Ask HN: What does Slack do that a self-governed IRC/Matrix server doesn't?

[uoaei]

I knew before that Slack was popular for project- and work-related team communications but I recently came across some articles about their IPO and was stunned how much the company is worth. How is it that people value this technology so highly?

I use Mattermost (the open-source alternative) at work and from what I can gather, everything there is equally possible with IRC or Matrix. The only excuse I can think of is that they streamlined the process of getting it running which is probably valuable for overloaded DevOps teams.

What is the added value of Slack compared to these protocols?

[Jaruzel]

Take all the rich client features of your popular messenger platform (Facebook, Whatsapp, Snapchat, etc) weld them on-top of an IRC-like protocol to enable 'rooms' and you have Slack.

It's not a new or clever idea, but their marketing efforts have been brilliant. To such an extent in fact, that there are now a bunch of Slack clones out there all trying to do the same, complete with the same sort of interface.

[Rjevski]

The fact that it works out of the box, the UI is good and lots of third party integrations available.

My employer recently switched from Slack since it was closed source (and management is crazy about everything needs to be open). We switched to XMPP and Movim for the web interface. Worst software I've ever used. Looks awful, unreliable, and having absolutely no support other than some hackers working on it in their free time doesn't make me comfortable.

[sjs382]

Devops, a standard client, friendlier interface for non-techs, built-ins like file sharing & images.