Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956
Stewart Butterfield says Microsoft sees Slack as existential threat – TechCrunch
In a wide ranging interview with The Wall Street Journal’s global technology editor Jason Dean yesterday, Slack CEO and co-founder Stewart Butterfield had some strong words regarding Microsoft, saying the software giant saw his company as an existential threat.
The interview took place at the WSJ Tech Live event. When Butterfield was asked about a chart Microsoft released in July during the Slack quiet period, which showed Microsoft Teams had 13 million daily active users compared to 12 million for Slack, Butterfield appeared taken aback by the chart.
“The bigger point is that’s kind of crazy for Microsoft to do, especially during the quiet period. I had someone say it was unprecedented since the [Steve] Ballmer era. I think it’s more like unprecedented since the Gates’ 98-99 era. I think they feel like we’re an existential threat,” he told Dean.
It’s worth noting, that as Dean pointed out, you could flip that existential threat statement. Microsoft is a much bigger business with a trillion-dollar market cap versus Slack’s $400 million. It also has the benefit of linking Microsoft Teams to Office 365 subscriptions, but Butterfield says the smaller company with the better idea has often won in the past.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday October 25 2019, @10:41PM (3 children)
IRC as-a-service
Simple to use. Cheap enough. IRC integrations with everything thats ever existed are POSSIBLE with perl but nobody never writes it, whereas on slack they're not only possible but it exists and only takes one click.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @10:53PM (2 children)
I bet the fancy features can be duplicated if they haven't been already.
Like an IRC client that is prettied up to look more like a Slack or Discord, automatically embeds YouTube videos when they are linked, supports emoji, etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @01:19AM (1 child)
Mattermost [wikipedia.org] and Rocket.Chat [github.com] are both open-source Slack-clones that are funded by companies that offer to host them for you for a fee but you can self-host. Also, Discord [wikipedia.org] is a popular chat service that appears to be very similar to Slack in functionality and business model (i.e. no self-hosting); as far as I can tell the difference between Slack and Discord is almost entirely in who they market to.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @07:55PM
Discord is fucked. If they see irregular activity such as a VPN, they demand a phone number.