

Slack Chats - bleakgadfly
http://www.slackchats.com/

======
davidw
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.

~~~
Uberphallus
Not even for companies, IRC IMO would be much better, the only issue is, as
always, you need someone responsible for the infrastructure: not only servers,
but scripting for Jira/Dropbox/NameYourCurrentTrendyPlatform integration.

-No single point of failure.

-No dependency on a different company for a vital points of your business.

-No private info stored on a 3rd party system, in a different state and potentially a different country (legal nightmare to ask for damages).

-Distributed system. Local servers give lower lag for multisite companies, internet access outage means netsplit, not inability to communicate.

-Already existing indexing and searching features if desired.

-Many bots to automate/notify/interact with insane amounts of stuff.

-Thousands of IRC clients, with enormous customizing features, for every conceivable platform, that do as much and even more than all these "this is how communication should be" solutions.

-Bridging IRC to XMPP/Sametime/etc plugins/apps to interoperate with other companies.

I can sort of understand Slack for a small company, but if you have your own
server infrastructure, no, I can't.

~~~
swombat
Setting up the system you describe above to work as well as say, Hipchat, with
notifications by email and push notifications to iOS and Android clients,
@mentions, reliability, etc, is certainly doable. If you have someone who's
basically a competent geek, they can probably do that in a few days to get it
all working perfectly. Once set up this sort of stuff tends to be fairly
robust, so it probably won't take more than 1 days a month to maintain, deal
with inevitable issues, etc.

If you have absolutely nothing better to do with your time, it's a great idea
to do this yourself.

For the rest of us who are actually trying to grow businesses rather than set
up IRC servers, there's HipChat and Slack.

~~~
Uberphallus
That phrase is heavily dangerous.

> For the rest of us who are actually trying to grow businesses rather than
> set up IRC servers, there's HipChat and Slack.

For the rest of us who are actually trying to grow businesses rather than set
up <insert company IT infrastructure> there's this <insert proprietary
platform>.

I've heard that before from people who don't blink to have their own
Gitlab/Bugzilla/Jenkins/Whatever. It's overly short sighted to dedicate
resources for development support IT infrastructure, but consider resources
for development communication a waste of time.

~~~
detaro
I agree on the dangers, but I don't think they are easily comparable.
GitLab/Jenkins/... are a match for the hosted alternatives, whereas I couldn't
name a system that matches Hipchat or Slack without spending a lot more time
on setup and customization.

~~~
Uberphallus
At least you can deploy a HipChat server in your own boxes, Slack is a no-go
for many environments, yet still used because of a good client interface
combined with a cult-like following.

I've found Openfire + Spark IM to be a reasonable alternative sitting between
the customizable and the convenient, and it's open source.

------
benjamincburns
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
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
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
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-
un...](http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/03/24/slack-is-quietly-
unintentionally-killing-irc/)

~~~
jeffmorrisjr
Good question. As I understand it, their ability to "support" these
communities is more about building out these communities internally and
allocating technical resources to non-enterprise channels.

Again, I am not an employee of Slack and do not want to speculate but that's
my best guess.

------
saurik
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-
un...](http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/03/24/slack-is-quietly-
unintentionally-killing-irc/)

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
> 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.

~~~
jeffmorrisjr
Hi Benjamin,

Thanks for the note. This is Jeff (I started Slack Chats).

As mentioned above, the team at Slack has been very positive about the
project. I've been in touch with their marketing team to make sure we are
transparent about our "non affiliation" to Slack.

This was very much a 24 hour project and has been very positive for building
new communities on Slack.

Appreciate the feedback,

Jeff

------
petercooper
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
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.

------
wamatt
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
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.

------
07a
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-
un...](http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/03/24/slack-is-quietly-
unintentionally-killing-irc/)

~~~
psychometry
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.

------
BinaryIdiot
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?

------
joekinley
So it's basically another internet forum?

~~~
prottmann
Yes, like reddit, ycombinator, facebook, whatsapp and all others.

~~~
mozillas
Most of reddit is open. No account required, no invite required to read. Same
for HN. Facebook is closed.

------
joshfarrant
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/b...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clicky-for-
slack/bllgmdlgbbmijcoecbnmgeoekhebgmac)

~~~
benjamincburns
This isn't from the team which produced the "Slack" to which you're likely
referring.

~~~
joshfarrant
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!

------
buro9
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.

~~~
benjamincburns
> 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).

------
mozillas
What if HN would have been a private Slack Chat?

------
ChikkaChiChi
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.

------
mundanevoice
Is it me or is it very very slow?

~~~
chippy
It's not just you. But this may not be indicative of the slack experience.

~~~
ipedrazas
Not sure "Slack experience" is the best way of describing it :)

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

------
ishener
I get 403 forbiden

~~~
kokey
Someone from South Africa also reported that he gets the same.

------
Ono-Sendai
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>

