This is a blog post from a competitor of Slack. I was never “impressed” with the Slack implementation, and at one time hoped it might be the actual “email killer”. Email is still thriving, and Slack has remained the preserve of “hippies”. People make specific “channels” for everything under the sun, and drown themselves in notifications making it impossible to keep a track of the conversations. I have seen some start-ups offering a “slack channel access” to “foster communication”. A long story short? Microsoft Teams killed it. Convincingly. Realising that they needed to monetise the product, they threw a nice spanner for the free users. Of course, there were howls of protest from “non-profits” or “small businesses” because everyone cares for them without suggesting alternatives. If the status quo works, people won’t budge.
Slack went nuclear on its users and this was the outcome:
Why Slack’s free plan change is causing an exodus
On July 18, 2022, Slack announced that starting September 1, search history for organizations on Slack’s Free plan will be limited to just the past 90 days of message history.
Nevertheless, social media is abuzz with messages from users upset about this change, and one would be hard-pressed to find any who are excited about it. Moreover, many teams have decided to abandon Slack altogether.
Slack is a useless software from an even more useless company that aqui-hired it; mostly for the “cool factor”. It’s ironic that the local head is the contact person to push through “sales” while making an odd choice for a banker-turned-enterprise evangelist. Enterprise sales are notoriously hard, and usually work through referrals or “deep-business relationships”. When Microsoft offers Teams for free bundled with their cash-cows, I find the rationale for investment in Slack business a little more dodgy.
Choose your friends carefully, and your communications tools wisely!
RadOncNotes 