
Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield on Changing the Way We Work - matsur
http://www.wsj.com/articles/slack-ceo-stewart-butterfield-on-changing-the-way-we-work-1446689564
======
camillomiller
I closed the page as soon as I read the title. Why anything mildly succesful
(or largely, as slack) in this field must be immediately labeled as an email
killer? Why are we trying so hard to kill email!? Nothing like slack, which is
extremely useful and productive, can substitute the naturally delayed nature
of email. It's freeing, it's free of expectations of a quick answer, but it
can be fast and paced nonetheless. Email is still wonderful, and open, and
available everywhere. It's the best piece of technology we ever invented in
the field of personal communication. And it's damn resilient.

Slack is great and somehow revolutionary. It doesn't need to be downplayed by
being defined as the n-th email killer that wasn't.

~~~
lbotos
It isn't trying to kill _all_ email, or replace the entirety of what email
offers but replace using email as communication intra-office.

I still email my friends and use email every day, but slack has reduced my
intra-office work email to 3-5 threads a week from a 20-30 before.

~~~
camillomiller
Which is correct and it's also why the title and the label - email killer -
are dead wrong and anti-factual.

------
iamleppert
The only thing Slack has changed is the name of the chat application I open.
In the 90's it was ICQ, Yahoo Messenger and AIM. In the early 2000's it was
Meebo (remember them?). Just a few years ago, we had Skype. See where I'm
going with this?

I'm sorry but I find nothing revolutionary about Slack. It has a good UI --
and it should, for being a real company and not some side project. But chat
clients are like TV shows, they don't seem to last. I wouldn't be placing any
bets in 2-5 years we will have all moved onto something else and be heralding
it as the next replacement for e-mail or whatever. It's just way too easy to
move on to a replacement that's the new new.

~~~
moises_silva
I somewhat agree with you, but, a closer comparison would be that it is a
'better' corporate IRC. The comparison with ICQ, Yahoo Messenger and Skype
does not really fit given that, at least for me, the biggest advantage is the
tons of integrations with automated development tools etc. That wasn't really
there for Skype, ICQ, Yahoo messenger, etc. It was possible with IRC, but a
pain to maintain on your own and out of grasp for many other teams. Slack and
HipChat make it a breeze. At our company we used to build our own integrations
with IRC (using existing OSS bots, redmine plugins, etc) but ultimately it was
a distraction. Moving to HipChat or Slack was liberating.

------
cylinder
It's just chat you can drop files into easily. What's so revolutionary about
that? I keep trying to use it with my teams and we just end up reverting back
to email and dropbox.

~~~
bachmeier
Agreed. I am puzzled not so much by its popularity, but by the claims that it
is some kind of revolutionary change, and especially that companies are
willing to pay that much _per user_ in order to put their data into someone
else's vault. I've been using HipChat for quite a while, and don't see what
more Slack provides. I've recently been trying out Ryver and like it better
than Slack.

But if I'm going to pay for something, it's going to be an app designed for
project management. Basecamp costs less than the cheapest 5-user Slack plan.
You can have an email conversation (others don't even need a login and don't
have to know anything about Basecamp) and it is automatically included as part
of the conversation.

------
6stringmerc
After some more looking around, it does seem like Slack has some built-in
Compliance functions regarding preservation of data. That's useful. Regarding
the 1+ million users, I wonder how many treat their Slack communications with
the same level of evidentiary legality as email? As in, when a case finally
comes to court, how is Slack going to be seen from then on?

I mean, I grew up with ICQ. It was a great tool. It wasn't in the browser like
Slack, but from what I recall, it did nearly everything that Slack does (chat,
group, send files, etc), minus the 'oversight' of having a central place to
export communications. Private really meant private.

All in all, it looks like a nice tool but smells like a new cover slapped on
an old book. Having an eccentric Philosphy PhD at the top makes for good
press, sure. I'm interested to see where Slack is in 5 years.

~~~
fizx
> After some more looking around, it does seem like Slack has some built-in
> Compliance functions regarding preservation of data. That's useful.
> Regarding the 1+ million users, I wonder how many treat their Slack
> communications with the same level of evidentiary legality as email? As in,
> when a case finally comes to court, how is Slack going to be seen from then
> on?

I'm a member of a casual/friends slack group that has the retention policy set
short (2 weeks iirc). It lets us treat Slack more like Snapchat, knowing our
messages will be deleted.

~~~
6stringmerc
Ah, interesting. I've been in several corporate environments where the
retention policy is more like 5-7 years. I suppose Slack can be deployed in
such a fashion, but if it's used as a disposable conduit then I think other
questions may arise during the course of a legal test. I'm curious to see how
things turn out in this regard.

