[Clobbersmith]

Slack also has an amazing UX, I haven't used a competing product that was as enjoyable to use. Yes I know this is subjective, but of the people I know that like Slack actually love it. Whereas I've never met somebody that loves HipChat.

[continuational]

I'm not fond of the Slack UI.

First of all I don't want to talk to "@jjm", I want to talk to John Jameson. Why can't it show me the full, human name?

Second, chat is basically the hello world of push based apps, but any other update, like renaming channels, editing documents etc. aren't real time. I have to close the app and reopen it to see the update. Come on!

Third, the document feature is not multiplayer. You have to lock the document in order to edit it. And for todo lists, you can't even tick off a box without locking the whole document.

[ecnahc515]

Slack has an option to display full names, which you can set. An admin can also make that the default.

Secondarily, the reason for @username is because you basically have to use usernames of some kind to ensure you can directly refer to another user consistently. Users can also setup "highlight words" which will notify them if someone says them in a channel they're in. This could be their name for example, or other things.

[pc86]

I set up a Slack channel for the PTs at the gym my wife and I run, and have defaulted it to real names and I get an alert for my first name, our last name, and a handful of other words. Having never used Slack before I was pretty impressed with the customizability of it.