[shenoyroopesh]

I think everyone underestimates how much the slack team's game-dev experience with Glitch (even a failed one) would have impacted Slack's success.

There are tons of things that makes using Slack "an experience" - tiny bits of things that are not really "necessary" but just add that little bit of polish. This is gamification at it's best - when it stops being a excuse to add some points and silly badges and developers use real, practical things they generally use to build good games and apply it to non-game products.

The end result is an experience, as opposed to just "features". Hipchat doesn't get it. Neither does Hall or any other startup in this space.

Slack's only real threat, IMHO, is Whatsapp. Whatsapp has a brilliant mobile experience which works offline too - Slack is weak there and I don't know why they can't have a mobile app that works properly offline. With Whatsapp coming to desktop (although via a mobile go-through), whatsapp is suddenly a bit more usable for a team.

Now if they introduce a whatsapp API which works without having a phone number, it can rapidly make it an amazing alternative to Slack. Don't know if they will be going behind the B2B market though.

[Rainymood]

>Slack's only real threat, IMHO, is Whatsapp. Whatsapp has a brilliant mobile experience which works offline too - Slack is weak there and I don't know why they can't have a mobile app that works properly offline. With Whatsapp coming to desktop (although via a mobile go-through), whatsapp is suddenly a bit more usable for a team.

The main reason for me. For switching from Whatsapp to Slack was because I completely suck at typing on a mobile phone. I type 150 wpm on my mechanical keyboard but typing a single sentence without typos on my mobile phone? No can do.

I heard a lot about Slack from Reddit/HN. I gave it a try and haven't looked back since. I'm a student and we use it for a kind of personal facebook group. It's great. If you are in uni I highly suggest you try it out.

[shenoyroopesh]

> I completely suck at typing on a mobile phone

So do I. That's why we still use Slack. But one of my co-founders is into sales and constantly on the go, and while travelling, sometimes the signal is flaky on his smart phone. Thats when he really cribs and tries to get us to go back to whatsapp :)

Of course, we won't move until whatsapp improves desktop experience and bridges at least some integrations, but I think it's highly possible for them to do it if they want to.

[mironov]

You may be heard of Telegram — a Whatsapp alternative with great desktop clients. We integrated it with github and other services: http://telegram.jaconda.im

[Tiktaalik]

I think you're right that people underestimate the Glitch experience. The Slack developers have gone through an experience that almost no other startups have.

In games polish is extremely important, and the polish needs to be there from day one. It makes sense that a developer with game experience would produce a product with an extra shine to it.

[1stranger]

Slack is an "experience"? You're outta your mind. It's a freaking chat app.

[shenoyroopesh]

Slack is definitely an experience, if you compare it with something like hipchat.

A few of the small things I've noticed -

- Sounds are just beautiful. The pings and the clings are selected very thoughtfully. Sound is the invisible thing that generally makes a good game, great.

- The slack loading message - there are a bunch of different welcome messages that just bring a smile to your face. And they cycle through it, so you don't see the same message every time.

- The loading animation is just beautiful. I saw an update where all they did was improve the resolution for this icon on retina display

- The channels thing is awesome - it's like the IRCs. They even went ahead and added the "#" even though it's unnecessary.

- The details - the colors chosen, the fonts, even the minimalistic design in general - it's just done very, very nicely.

- The search is just awesome.

You might go "meh" on this, but these are things that the competitors are ignoring. These are things that made me fall in love with Slack when we started using it an year back. Yes administration is simple, yes they have amazing documentation. Yes, they have segmented their users well. But I think the core product is just beautiful, and that gives them a huge leg-up over their competitors even without the other places they are doing well.

[ThomPete]

I think you would be surprised how much little things matters.

Thats also why not all games are equally addictive even though they are all "experiences".

It's not what but how.

That doesn't mean it's the only reason for it's success but it does have a very open ended architecture with so many customization possibilities that allows it to silence even the most critical technical people.