Sources Contact Advanced Search Tutorials

An Interest In:

Web News this Week

Search Archive

Some of Our Sources

View All Sources

Help Webnuz

Referal links:

March 24, 2021 02:00 pm

WhatsApp for Work: Slack is Turning Into a Full-on Messaging App

Forget email. The final frontier for Slack, as it tries to reimagine the way millions of people communicate at work, is the text message. From a report: Email is a useful tool but a blunt one. It mixes business communication with receipts and confirmation numbers, makes it easy to talk to anyone but also maybe makes it too easy to talk to anyone. But text messages? Not every professional relationship graduates to text-message levels of intimacy, but the ones that do are the ones that matter most. And you might have an assistant read and filter your email, but pretty much everybody checks their own texts. It's the highest, most elusive rung of the business communication ladder, and it's exactly what Slack wants to replace. Starting on Wednesday, any Slack user will be able to direct message any other Slack user. The new system is called Connect DMs, and works a bit like the messaging apps and buddy lists of old: Users send an invite to anyone via their work email address, and once the recipient accepts their new contact is added to their Slack sidebar. The conversations are tied to the users' organizations, but exist in a separate section of the Slack app itself. Connect DMs turns Slack from an app for chatting with co-workers into an app for chatting with anyone. It puts Slack on par with both enterprise tools like Microsoft Teams and free consumer services like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. "When someone opens up their phone," said Ilan Frank, Slack's VP of product, "if they're connecting with their friends, they click on Facebook or WhatsApp. If they're connecting with someone they work with, regardless of where that person works, they should be clicking on Slack." That's a tricky thing to get right, both from a UI perspective and an IT one. But Slack is committed. This has been the plan since before Salesforce bought the company, and it feels even more urgent now. Slack needs this to work, in some ways, as Microsoft Teams and Zoom threaten to leave it behind. By expanding its purview, Slack gives users more reasons to try Slack, gives companies more reasons to adopt it, and makes Slack an even more central part of the modern workday.

Slashdot

Slashdot was originally created in September of 1997 by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda. Today it is owned by Geeknet, Inc..

More About this Source Visit Slashdot