days?) would pay for slack when Teams is included in their existing subscription.
Regardless, this new Slack app is not going to be a thing. Few if any actually want this.
Additionally, the comparison to WhatsApp is asinine. WhatsApp was able to reach critical mas
I need a timeline... (Score:2)
One group I work with is communication disfunctional.
Between slack, DMs in slack (almost any combination of users), slack on laptop, slack on phone, plus email from multiple accounts and FB messages and text messages I will see something but may not be able to respond immediately. Then when I need to respond I have no idea where that message was.
Am I an ID10T? Is there some magic feature I am missing that could integrate all that into one search?
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"communication dysfunctional"
You're very polite, I would use other words . . .
Still not gonna replace SMS (Score:2)
Obligatory xkcd [xkcd.com]
If someone calls me, my phone rings like an old black Bell rotary. If someone texts me, it says, "Wizard needs food badly!" Otherwise, my phone stays silent. If you want me to notice right away, you call or text. I'm not about to enable notifications on anything else.
For asynchronous long-form stuff, there's email.
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Gross. I don't think I know anyone with an iPhone. I'm sure I've never actually seen one in person.
Spam (Score:3)
So they've just enabled Slack as a vector for Spam. Congrats!
Etiquette (Score:1)
A useful feature of email is the receiver reads and responds to it on their schedule as opposed to being constantly interrupted.
I once worked for a company where established etiquette was to use instant messaging (which tends to rudely interrupt the receiver, implying that whatever the sender's issue is has more importance that what the receiver is doing) be reserved for instances where you were blocked and your work could not proceed without the immediate help of the receiver.
If this was not the case, an e
Messaging apps (Score:1)