[eberkund]

Yeah honestly I don't see why it couldn't replace Slack, it is a very similar product but I feel like by marketing it primarily to gamers they are positioning themselves in a far less profitable market than Slack is.

[j_s]

One major roadblock is there is no concept of separate identities managed under one login, or switching accounts easily. I think there is a half-way-there "server nickname" option new this year but it's not quite the same. The primary motivation for most is a clear separation between personal and professional.

https://feedback.discordapp.com/forums/326712-discord-dream-...

https://support.discordapp.com/hc/en-us/articles/219070107-S...

Anecdata:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14870899

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14865292

Some people consider this a positive.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14093132

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14089417

[pavel_lishin]

> Yeah honestly I don't see why it couldn't replace Slack

I see several reasons.

1. It's impossible to not be in a public channel. Yes, you can mute it, but you can't ever leave it. In a large company with thousands of channels, this creates cognitive overhead.

2. You can create private channels, but this requires the ability to assign permissions. This has two problems - one, if you have a lot of teams that need to have private rooms you're going to spend a lot of time juggling permissions, and two, if you need a quick ad-hoc room that you don't want littering the general list, you need to be able to assign permissions.

[hellbanner]

You can hide muted channels.. then you don't see them

[pavel_lishin]

How?

[vitaflo]

Under the options for the server, select "Hide muted channels".

[sandGorgon]

Exactly - the permission structure is the single biggest problem. This will pretty much kill slack if they can build this in.

[robryan]

They would have got nowhere just being a slack clone going after the same businesses. In gaming there was a read pain point which they are addressing.

Services like Ventrilo, Teamspeak etc required a lot of setup/ self hosting and were only really strong for voice. Skype didn't organise well around how people game.

When I come back to WoW a few years ago a lot of people were trying to run groups on Skype which was a horrible experience of adding randoms and joining group calls, in additional to all the other downsides of Skype. Discord is a perfect replacement for that.

[forthefuture]

Its easier to get businesses to use Discord than to get gamers to use Slack.

[bpicolo]

Turns out 'free' is a good selling point