

Will WhatsApp kill Slack? - mataug
https://kissflow.com/kissu_kissu/will-whatsapp-kill-slack/

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dasil003
So the author hasn't even used Slack but assumes that a web version of
WhatsApp will be its equivalent?

Slack is already more expensive than HipChat, Campfire, IRC, yet it is
dominating those, why? Because it's worth it. The implementation and UX for
company teams (especially technical teams) is so far beyond what other apps
offer that the cost is a minor bullet point.

WhatsApp is great as a personal instant messenger, but for them to be better
than Slack at what Slack does they would have to design for two radically
different use cases, and the result would almost assuredly be mediocrity.

~~~
hesselink
We've used Campfire and are now using HipChat. What are the things that Slack
offers over these?

~~~
emirb
I use it everyday and it helps a lot when you connect it to various services
(github, trello etc.) It offers dozens of them:
[https://slack.com/integrations](https://slack.com/integrations)

~~~
ryantownsend
Ditto this, the integrations are really the icing on the cake for Slack.

We've even written notifications from our own applications to push into Slack,
so we get notified on everything from continuous integration test results and
deployments through to analytics and sales figures.

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mccr8
Kind of odd seeing a company that charges $3 a month per user being too cheap
to pay $6 a month per user. If everybody has their attitude, their business
model is in trouble.

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intopieces
Yes, WhatsApp has a massive adoption rate, but it will need to vastly improve
its web interface and generally make their service look and feel more
professional, as well as more collaborative. When I think of Whatsapp, I think
of messages between individuals. Slack, for my company, replaced IRC, which is
much more of a chat room aggregator.

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rvanmil
I know a lot of HN folks are very critical of Telegram, but I've been using it
for team (and private) communication for quite a while now and it's great. It
has clients for almost all platforms including a nice web client for all
browsers.

~~~
mironov
Same here. We use Telegram for team communication while everyone is out of the
office. We've integrated it with github and CI, and now thinking about making
this service public: [http://telegram.jaconda.im](http://telegram.jaconda.im)

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jpinkerton88
please see
[http://andregarzia.com/posts/en/whatsappdoesntunderstandthew...](http://andregarzia.com/posts/en/whatsappdoesntunderstandtheweb/)

~~~
hoppi
Just because the application has huge flaws from a certain developers
perspective doesn't mean other people will share the same view.

I use whatsapp regulary along with my team to coordinate driver & share
info/media quickly to allow the driver to do his/her job and vice versa.
Having a desktop client is a god send for this as switching between
computer/phone gets very tiresome.

It won't replace slack but it makes life a whole lot easier. Slack is a lot
more business orientated and that definitely shows whereas WhatsApp has the
convenience factor for people eg. driving and giving us real time info.

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shenaor
WhatsApp was pretty cool, I disabled the notifications to message at my own
accord.

All was good until facebook bought it.

Now it has annoying pop-up telling me to enable my notifications. I refuse!!!

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emirb
WhatsApp and Slack are similar applications with totally different user base,
so no, WhatsApp will not kill Slack, nor it will "attack" its user at all.

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spacefight
What I really don't get with the new WhatsApp web app and the embedded end-to-
end encryption is the following: why on earth are they including 3rd party
scripts with DOM access?

<script
src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/webfont/1.5.10/webfont.js"></script>

All online banking sites I use do not do this, for a reason.

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josu
Facebook and Skype have both a big userbase too and the option for group
chats, how come they haven't killed Slack yet?

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ctide
Why is the deal breaker a cost that you don't have to pay? Slack works fine
for free.

~~~
LargeWu
The history in Slack's free version is limited to only 10,000 posts. If you
have even a moderate number of active users, your history drops off pretty
fast. My last job used Slack without paying, and wanting to find something in
the history that had cycled out was almost a daily occurance.

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jkoschei
The exclamation marks made me think this was sarcastic.

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ojbyrne
Betteridge's Law
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines))

strikes again!

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martyz
Slack is a tremendous collaborative tool for teams. WhatsApp is a tremendous
tool to send photos to Grandma. I think they both have different target
markets in mind.

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bdcravens
Needs more exclamation marks.

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danielsamuels
No.

~~~
nosideeffects
+1

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makeitstop
Stopped reading this infantile crap.

"super awesome!" "super difficult"

Like reading the diary of a teenage girl.

~~~
cylinder
The constant use of the adjective "super" is easily the worst thing to come
out of hipsterism. Yuck.

~~~
dasil003
The worst thing to come out of "hipsterism" is the dilution of the term
hipster to be utterly meaningless, and frequently used describe any person
that one dislikes for any reason.

The word "super" is just a word. People have been using it for a long time.

~~~
cylinder
Nope. Wasn't being regularly used to describe anything until recently.

