Are you on Slack? Over 10 million people log on to the messaging App every day.
People in all sorts of industries are deciding if it’s a helpful tool or a nagging reminder (that there are unread messages waiting for you to act on).
The answers to these questions will vary depending on how your organization chooses to use Slack. Generally speaking, I believe email is for work and Slack is for talking about work and other shared interests.
Tell Your Organization’s Story on Slack
Slack is a new company, and like other big winners in technology, it became ubiquitous fast.
Check out this timeline treatment from Slack, leading up the company’s IPS earlier this month.
Slack eschewed the Wall Street roadshow in favor of a direct offering, which allows company investors and other stakeholders to sell directly to the market without issuing new shares.
The San Francisco-based company’s stock began trading under the ticker symbol “WORK” on the New York Stock Exchange at $38.50, well above its reference price of $26. The five-year old startup now has a stock market valuation of about $19.5 billion.
Knowing When To Talk or Type
More than 600,000 organizations around the world use Slack and its 10 million users collectively spend 50 million hours on the platform in a typical week.
According to Fast Company, Slack’s own employees use Slack too, but they’re not distracted by the technology and they know when to log off.
If you were to walk around Slack’s company headquarters in San Francisco, you’d notice a peculiar slogan on the hallway walls. White letters on a bright pink background blare, “Work hard and go home.” By 6:30 p.m., Slack’s offices have pretty much cleared out.
Surely, Slack employees log back in when they get home, right? Wrong.
Did you know that Stewart Butterfield, the company’s founder and CEO (and a newly minted billionaire) was raised in a log cabin without electricity and running water?
Butterfield’s first company, Flickr, he sold to Yahoo for more than $20 million.
Not In Microsoft’s House
Microsoft is not one of the 600,000 organizations on Slack.
The maker of Microsoft Teams banned its employees from using Slack, as well as discouraging the use of arch rivals Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google.
Slack Free, Slack Standard and Slack Plus versions do not provide required controls to properly protect Microsoft Intellectual Property (IP).
I was recently on a consulting assignment where we all used Teams for a few months. It was okay. But I deleted it from my machines as soon as the project wrapped.
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About David Burn
David Burn is the co-founder, editor, and publisher of Adpulp.com. David joined the ad agency business in 1997 as a copywriter and then worked for seven agencies in five states prior to launching Bonehook in 2010. Today, David is a writer, brand strategist, and leader of creative teams in Austin, TX.
