[csydas]

I like(d) slack as much as the next person when my last workplace used it, but we used it over gchat for some reason, right around when Hangouts had just been early released for Google Business/Apps for Education Users. Slack was slick, nice, and definitely fun, but we already had a chat system that more-or-less did the same thing.

I don't think that Slack's issue is so much that other companies are just copying it, it's that they were a nuisance in an already existing space (collaborative chat) and they hit on a few key features that devs liked. While the Slack features are great, and the slack-team is great [1], [edited content: it's yet another item to keep track of], and that's a hard sell when you're an org of 100+ employees and you already have stuff like Lync or Hangouts or Skype around as part of the standard employee loadout.

I hope the best for Slack and sincerely think they'll be able to dazzle people with their support and with good responses to user feedback.

[1] http://imgur.com/a/6vPcn It's small, but this sense of humor and fast response time from the support team is just hard to hate.

Edit: Removed comment on extra account as below comments pointed out Slack has SAML SSO, which I was not aware of as it was not in use at my last place of employment. Changed it to current text, as I still feel that the idea that it's Yet Another Chat that users have to decide on, but definitely a plus that it's not another account.

[bitexploder]

I don't think it is fair to classify them as just a "fancy IRC". I see technical people myself included think of them that way, but why isn't a slightly fancier IRC dominant?

Seamless mobile clients, integrations, animated gifs, etc. Slack has a lot of small but very sticky features.

[majewsky]

Exactly. My workplace is currently evaluating Slack and Microsoft Teams vs. "bolt on chat to the existing internal social network". I'm presently trying to figure out how to explain to the engineers running the evaluation that the value of Slack cannot must be understood by the quality of execution, not just as the sum of its features.

"How will we get people to use Slack if it does not have $feature [1]?" - "But hundreds of people are already using it, so your point is moot."

[1] e.g. SSO integration

[senko]

> [...] a fancy IRC with a new account that has to be set up - that's a hard sell when you're an org of 100+ employees [...]

Slack appears to support SAML SSO, with a list of supported providers and ability to roll a custom one (https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/205168057). Haven't tried/needed it, but wouldn't that care of this particular problem?

[ajdlinux]

Can confirm - at my ultra-massive employer where we have a considerable number of very large Slack teams, we use SAML to authenticate Slack against our intranet ID and everything more or less works.

[csydas]

I see, that was not set up at my last work place, so I was not aware it was an option.

I have edited my original post to correct this with an updated content piece. Thank you both for letting me know.