Dear Microsoft [from Slack]

Previous discussion [1].

    Dear Microsoft (slackhq.com)
    87 points by davidhariri 11 hours ago

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12855291

I use slack every day and have no problems with it. This letter has so much wrong

> First, and most importantly, it’s not the features that matter.

Yes, yes it very much is. Do you think people would use Slack if it was bare bones?

> The revolution that has led to millions of people flocking to Slack has been, and continues to be, driven by something much deeper.

I have no idea what this "revolution" is. What exactly is the deeper meaning?

> Second, an open platform is essential

Says the team making a closed source app with an api. Nothing Microsoft can't do.

> We’re glad you’re going to be helping us define this new product category

Group chat isn't new.

I'm not a user of Slack (solo dev) so I guess I'm not the target audience for this. But I am I wrong in feeling that this comes off as completely lame?

To me it reads as weirdly premature desperation conveyed in a condescending tone.

That was a lot of words just to publicly display that they're scared. Who approved this PR disaster?

This is one of the more bizarre press releases I've read in a while.

Translation: we just collectively shit ourselves.

That genuinely left me scratching my head. What a weird passive aggressive press release.

I'm not entirely sure what the point of the release is, it also feels sort of passive aggressive to me

Slack = Dropbox. They don't own the stack. Their chat app is worthless to all the real companies, i.e., non-SV funny money (which btw is 99.9% of the world's purchasing power), who are living in msft or google products and don't want to click into some incompatible app they won't be able to rally others around because it's not recommended by IT.

i think it's funny their final point was "slack is here to stay".. as if their explosive growth over the last year - which involved many companies switching out their existing chat service for slack - could not be repeated next year to another destination.

I had no idea Microsoft released a chat client until I read this article.

Microsoft should send Slack some flowers and a thank you card for the free marketing.

I'll admit that i don't use slack...but it would have come across as more respectable if they hadn't injected a tad bit too much passive aggressiveness. I mean if this was written in the late 90's/early 2000s, perhaps I might have agreed with them. But have they seen what microsoft is up to? I mean, microsoft is working with linux...working. with. freakin. linux! Microsoft. with. linux! ;-)

This note sounds like the kind of passive-aggressive stuff I write and subsequently discard to feel better about some dispute with a coworker.

There's such an air of condescension here, all from a team that didn't even design its own flagship product (http://metalab.co/projects/slack/).

I feel bearish on slack.

I came to know about Microsoft teams only by this post. I see better value proposition with whole office 365 offering.

I would short Slack. Shark jumping moment.

Just yammering about upcoming competition :-)

What the heck?

Weird "marketing".

Epic fail

haughty