Source--Slack's Secret 2.6 Billion $ Secret Sauce
ref: https://medium.com/@awilkinson/slack-s-2-8-billion-dollar-secret-sauce-5c5ec7117908
Quotes
When you hear people talk about Slack they often say it’s “fun”. Using it doesn’t feel like work. It feels like slacking off, even when you’re using it to get stuff done. But when you look under the hood, it’s almost identical to every other chat app. You can create a room, add people, share files, and chat as a group or direct message one another. So, what makes Slack different?
Related: Slack is about... slacking and Slack won because it was fun
3 Things that make it different:
- It looks different
(Hipchat and Slack) both do exactly the same thing, but one feels dull and the other feels electric and playful. The difference? Vibrant colors, a curvy sans-serif typeface, friendly icons, and smiling faces and emojis everywhere.
- It feels different
“We gave it the color scheme of a video game, not an enterprise collaboration product.” Slack was designed like a Video Game “Slack acts like your wise-cracking robot sidekick, instead of the boring enterprise chat tool it would otherwise be.”
Everyone caught on to "Fun design", but it's too late
Over the past couple months, their competitors have caught on. They’ve all started using casual copy and trying to bone up on design, but it’s a little like your uncle trying to do the macarena. It’s too little too late. Everyone has picked their robot sidekick. Slack has stolen the show.
My Take-away
Slack was designed to be fun, nothing wrong with that, but I would argue it often does it at the mercy of focus and thoughtfulness. I'm not saying I would rather have "work is always about work!", I don't think that's true, yet I do think it can be taken too far, and Slack did..
Have you ever had a friend that's a class clown? They are always cracking jokes, and they are super fun and funny to be around, but you can never have a serious conversation with them? Never really feel like you know them. Slack feels like that, except it's not just one person it's like a house party constantly going on at work. No serious conversation won't be punched in by a kitten shooting lasers from it's eyes. Slack is like.a [[Source--Why I Hate Slack and You Should Too#Threads don't work because of rabid bull of real-time chat|rabid bull]] of fun.
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