The only thing that can replace email is a better email. If we had a version of IMAP that worked with labels (download a message once regardless of how it's tagged) + push, email would be usable again. Currently this is only possible with IMAP with all its flaws OR by giving all your email to a third party to serve through an API designed for modern email. There are perverse incentives preventing this from occurring in any widespread fashion, which is allowing Slack to flourish on the dysfunction of the current communication ecosystem. If we do have a replacement for email, it's not gonna be from a for-profit entity.
Anyway, real-time communications are inherently a different beast from async communications—one is a highly searchable and taggable data store where you're expected to carefully read and type and form workflows around, and the other is for essentially war rooms for collaborative real-time work. Pitching slack as a replacement for email seems like a fundamental misunderstanding of the product.
Anyway, real-time communications are inherently a different beast from async communications—one is a highly searchable and taggable data store where you're expected to carefully read and type and form workflows around, and the other is for essentially war rooms for collaborative real-time work. Pitching slack as a replacement for email seems like a fundamental misunderstanding of the product.