> Combining Slack with Salesforce Customer 360 will be transformative for customers and the industry. The combination will create the operating system for the new way to work, uniquely enabling companies to grow and succeed in the all-digital world.
Oh. Oh no.
It really says something about a company that people see their name getting close as a sign they should stop using a product.
Sadly I suspect the people saying "we need to find a Slack alternative" today are the same ones that have been saying "Slack sucks" this whole time, to little effect.
feature-by-feature on paper, it doesn't necessarily stand out compared to the crowded landscape. It's not a new distributed protocol or anything unique.
but you really can tell it's well crafted, with love as slack used to say. And if you don't believe me, you can inspect the source code yourself!
I have wanted our company to move away from Slack to something w better thread discussions.
We have long resisted Salesforce because of pricing, say, compared to Pipedrive for CRM.
I am interested to see what happens with pricing and many orgs locked data.
I know we do not pay for the high uptime plan.
Salesforce is a reasonably good operating entity, I don't see any reason for Slackers to flinch.
But consider that 'Slack' was a movement - literally the name, the original premise, there was a corporate/hip aspect to it. Which now it's not, just the opposite, because it's 'Salesforce'.
So at least in part - 'it's not cool now'.
Products that people started hating with passion.
The real trick is, to figure out all those things we do that we think are based on utility, but are not.
The Saab ad comparing their car to the Jets the make appeals to our 'every little boy wants to be a pilot' fantasy.
But the Ford ads that tell us how 'strong' our vehicle is going to be ... even though many of us will never, ever use them for this purpose.
Like the guy with 1000 different tools in his shed - he buys them 'because they are useful'. But really, it's the 'emotion/novelty' of utility, not actual utility.
At least 1/2 of the tech industry is driven by this, it's hilarious. We HNers, so neurotically passionate about whatever it happens to be ... are the most guilty.
Of course a lot comes out of purely speculative and creative use of technology, it's just that we should be better at discerning.
Slack, if it's bad, is probably because it's a noisy channel, not because it's Salesforce.
That seems very reasonable from a purely rational POV, and I know we all like to think of ourselves as rational creatures. (It reminds me of this: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/rational-2)
I can still see a world where Slack is a tool that continues to operate and serve its customers, similar to Heroku post-acquisition, but Salesforce augments their services with Slack tie-ins (and vice-versa).
Short: there's a middle ground I think they can strike.
I'm just complaining, but... Why do people write things like this? I see it in my own employer and our marketing material, too. It's confusing bullshit that is devoid of any meaning.
I am also surprised, as I'd think the COVID pandemic would have boosted its use. Though, after thinking about it I've seen MS Teams everywhere outside of Open Source and startups. A post-mortem of why they sold, and the events leading to it, would be an awesome thing for one of the founders to do.
"We'll still be Slack. I'll still be the CEO."
Source: https://twitter.com/stewart/status/1333901107978936320
The clash of meaning in those two words says it all.