
Slack will soon start testing voice and video chat - coloneltcb
http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/01/slack-roadmap/
======
Ensorceled
We abandoned hipchat because the latest app was horrible; constant signouts,
lost configurations, sso issues.

Skype is also a mess right now; with chat application bugs, UX issues (why
does the freakin' mute button move around) calls that can't be joined or start
cyloning, participants are suddenly dropped mid call. Throw in the spying
allegations ...

Hangouts is great for video but is a really clunky experience otherwise.

With everbody dropping the ball, there certainly is room for Slack to come in
and take control of this space.

~~~
scrollaway
We're trying out Discord for work here. It's mostly targeted at gaming, but it
feels far more like a "better Slack with voice chat" from my side.

With that said, shoot them an email first if you want to use them at a large
company ... it's not an enterprise product.

~~~
striking
Seconding Discord. It rocks for real time communication and works very well in
a browser, with rock solid native apps.

And they send you really friendly emails.

edit: heh. Apparently I tried posting it to HN before. Perhaps they're going a
little hard on the "for gamers" branding when it could really be for anyone.

~~~
whistlerbrk
Indeed, the React community moved from Slack to Discord. Slack has made it
clear they are a tool for small teams. I don't necessarily see this
announcement as a change from that.

~~~
jhgg
Oddly enough, Discord started out as a chat/voip tool for smaller gaming
groups too, but as a side-effect of awesome engineering we've been able to
handle large communities really well. Over the winter break, one community
sprung up, going from no users, to about 2400 concurrents at peak, with about
600 of them in voice chat at the same time.

Also, our tech stack for the native/web client is React & our iOS app is React
Native, so it was pretty awesome to see Reactiflux migrate to Discord.

~~~
codexon
I would say Discord is missing 2 crucial features that prevent it from
replacing old software like IRC for large chat communities.

1) offline mode

2) different names for each server

~~~
vacri
No linux support either, sadly. The linux client has apparently been due "Real
Soon Now" for nearly a year.

~~~
fernandotakai
i've been using [https://github.com/XNBlank/discord-
linux](https://github.com/XNBlank/discord-linux) for a while now, and it works
quite well.

------
my5thaccount
I wish slack would concentrate on making the app more productive for teams to
work together remotely. We can type fast enough, in fact, hackernews tells me
I'm typing too fast.

The problem is organizing and collecting the information and ensuring it is
useful later, rather than just during the 5 minutes. Let users break a chat
message out into a threaded discussion for example. We already have plenty of
voice and video chat options, we can just pick up a phone. Those things are
ephemeral. Text is forever. Let's keep more of that so we can use it to
further the business objectives.

~~~
rtpg
I think that storing data in Slack is a bit of an antipattern.

I'll avoid saying "You should" beacuse everyone's workflow is different, but:

I like to treat Slack like e-mail. I'm also a fan of GTD(Getting Things Done),
and a pretty big part of that (and things like Inbox Zero) is that _you don't
leave important stuff in your inbox_.

If there's some info in slack that will be valuable for more than 15 minutes,
it's likely that it belongs somewhere else!

When dealing with bugs, I copy the chat (well, a link to the chat) into a card
in Trello. Same for basically any request that requires me to do something. I
do use Slack reminders for calendar-based events.

I treat Slack like I treat talking to a person in real life. If I don't write
it down, I'll likely forget it, so I better write it somewhere (not in Slack)
quickly. You can probably accomplish some of this with pins inside Slack, but
I've never accomplished it.

I think that this is one of those intractable problems where, because people
work differently together and in individual workflows, it's hard to solve the
"long-term coordination" problem without bogging down the "short-term
coordination" problem.

Anyways, text is forever, but so are newspapers on microfilm. But we still
make history books.

~~~
porker
A great point, but saving from Slack isn't the most straightforward. It's not
as brainless as "Select text & hit 'Save to Evernote'" which I do in my web
browsers. I've resorted to screenshots a few times, to keep the richness of
the messages.

> If I don't write it down, I'll likely forget it, so I better write it
> somewhere (not in Slack) quickly.

Where do you write it?

~~~
rtpg
My philosophy on this is "don't be afraid." It's all 1s and 0s to the machine
when you're digital, so it's OK to dump 10 paragraphs into certain text boxes.
If you want to do something, you can usually do it! A lot of programs let you
paste images in directly nowadays.

If you're OK with having links to chats instead of the chat text itself, you
can click the timestamps in a Slack chat to get a permalink . Sometimes I just
copy the entire chat and paste it into Trello.

Which leads to "where". Most things I end up with are small tasks like
bugfixes. Actionable tasks for the immediate. As much of that goes into Trello
as possible. I'm not afraid of making multi-paragraph cards that copy the chat
verbatim either (it's all 1s and 0s, right).

I also do the whole "screenshot" thing too. Take a screenshot and also paste
it right into Trello.

Some stuff is important in the immediate but I'll throw away later. Temporary
notes for things like user support. I use OS X's Notes app, which is basically
notepad with tabs (I would likely use Notepad++ on Windows to accomplish
this). It's all temporary notes, but still nice because it doesn't scroll up
as other people start talking.

If I have something like a long-term reference, I try really hard to find a
good place for it on a case-by-case basis. Usually that involves writing a
text file (markdown) and putting it into Dropbox. On OS X I use LightPaper (a
great little app), on Android I use Draft[1] (iOS has a thing called Drafts).
Both apps are set up to point to the same folder, so I have these references
on my phone too.

I also use text files for journaling what I'm trying to accomplish. For
example, at work I'm working with a system that will physically mail documents
back to me, so I wrote down exactly my operations so that when the docs get
back to me I know what I did:

    
    
        Sent two pdfs (located in Documents) on invoice `weFFEA123231`. One is Letter size instead of A4, another is A3 size. 
    
        Also sending Invoice `weFFEA123232` with just the letter-size page(`2015.pdf`).
    
        A "user space unit" in PDF is 1/72nd of an inch.
    

Sometimes this log dead-ends, most recent entry:

    
    
        For compressor and source maps, thing that's likely needed is to rewrite the JS compressor.
    
        An easy solution would be 
    
        -----
    
    

I also use my calendar! I'll also just paste random stuff into my calendar for
information I'll need at a certain event (for example reservation confirmation
numbers).

This veered slightly off topic but tl;dr is: Trello for tasks, Notes for temp
notes, LightPaper for reference+journaling, Calendar for time-sensitive
information.

[1]: [http://www.mvilla.it/draft/](http://www.mvilla.it/draft/)

------
rocky1138
Am I the only one who feels like they should stick with what they're good at?
Don't add too many features, bells, and whistles. Just keep building the core
product.

~~~
cloverich
I had the opposite thought -- its such a simple next step (at least, basic
video chat integration is really simple with webrtc) I was wondering what they
were waiting for. Without it, the door is wide open for a competitor to come
in and be Slack + (on demand) Video Chat.

~~~
taneq
What's that fallacy called which leads us to assume that other peoples' jobs
are easy? If there are a few major players in an area and all of their
offerings are terrible, is it more reasonable to conclude that they just all
suck despite somehow being major players, or to conclude that it's actually a
much harder problem than you think?

~~~
MAGZine
It's much harder to innovate than it is to copy someone's innovation.

Now that Slack has pioneered good UX in the space, it's easy to rip off.

------
spearo77
Are the "dips" in the chart[0] where corporate customers are on vacation?

[0]:
[https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/slack-g...](https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/slack-
growth.jpg?w=680&h=438)

~~~
jwomers
Yes they are - I've seen another version of that chart and it was annotated
with those dips being holidays.

~~~
fraserharris
Specifically, Christmas' of 2014 & 2015.

------
Mandatum
This has been in the pipeline since they bought Screenhero. I think they're
just fully integrating it now.

~~~
faitswulff
I have high hopes for it, then. ScreenHero remains my favorite screensharing
application. Among my circles, its usage has been growing even though you can
now only register an account by invitation.

~~~
Mandatum
I can only hope the integrated version is >= ScreenHero.

~~~
jeremy_k
Agreed. I actually hope it provides the screen sharing capability with the
possibility of video also. There are tons of non-developers that I always feel
like I wish I could just Screenhero them and show them something, but having a
random person take over your computer can be a little jarring.

------
hans
Slack for us just turns into meaningless giphy stream of consciousness for
every channel, crazy town.

~~~
wingerlang
You can disable images from 3rd parties showing automatically.

~~~
Flammy
We used to be on Hipchat... moving to Slack the only thing I've missed is
giphy on Slack seems much, much worse.

------
kdkooo
I'm surprised there hasn't been more of an emphasis on creating better
dashboard. One of the biggest hang-ups I experience as a user is it's too
difficult to find and keep windows open for every team that I'm on that has
it's own slack address. If I could sign in once and see all of the teams I'm
on in one place I would be much more inclined to keep a slack tab open in my
browser all the time.

~~~
lobster_johnson
The native (desktop and mobile) apps let you be logged into multiple teams at
the same time. Each team has its own tab in the desktop version.

------
bmh_ca
We've had good luck with appear.in.

The command `/appear` is even built-in to slack.

That makes me curious about what their relationship is.

~~~
lwhalen
Well, Slack did buy Screenhero not too long ago....

~~~
tommoor
over a year ago!

------
atom_enger
I'm still convinced that Hipchat was bought by Slack and the Hipchat
horribleness lately is the Slack migration plan. The new client is just
terrible. I asked a coworker to zip up their HipChat.app so I could revert
back to a state of somewhat stability. Hopefully someone who works at
Atlassian is reading this and will read: We just need to chat. I miss whatever
happened to the HipChat of 2013/2014.

~~~
vacri
HipChat definitely is Atlassian's dropped ball,... and after they saw Slack's
success, they leant down to pick it up ... and accidentally kicked it away
again. It's surprising just how badly they've handled that project.

A pity, because I liked Hipchat's ability to show more than three comments at
once, sane display of notifications, and non-rapacious pricing schedule.

------
amelius
This makes me wonder. How well does video-chat over WebRTC work? Are there any
open-source video chat applications?

I know there is icecomm.io, but it is closed source. I wonder how they handle
video, and if they are doing any video processing and/or compression in
javascript.

~~~
GFischer
Plenty of open source video chat WebRTC apps. What exactly do you need?

For example JITSI Meet (by the guys that are now on Hipchat, so YMMV):

[https://jitsi.org/Projects/JitsiMeet](https://jitsi.org/Projects/JitsiMeet)
(MIT license)

[http://www.openwebrtc.org/](http://www.openwebrtc.org/) (BSD license)

I think Talky is going to be open sourced too

[https://blog.andyet.com/2015/06/09/what-is-being-open-
source...](https://blog.andyet.com/2015/06/09/what-is-being-open-sourced-from-
talky/)

I'm working on a WebRTC-based project but it's not going to be open source :P

~~~
amelius
Thanks! I was just interested (not planning to implement anything myself
soon).

How does WebRTC perform in realistic scenarios? Is it capable to realistically
compete with the big guys (Skype et al)?

~~~
GFischer
Too soon to tell yet in my case, but I've been pleasantly surprised by the
rapid rate of improvements, so I'd say probably yes.

Skype and Hangouts are still a little better in terms of quality and overall
experience, but a standard WebRTC app is definitely "good enough", and with
some tweaking, it can be great (see Appear.in).

And WebRTC brings some very important advantages over Skype, Hangouts, etc
(mainly reduced friction, not having to login, better embeddability, and
overall control of the experience)

I've yet to test the new VP9 codec, which should bring huge gains. And there
are other tools being added to the ecosystem which will enable lots of neat
use cases.

------
shmerl
It's a sad feeling that no one is working on open standard for this.
XMPP/Jingle has hard time getting traction.

------
soupbowl
I replaced irc and slack for my group with a self hosted
[http://matrix.org](http://matrix.org)

Our only complaint is no desktop client, but the web and phone clients make up
for it.

------
insulanian
That graph shows the drop of cca. half a million users around the end of 2015.
Is that reporting glitch or they really did loose and regain half a million
users in a month?

~~~
suls
Holiday season would explain a drop in "daily active users" wouldn't it?

~~~
insulanian
Ahh... OK then it makes sense. I understood it as total number of users they
have.

------
fensterblick
If they can do this right, they will get a lot more customers.

Right now we use Lync/Skype for communication, which I loathe almost as much
as Lotus Notes. This sentiment is shared by many. Slack usage has organically
grown (as a reaction to the failings of Lync) and I can envision Slack
displacing Lync in many companies.

~~~
SinomaSo
This. I think Slack is going a new territory with voice/video. It will compete
now with MS Lync and Cisco Spark. Both are eating market shares in
collaboration and Slack will be affected. The two giants are investing a lot
of money in their cloud based collaboration tools and might want to buy slack
in the future, if it becomes a real threat.

------
PaulRobinson
Screener's video/audio/screen-sharing tech with Slack's UX will be a good
marriage, and when I heard about the acquisition I was expecting good things.

Use both products at work, and Screenhero is good enough we can code in pairs
remotely across Europe. Bake that right into Slack and improve the UX (because
Screenhero's interface is not great in places), and it's going to be a really,
really solid stack.

------
neximo4
I wish they'd just make their app start up faster and improve the quality of
the app.

Takes nearly 15 secs to half a minute to connect, quite consistently.

Would love to jump on the 'slack is awesome bandwagon', i'm already using
slack. Its terrible software for the resources they have, though.

I emailed them about the issue over a year and a half ago and they said
they'll get to it. I guess Voice+Video>Quality

~~~
lobster_johnson
How often do you open the app for that to be a pain point? (FWIW, it's always
been fast enough for me.)

~~~
neximo4
I try to avoid it because its such a tease trying to get it just load up. To
put things into perspective it's faster to load up Facebook with a web browser
and just chat with that than to load the Mac Slack app.

It's cool they have those funky loading messages but its just too slow.

Might point out im in Australia and latency is a bit higher. I noticed the
same thing in a few African countries.

While latency is higher by a hundred or so milliseconds the loading time is
significantly slower. This too on a line that is 99.4%+ better than the
average.

It is badly engineered. I had a look at the inner workings and first off they
use a web app in a native wrapper, second their websocket negotiation process
has a lot of going back and forth just to get started.

------
sniuff
What they also really need is being able to manage all slack servers you are
in. Something like what discord has.

~~~
vacri
And perhaps not having the 'sign out of X' link right next to the 'switch to
Y' link in the web app...

------
porker
Let's hope this has a mode like Sqwiggle, which works brilliantly for remote
teams (but lacks chat as good as Slack)

[http://www.sqwiggle.com](http://www.sqwiggle.com)

------
Hengjie
Does anyone know what the "Search, Learning & Intelligence (SLI) division"
does? It sounds onymous

------
greggman
Wish slack supported iframes so we could integrate live stuff like
jsbin/jsfiddle/wolframalpha ...

------
api
I wonder if they will do p2p video chat... since Skype abandoned p2p the
quality is notably awful.

~~~
emp
I thought the removal of P2P was due to a patent:
[https://www.google.com/patents/US6108704](https://www.google.com/patents/US6108704)

~~~
striking
They never truly abandoned it, but most connections are served through
dedicated servers now. [http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/05/skype-
replaces-p2p-s...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/05/skype-
replaces-p2p-supernodes-with-linux-boxes-hosted-by-microsoft/)

~~~
abrookewood
The reason for the move to dedicated servers (AFAIK) was because without it,
they couldn't really do offline messages. Once WhatsApp etc started doing
this, the Skype team realised that their greatest strength (no paying for
bandwidth or servers etc) was actually their greatest weakness, since they
couldn't deliver the features that people had begun to expect from chat apps.
There was a great article on this .. but I can't find it.

~~~
api
You can do both.

------
richerlariviere
Communication is not productivity. That's it. It can helps but it is not the
same scope.

------
macspoofing
They should. Makes a ton of sense.

------
Laaw
Slack has (had) some very serious security problems.

So does Skype though, so whatever.

------
plg
what's the status of encryption on slack?

does the company hold the keys?

or is it end-to-end?

------
zootam
i'm not surprised

