[DamnYuppie]

I find it hard to believe that people believe Slack started the trend. There have been countless such services in the past. Back in the terrible dark ages of the internet, pre-2000, we used AIM to have those type of discussions. Was very valuable as we had development teams all over the country and was a quick way to determine who the expert was for a given question and get them into a conversation. If it was too cumbersome to hash out with them via messaging we would, god forbid, pick up the phone and have a chat.

[pavel_lishin]

IRC and a wiki used to be the tools of the trade.

[sanderjd]

People in "normal" non-techy workplaces are aware of and interested in Slack. Mainstream workplace group messaging in these sorts of organizations (which make up a lot more of the economy than the ones in our bubble) is a fairly new trend, which Slack deserves a lot of credit for.

This is a common mistake - the existence of technology is not the same as mainstream adoption.

[DamnYuppie]

Are you saying AIM wasn't widely adopted?