Jump to content

Slack (software)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Slack
Original author(s)Stewart Butterfield, Eric Costello, Cal Henderson, and Serguei Mourachov[1]
Developer(s)Slack Technologies (Salesforce)
Initial releaseAugust 2013; 10 years ago (2013-08)[2]
Written inElectron (C++, JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Redux, etc.),[3] Hack (backend)[4]
Operating systemMicrosoft Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android[5]
Available in12 languages[6]
List of languages
Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Simplified), English (UK), English (US), French (France), German (Germany), Italian (Italy), Japanese (Japan), Korean (South Korea), Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish (Latin America), Spanish (Spain)
TypeCollaborative software
LicenseProprietary
Websiteslack.com

Slack is a cloud-based team communication platform developed by Slack Technologies, which has been owned by Salesforce since 2020. Slack uses a freemium model. Slack's primary userbase is businesses, and has functionalities primarily for businesses.[7][8]

History[edit]

Slack originated as an internal communication tool used within Stewart Butterfield's company, Tiny Speck, during their work on the development of Glitch, an online video game.[9] These communication tools were initially built around the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) protocol and included scripts designed to automate and organize file exchanges among their development team. By October 2012, Stewart Butterfield realized that Glitch was not going to bring necessary profits.[10] As a result, he decided to change the direction of his company and repurpose the communication tools they had developed into a new product.

In 2012, Butterfield decided to name their upcoming product "Slack," which he said was derived from the phrase "Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge," replacing the previous codename "linefeed".[11]

In August 2013, Slack was launched to the public[12] and continued to maintain compatibility with IRC, reflecting its origin.[13] Additionally, it was also compatible with XMPP messaging protocols. However, in May 2018, the company chose to close down these corresponding gateways due to limitations inherent to those protocols.[14]

On July 26, 2018, Slack acquired HipChat and Stride from Atlassian, with plans to shut down both services in February 2019 and migrate their users to Slack.[15][16]

In June 2019, Slack went public through a direct public offering to reach a market value of $19.5 billion.[17]

In July 2020, Slack acquired Rimeto, a startup specializing in employee directories and profiles, with plans to rename the service and operate it as a standalone app.[18][19] Almost a year later, in June 2021, its functionality launched as an optional feature within Slack named "Slack Atlas".[20]

On December 1, 2020, Slack and Salesforce announced an agreement for Salesforce to acquire the company for approximately $27.7 billion, marking one of the most significant tech acquisitions at that time.[21][22] The acquisition was completed on July 21, 2021.[23]

On December 5, 2022, Salesforce announced that Butterfield was leaving Slack and would be succeeded by Lidiane Jones, an executive vice president at Salesforce.[24] On November 13, 2023, Salesforce executive Denise Dresser was appointed to replace Jones, who was in turn replacing Whitney Wolfe Herd as Bumble CEO.[25][26]

Outages and security breaches[edit]

In March 2015, Slack announced it had been hacked for over four days in February 2015 and that some data associated with user accounts had been compromised, including email addresses, usernames, hashed passwords, phone numbers, and Skype IDs. In response to the attacks, Slack added two-factor authentication to its service.[27]

On January 4, 2021, Slack suffered a significant outage that lasted several hours. From 10 AM ET until 3 PM ET, users could not log in, send or receive messages, place or answer calls, or use Slack connections. After 3 PM, most of the core features became operational, except for push notifications, email, and third-party integrations including Google Calendar and Outlook Calendar.[28][29]

In 2022, Slack suffered widely reported outages on February 22,[30] March 9[31] and July 26.[32] On 31 December 2022, Slack announced that its private GitHub repositories had been compromised during the previous weeks, using stolen security tokens.[33]

Features[edit]

Slack offers many IRC-style features, including persistent chat rooms known as channels, which are organized by topic, as well as private groups and direct messaging functionalities.[34] All content, including files, conversations, and people, is searchable within Slack. Users can express their reactions in the form of emojis to any message.[35] Message history on Slack is limited to messages from last 90 days on the free plan.[36]

Slack allows for communities, groups, or teams to join a "workspace" via a specific URL or invitation sent by a team admin or owner.[37] A workspace can contain both public and private channels, with public channels being accessible to all members of the workspace.[38] Both public and private channels can be converted interchangeably.[39]

Direct messages enable users to engage in private one-on-one or group conversations with up to nine participants. Group direct message can be converted into a private channel.[40]

Slack integrates with many third-party services and supports community-built integrations, including Google Drive, Trello, Dropbox, Box, Heroku, IBM Bluemix, Crashlytics, GitHub, Runscope, Zendesk, and Zapier.[41][42] In July 2015, Slack launched an integration with Google Calendar.[43] Later, in December of the same year, a searchable directory was introduced consisting of over 150 integrations that users can install.[44] In addition to these integrations, Slack offers users the ability to incorporate and customize chatbots known as "Slackbots." These chatbots can be configured to send notifications, reminders, or provide tailored responses to specific phrases, among other functions.[45] Furthermore, Slack provides an application programming interface that enables users to develop applications and automate various processes, including sending notifications based on input, generating alerts for specific conditions, creating internal support tickets, and more.[46]

In March 2018, Slack partnered with Workday, a financial and human capital management firm.[47][48] This integration allows employees to access co-worker information, organizational charts, benefits, feedback, and time-off requests within Slack.[49]

In March 2022, Slack introduced a new voice conference feature known as "Huddles".[50] Within a Huddle, users have the capability to mute or unmute themselves, share their screens, draw on a shared screen, and invite others to the call.[51] In June 2022, Huddles received the additional functionality of video calls.[52] Huddles are restricted to only two participants on free tiers, while paid plans offer the capacity for up to 50 participants.

In March 2023, Salesforce announced the partnership with OpenAI to launch a ChatGPT integration for Slack and can be used for summarizing conversations, answering questions, or drafting replies.[53]

Slack provides mobile apps for iOS and Android in addition to their web browser client and desktop clients for MacOS, Windows,[54] and Linux (beta).[55] Slack is also available for the Apple Watch, allowing users to send direct messages, see mentions, and make simple replies.[56]

Business model[edit]

Slack is a freemium product whose main paid features are the ability to search more than 90 days' archived messages and add unlimited apps and integrations.[57] They also claim support for an unlimited number of users. When freeCodeCamp attempted to switch its community of over 8,000 users to Slack in 2015, however, they experienced many technical issues and were advised by Slack support to limit their channels to "no more than 1,000 users (ideally more like 500)."[58][59] That specific limit no longer applied by January 2017.[60]

Growth[edit]

In August 2013, 8,000 customers signed up for the service within 24 hours of its launch.[12][61] In February 2015, the company reported that approximately 10,000 new daily active users had signed up each week, and had more than 135,000 paying customers spread across 60,000 teams.[62][63] By April 2015, those numbers had grown to 200,000 paid subscribers and a total of 750,000 daily active users.[64] Late in 2015, Slack passed more than a million daily active users.[65][66] As of May 2018, Slack had over 8 million daily users, 3 million of whom had paid accounts.[67] At the time of its S-1 filing for IPO, dated April 26, 2019, Slack reported more than 10 million daily active users from more than 600,000 organizations, located in more than 150 countries.[68]

In 2019, it was estimated that employees at large firms were sending over 200 Slack messages per week on average.[69] From 2013 to 2019 the amount of time spent on work email had declined, which was attributed to the proliferation of Slack and its competitors Workplace (launched by Facebook in 2016), Microsoft Teams (launched 2017) and Google Hangouts Chat and Meet (launched in 2018).[69]

Reception[edit]

In March 2015, the Financial Times wrote that Slack was the first business technology to have crossed from business into personal use since Microsoft Office and the BlackBerry.[70] In 2017, New York magazine criticized the platform for being "another utility we both rely on and resent."[71]

In 2017, Slack was recognized as the best startup of the year at the Crunchies Awards, organized by TechCrunch.[72]

The digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has cautioned that "Slack stores and is able to read all of your communications, as well as identifying information for everyone in your workspace."[73] They commended the company for following several best practices in standing up for users concerning government data requests, such as requiring a warrant for content stored on its server, and awarding it four out of five stars in its 2017 "Who has your back" report;[74] the EFF also criticized Slack for "a broad set of exceptions" to its promise to notify users of such requests, and for other privacy shortcomings.[73]

Slack has been criticized by users[75] for storing user data exclusively on cloud servers under Slack control.[76][77] This is found to be a particular issue for users with large teams, who experienced issues with connectivity within the app, access to archived messages, and the number of users for a given "workspace."[78]

Slack has also been criticized for a retroactive 2018 change to its privacy policy, allowing access to all public and private chat messages by workspace administrators, without the need of consent from any parties using the app.[79] According to the new policy, Slack workspace members are no longer notified when data is downloaded from their workspace.[80]

Slack has also been criticized when used in free and open source projects for the inability to search for messages and discussions.[81][82]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Kumparak, Greg (February 5, 2015). "Slack's Co-Founders Take Home The Crunchie For Founder Of The Year". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on April 1, 2019. Retrieved June 25, 2017.
  2. ^ Zax, David (August 14, 2013). "Flickr Cofounders Launch Slack, An Email Killer". Archived from the original on October 31, 2019. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  3. ^ "Desktop Application Engineer". Slack. Archived from the original on September 13, 2015.
  4. ^ Sandler, Scott (April 14, 2020). "Hacklang at Slack: A Better PHP". Slack.engineering. Archived from the original on January 29, 2021. Retrieved February 11, 2021.
  5. ^ Slack. "Slack apps for computers, phones & tablets". Archived from the original on November 2, 2018. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  6. ^ "Manage your language preferences". Slack. Retrieved August 31, 2023.
  7. ^ Slack. "What is Slack?". Slack Help Center. Retrieved April 1, 2024.
  8. ^ John, Steven. "'What is Slack?' Everything you need to know about the professional messaging program". Business Insider. Retrieved May 4, 2022.
  9. ^ Tam, Donna. "Flickr founder plans to kill company e-mails with Slack". Archived from the original on December 3, 2013. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  10. ^ Honan, Mat. "How Stewart Butterfield Created Slack From a Failed Video Game". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved August 30, 2023.
  11. ^ Kim, Eugene (September 27, 2016). "Slack, the red hot $3.8 billion startup, has a hidden meaning behind its name". UK Business Insider. Archived from the original on November 19, 2019. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  12. ^ a b Koetsier, John (August 15, 2013). "Flickr founder Stewart Butterfield's new Slack signed up 8,000 companies in 24 hours". VentureBeat. Archived from the original on February 4, 2020. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  13. ^ Mombrea, Matthew (August 15, 2014). "Slack: I've seen the future, and it reminds me of the past". Computerworld. Retrieved August 31, 2023.
  14. ^ Sharwood, Simon (March 9, 2018). "Slack cuts ties to IRC and XMPP, cos they don't speak Emoji". Archived from the original on September 3, 2018. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  15. ^ Etienne, Stefan (July 26, 2018). "Slack buys HipChat with plans to shut it down and migrate users to its chat service". The Verge. Archived from the original on August 14, 2018. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  16. ^ Kumparak, Greg (July 26, 2018). "Atlassian's HipChat and Stride to be discontinued, with Slack buying up the IP". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on October 9, 2018. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  17. ^ Slack Stock Soars, Putting Company’s Public Value at $19.5 Billion Archived March 15, 2021, at the Wayback Machine - Erin Griffith, The New York Times, 20 June 2019
  18. ^ Konrad, Alex (July 8, 2020). "Slack Acquires Corporate Directory Startup Rimeto, Plans To Operate It As Standalone App". Forbes. Archived from the original on July 9, 2020. Retrieved July 9, 2020.
  19. ^ Miller, Ron (July 8, 2020). "Slack snags corporate directory startup Rimeto to up its people search game". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on July 9, 2020. Retrieved July 9, 2020.
  20. ^ Miller, Ron (June 30, 2021). "Slack's new voice, video tools should fit nicely on Salesforce platform after deal closes". TechCrunch. Retrieved September 8, 2023.
  21. ^ "Salesforce Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Slack". Archived from the original on January 21, 2021. Retrieved January 21, 2021.
  22. ^ Levy, Ari (December 1, 2020). "Salesforce acquires Slack for over $27 billion, marking cloud software vendor's largest deal ever". CNBC. Retrieved September 8, 2023.
  23. ^ "Salesforce closes $27.7 billion acquisition of Slack". finance.yahoo.com. July 21, 2021. Retrieved July 21, 2021.
  24. ^ "Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield is leaving Salesforce two years after a deal was announced". www.cnbc.com. December 5, 2022. Retrieved December 5, 2022.
  25. ^ Goswami, Rohan (November 13, 2023). "Salesforce appoints longtime executive Denise Dresser as Slack CEO". CNBC. Retrieved November 14, 2023.
  26. ^ "Salesforce names Denise Dresser to succeed Lidiane Jones as CEO of Slack". November 13, 2023.
  27. ^ Greenberg, Andy (March 27, 2015). "Slack Says It Was Hacked, Enables Two-Factor Authentication". Wired. Condé Nast. Archived from the original on February 4, 2020. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  28. ^ Lyons, Kim (January 4, 2021). "Slack starts 2021 with a massive outage". The Verge. Archived from the original on January 5, 2021. Retrieved January 5, 2021.
  29. ^ "Slack kicks off 2021 with a global outage". AP NEWS. January 4, 2021. Archived from the original on January 4, 2021. Retrieved January 4, 2021.
  30. ^ "Ongoing services outage at Slack".
  31. ^ "Slack says its problems are solved, but you might have to refresh". March 9, 2022.
  32. ^ "Slack back online after users report outage affecting sending messages". July 26, 2022.
  33. ^ Slack's private GitHub code repositories stolen over holidays, Ax Sharma, Bleeping Computer, 2023-01-05
  34. ^ Johnson, Heather A. (January 2018). "Slack". Journal of the Medical Library Association. 106 (1): 148–151. doi:10.5195/jmla.2018.315. ISSN 1536-5050. PMC 5764588.
  35. ^ Crook, Jordan (July 9, 2015). "Slack Adds Emoji Reactions". Archived from the original on November 30, 2018. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  36. ^ https://slack.com/pricing/paid-vs-free#:~:text=Unlimited%20messaging-,90%2Dday%20history,-Unlimited
  37. ^ Krasnoff, Barbara (January 28, 2022). "How to set up a Slack account". The Verge. Retrieved September 8, 2023.
  38. ^ John, Steven. "How to join a Slack channel on desktop or mobile, whether it's public or private". Business Insider. Archived from the original on June 9, 2020. Retrieved June 9, 2020.
  39. ^ Slack. "Convert a channel to private". Slack Help Center. Retrieved July 28, 2023.
  40. ^ "Slack updated their privacy policy: Now your company can read 'private' messages". NBC News. April 5, 2018. Archived from the original on May 18, 2020. Retrieved June 9, 2020.
  41. ^ Gannes, Liz (August 14, 2013). "Flickr Co-Founder Stewart Butterfield Turns to Workplace Communication Tools With Slack". Archived from the original on November 25, 2013. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  42. ^ Augustine, Ann (May 19, 2018). "A Review of the Slack Communication Service". Archived from the original on November 21, 2018. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  43. ^ "Slack Integrates With Google Calendar To Add Events To Channels". TechCrunch. July 23, 2015. Retrieved February 15, 2022.[permanent dead link]
  44. ^ Newton, Casey (December 15, 2015). "Slack launches an app store and an $80 million fund to invest in new integrations". TheVerge.com. Archived from the original on September 15, 2018. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  45. ^ Newlands, Murray (September 11, 2017). "How to Make A 'Slackbot' for Free Without Coding". Entrepreneur. Retrieved September 14, 2022.
  46. ^ "Slack API". Slack. Archived from the original on December 28, 2018. Retrieved December 28, 2018.
  47. ^ Coop, Alex (March 26, 2018). "Workday and Slack announce partnership; Google, Microsoft and Facebook on the horizon". IT Business. Archived from the original on June 26, 2018. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  48. ^ News Desk, The HRT (May 27, 2018). "Industry Leaders Slack & Workday are Now Partners". Archived from the original on June 26, 2018. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  49. ^ "Slack and Workday team up to bring HR tools into the Slack platform". ZDNET. Retrieved September 8, 2023.
  50. ^ Slack. "New collaboration tools to help you work from anywhere". Slack. Retrieved June 8, 2022.
  51. ^ "How to use Slack's huddle feature (and why you should)". ZDNET. Retrieved September 8, 2023.
  52. ^ Pierce, David (June 22, 2022). "Slack added video to Huddles so you don't have to spend your life in Zoom meetings". The Verge. Retrieved September 8, 2023.
  53. ^ Roth, Emma (March 7, 2023). "Slack's new ChatGPT bot will talk to your colleagues for you". The Verge. Retrieved September 8, 2023.
  54. ^ Foley, Mary Jo. "How Slack brought its desktop app to the Windows Store". ZDNet. Archived from the original on August 7, 2020. Retrieved April 30, 2020.
  55. ^ Warren, Tom (September 12, 2019). "Slack launches dark mode for macOS, Windows, and Linux". The Verge. Retrieved December 2, 2022.
  56. ^ Novet, Jordan (April 20, 2015). "Slack brings its app to the Apple Watch (video)". VentureBeat. Archived from the original on June 26, 2018. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  57. ^ https://slack.com/pricing/paid-vs-free#:~:text=Unlimited%20messaging-,90%2Dday%20history,-Unlimited
  58. ^ "So Yeah We Tried Slack... and We Deeply Regretted It". FreeCodeCamp.com. June 21, 2015. Archived from the original on October 25, 2018. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  59. ^ Kim, Eugene (June 22, 2015). "Startup founder claims $2.8 billion startup Slack is misleading people about its free 'unlimited' plan". BusinessInsider.com. Archived from the original on November 2, 2018. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  60. ^ Chen, Dave (January 20, 2017). "Despite its marketing, Slack's free tier limits your total number of users". DaveChen.net. Archived from the original on July 20, 2018. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  61. ^ Fingas, Jon (August 14, 2013). "Flickr creator takes sign-ups for Slack, an office collaboration tool with universal search". Archived from the original on June 26, 2018. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  62. ^ Griffith, Erin (February 12, 2015). "Slack growth skyrockets: 10,000 new active users each week". Fortune.com. Archived from the original on October 13, 2018. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  63. ^ Kim, Eugene (February 12, 2015). "Billion-dollar startup Slack says it's adding $1 million in new contracts every 11 days". BusinessInsider.com. Archived from the original on October 14, 2018. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  64. ^ Welch, Chris (April 16, 2015). "Slack continues huge growth, is now valued at $2.8 billion". TheVerge.com. Archived from the original on May 15, 2020. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  65. ^ Metz, Rachel (June 25, 2015). "Slack Keeps On Growing". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  66. ^ Novet, Jordan (October 29, 2015). "Slack launches user groups, hits 1.7M daily active users and 470K paid seats". VentureBeat.com. Archived from the original on November 5, 2018. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  67. ^ Newton, Casey (May 22, 2018). "Slack adds action buttons to become a true workplace communication hub". The Verge. Archived from the original on October 17, 2018. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  68. ^ "Form S-1 Registration Statement". www.sec.gov. Archived from the original on May 1, 2019. Retrieved May 7, 2019.
  69. ^ a b Molla, Rani (May 1, 2019). "Is Slack ruining our jobs — and lives?". Vox. Retrieved June 14, 2022.
  70. ^ "Slack: workplace message app so cute you want to use it at home". Financial Times. March 25, 2015. Archived from the original on October 14, 2018. Retrieved October 13, 2018.(subscription required)
  71. ^ Fischer, Molly (May 17, 2017). "What Happens When Work Becomes a Nonstop Chat Room". New York Magazine. Archived from the original on October 20, 2018. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  72. ^ Lardinois, Frederic (February 6, 2017). "And the winners of the 10th Annual Crunchies are..." TechCrunch. Archived from the original on February 22, 2017. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  73. ^ a b Cohn, Cindy; Gebhart, Gennie (February 14, 2018). "The Revolution and Slack". Electronic Frontier Foundation. Archived from the original on September 4, 2018. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  74. ^ Reitman, Rainey (July 10, 2017). "Who Has Your Back? Government Data Requests 2017". Electronic Frontier Foundation. Archived from the original on September 15, 2018. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  75. ^ Silverman, Jacob (December 2016). "Big Bother Is Watching". The Baffler. No. 33. Archived from the original on January 6, 2019. Retrieved December 11, 2018.
  76. ^ Finley, Klint (March 16, 2016). "Open sourcers race to build better versions of Slack". Wired. Archived from the original on March 9, 2017. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  77. ^ Peterson, Becky (July 26, 2017). "Uber didn't like Silicon Valley's biggest chat apps - so it was forced to make its own". Business Insider. Archived from the original on September 5, 2018. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  78. ^ "We Tried Slack and Deeply Regretted it". June 21, 2015. Archived from the original on March 15, 2019. Retrieved February 10, 2019.
  79. ^ "Slacks new policy lets bosses read employees dms without consent". March 22, 2018. Archived from the original on May 15, 2020. Retrieved February 10, 2019.
  80. ^ "Slacks new policy lets bosses read employees dms without consent". March 22, 2018. Archived from the original on February 9, 2019. Retrieved February 10, 2019.
  81. ^ "Cutting Slack: When open source and team chat tools collide". VentureBeat. June 18, 2021. Retrieved January 17, 2023.
  82. ^ Wilkes, Gabriel (May 10, 2018). "Why tech groups can use Slack for free but open source projects and businesses of any size…". Medium. Retrieved January 17, 2023.

External links[edit]