I'm not a Slack fanboy but this whole article reads like it was written in an echo chamber where the word "free" has no definition.

> Ryver is entirely free. We give away what Slack charges a lot of money for.

> We’re a freemium model. We offer Ryver Team Communication for free and we will be charging money for add-on products such as a Task Manager.

So it's not "entirely free" the proper description would be "freemium".

Also from the FAQ:

> Then we will ship Ryver Enterprise for big companies. These will be priced very creatively and competitively.

BUT I THOUGHT THAT TEAM COMMUNICATION NEEDED TO BE FREEEEEEEE!

So once again, very clearly not free. Also "creatively" and "competitively", is that another way to describe: "hard to understand"? Reminds me of sketchy mattress dealers...

> The difference is that their free tier is a crippled product whereas our free level is a full product without limitations…

Okay..? I'm mean I see what they are saying but if I consider "task manager" to be a requirement for team communication, then you too are selling me a "crippled" product.

My key take away from this article is that Ryver is apparently the Donald Trump of the team communication world. Lots of smoke and mirrors and very few, if any, features that distinguish it from their competition.

But congrats, I guess... I now know the name of your company.

Team Communication does need to be free and does not "require" task management. You will be able to mix and match so only the ones who need tasks pay for it. The "creatively" word means we intend to price it so an Admin does not have to make a decision on adding cost EVERY TIME one more person needs Tasks.

Since Ryver team comm matches up very well against what Slack charges for, it seems a reasonable (at least) claim to be entirely free vs Slack.

Hmm... I strongly disagree with your assumptions. But, hackers have long debated the meaning of the word "free", so who am I to say?

I guess we will have to update the Jargon file to include your curious new definition, "free as in free when compared to specific things that Slack Technologies Inc. sells".

I do not use Slack, Ryver or any other similar product, so I think I can safely say I don't fall in to the "slack fanboy" demographic that this article claims are upset by their ads.

That said, I think that running negative ads about your competition only shows weakness in a company. Don't use your marketing to tell me negative things about your competition, use it to tell me positive things about you. If you can't do that, then the problem isn't that Slack is bad, it's that Ryver is not strong enough to stand on it's own.

Negative ads can make sense if you're going up against one or two entrenched competitors that own most of the market share.

That being said, the example ad shown in the article ("Slack is so last year. Now it's Ryver") just made me angry. Anyone who has been in tech a while has experienced this neurotic, senseless need to switch tooling every year because some middle manager decided to.

> Negative ads can make sense if you're going up against one or two entrenched competitors that own most of the market share.

Like what Gett is doing: "We pay more than Uber!"

"We pay more than Uber" isn't really, or at least not purely, a negative ad. It's making a comparison, one that Gett comes away looking good in; and it's really pointing out something that Gett does better than Uber, not just something that Uber does poorly.

I think that's a pretty strong approach.

As you say, it hits a nerve... But what's there to be angry about, when that happens anyway?

I suspect that said "neurotic, senseless need" to keep up with the corporate Joneses is what drove many organizations to adopt Slack in the first place. That leaves them feeling vulnerable about the next thing that might be coming up, which they don't want to miss out on. IMO Ryver is being rather clever by playing on that insecurity so openly.

I am now required to use Slack for communication at work. It replaces the previous chat tool I was required to use to communicate at work and is, in fact, the fourth communication tool that I have been required to use for work in the past 12 months. Needless to say, I can't communicate with anybody.

The only killer feature I would have any interest in would be syndication across various communication tools.

Our Ads saying positive things about Ryver are ignored. Why spend money on those?

And if the product sucked no one would use it which would be the ultimate slam against Ryver. But the opposite is true. Some Slack teams are converting and most because they like it better not just because it is free.

Then why didn't you just say that? You wrote a whole article defending your negative campaign when in reality you are doing it because it is the only campaign that works for you.

This is a smoking gun for in that you are only justifying your actions.

I explicitly state that in the article.

"Why do we keep running that ad, despite the occasional social media potshots ranging from snarky platitudes to frothing fanboy rage? It’s simple: That ad outperforms every other ad we have tested 5 to 1. "

Here's the thing: Slack already won. Slack won before you were even on the scene. Slack has won so thouroughly that it's winning converts from IRC, which is largely the hardcore crowd, and is somewhat outside of Slack's target market (team chat).

Bashing Slack isn't going to win you much in the way of customers, because all it tells them is that you want to be Slack. They already know that. Everyone on the playing field wants to be Slack, except IRC, which mostly doesn't care. Instead, show your customers all the ways Slack is better. Ask them if Slack has your awesome new feature that will increase their productivity tenfold.

If you want to kill the leader in the field, you have to give us a reason you're better. And "they're so last year" isn't a reason, unless you're a fashion product.

When I read "Slack is so last year", my first thought was "Oh, so Ryver is just this year's Slack." That's not a win, because I already have Slack and I don't need this year's trendy new version. That ad might have a high click-through rate, but you need something better than click-through to sell an enterprise client.

Pitching new features would be more appealing, but you have to actually have new features that are good. Task management is nice, but there are lots of Slack-integrable options already going.

As is, I'm really not sure what this pitch is supposed to say: "our well-established competitor is well-established"? Sounds good to me.

Yeah. If there's one well-established option that works well, why would I convert? As it stands, there are up to 3 well-established options, depending on your domain: Slack, XMPP, and IRC.

Maybe you are right that the game is over and Slack won. I don't think so. I believe they uncovered a market not even they knew was there. If I am correct there will be quite a few winners in what I believe to be a huge market. Over the next decade EVERYONE will gradually stop using email for their team communication. That is 1 Billion business users of email.

When I took SalesLogix public in 1999 there were other CRM companies that went public around the same time. Multiple winners. And where I am going with differentiation ultimately I don't care what Slack does. I only care now in order to become a known brand. Something we have pretty good start on.

Your comparison to Tuft and Needle is not very good. Everybody hates mattress stores for their sleazy business practices; it's a given.

There's no unanimous hatred for Slack, however, so your ads come off as pretty ignorant. We use slack at my company and have 0 problems with it. I am perfectly aware of its limitations and I am fine with them.

Also, I have to download a desktop client to use Ryver? 2004 called and wants their software back.

Tuft and Needle also doesn't call out anyone by name. Nobody would care if Ryver's ads said "Chat programs are greedy," rather than specifically naming a beloved company.

And it's made worse since Ryver just seems to be an (inferior) Slack clone.

Actually I would find a desktop client more appealing. I'm not a fan of browsers-as-poorly-functioning-userlands-on-userlands that seems to be the modern fad.

But Slack's desktop client is excellent. Furthermore, Ryver makes a big point about guest access - and a browser client would be much better for guests than a dedicated client they may only use once.

HipChat has both: a web client and a native windows/mac client.

Slack also - you can use it in browser. Most people don't want to, but I've seen some people say that they do so much work there that it's nice to have a browser tab visible.

And per-channel guest access, too.

We run in every browser and also have native apps for every platform.

Yeah, not having a desktop client was one of the reasons we went with Hipchat over Slack. I can understand not everyone wants to use a native app, but it sure would be a nice option.

> Yeah, not having a desktop client was one of the reasons we went with Hipchat over Slack.

Is Slack's desktop client a new thing? I'm relatively new to it, but they certainly have one now.

Slack has a native desktop client and has for a long time.

Or, better yet, irssi in persistent tmux. Slack really can't compare to terminal irc clients in terms of usability and flexibility.

We run in every browser very well. Have a Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android client.

Agreed. Desktop apps are generally so much better.

Most of our users do use the native apps. Some prefer the browser though.

Of course we run in all browsers. Also have native apps for windows, mac, linux, ios and android. 2004 never did call.

No, of course we run in a browser as well as windows, mac, linux, ios, android. 2004 hasn't called.

We run in every browser very well. Have a Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android client.

The first thing that stuck me watching TV in the US was negative ads. Drug ads came next. It was so new to me at that time I was puzzled how they could even use their trademarks[1]. I never felt compelled by any of these negative ads - not a single one. It exposes more weakness in the attacking company and more importantly it felt like - "Why are you guys buying that other product? We make so much better product." - as if the customer does not know what they are doing (even if that were the case).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advertising

> I was puzzled how they could even use their trademark

Important point about trademark law: it is intended to prevent you from fooling customers into thinking they are buying someone else's product, NOT to prevent you from talking about someone else's product.

As long as you put TM on their logo you are fine to mention a competitor.

> Slack is so last year. Now it's Ryver

The me this ads makes me think that Ryver is claiming that all these services are disposable products, to be thrown away for for the latest glittering gem.

While this may be true to a certain extent, I can't imagine that most companies want to think that the pain it took getting everybody over to Slack was disposable effort, and that now they should be happy to move to Ryver, and some other glittering ball next year.

To me, this makes me think Ryver itself is admitting it's just aiming to be the latest buzz, and it expects some other buzz to be around next year.

...but the article claims it's their most effective ad, so I must be in the minority there.

I guess it's hard to be relevant and get attention when your business model is Yet Another Chat System. This sort of Bro- marketing, however, tends to linger in the back of my head as a telling sign of how usable the product will be, and what customer service will look like.

(edited for clarification of comment)

Striking up controversy in advertising is very effective for going viral. Doesn't have to be a competitor, it can be an idea or methodology widely held in an industry as well.

Team communication must be reliable. An infinite search history is useless if you're going to end your incredible journey in six months.

If you were charging what Slack charges, I wouldn't trust you to win against them. But you're going to undercut them by providing everything Slack does, for free, and aligning your financial incentives with another product? I've been an engineer at a mismanaged startup run by a hotshot CEO before, I know how this works and I know how much attention the zero-revenue product gets.

What your pricing tells me is that a) you have no interest in doing it as well as Slack does, and I'm already less than 100% happy with the quality of Slack's product, and b) you have much less chance of surviving than Slack does.

I suppose I am one of the "Slack fanboys" because of this response I wrote on Twitter https://twitter.com/geofft/status/679466421206687744. (Incidentally, that proves to me that you're lying, because that "so last year" tweet is from 2015, and in this article you're arguing that it's okay for you to say "so last year" because it's currently 2016 and you're talking about 2015. Consider not lying?)

> I suspect that Ryver is now the third best-known brand in the new category of Team Communication.

Am I the only one that hadn't heard of Ryver before this post?

I didn't. Then they wrote a post about using negativity to get more attention than just showing product's features. This one had basically zero comments and karma when I saw it a few hours ago. It's at 50 comments with 45 karma now. Most comments (i.e. attention) from people pissed off by its claims and countering them. Much karma is likely coming from people who are pleased with the controversy, simply agree with the point, or possibly upvoting it to make their own negative, counters visible.

All illustrating the effect described in the article as nicely as I expected when upvoting it. Or maybe it's something else but it looks awfully similar. (evil grin)

Anyone doubting that controversy is effective should look at where the nice, honest candidates for U.S. presidency currently are. I don't know as they dropped off some time back while two remaining at the lead try to tap the conflict button in people's brains almost every time they speak. There's more to it than simply being controversial or aggressive: what you say or offer has to fit needs of the audience in their minds. As always.

The linked marketing reads as if it's bluntly honest while also delivering a backhand slap to the competition. Those often work. Many companies can't do it because their business model is a bit too scheming. The Ryver deal seems straight-forward based on what's presented here. So, they can do the brutally honest and combative approach. No opinion on Slack vs Ryver specifically. My comment is just about the marketing angle.

I mean, this essay raises some questions about the "straightforward" claim.

When I hear "creative pricing", I don't think a company is artistic, I think they're scamming me. Similarly, "free" is not "freemium" is not "competitive enterprise pricing". I get what they're saying, and I like pay-for-new-features way better than pay-for-unbroken-functionality.

But when your business model is literally TBD, it's hard to take refuge in having a straightforward offering.

"But when your business model is literally TBD, it's hard to take refuge in having a straightforward offering."

Yeah, I smiled at that one. Weakest part of the article.

"The best way to attack a competitor is to find their soft underbelly and tear it to shreds with tooth and claw. Ideally, it’s something they are not able to change in response to your attack. Slack’s soft underbelly is their pricing model. "

I have to say that having used Slack for clients' projects and as part of a few political campaign teams, the primary value add is the organization of meta-information (files) in the same client as the chat service. I'm not sure I'd ever pay for that kind of service.

Also I've never clicked on a Ryver ad. I read the blog post linked here, and while I find some merit in the idea that competition must be contrasted and that we're wired to focus on conflict, the aggressiveness is off-putting.

The biggest problem with all of these I think is who owns the data, you're much better getting Mattermost and creating your own inhouse system. It'd also be much more secure - assuming you have the team to do so. I haven't looked into it but how easy is it to get all chats from slack to ryver? Is there an import? What if there were a protocol for that like imap ?

There's lots of room for disruption with this technology, but being the same as slack in most things isn't it..

"The biggest problem with all of these I think is who owns the data"

Absolutely. It's why I'm against all of them. Best to have your communications in an open, vendor-neutral form with at least one copy local so you can guarantee access to anything critical. Indefinitely. Email already handles that well kludgy as it is. Next solution needs to be able to as well. Although, that's not required for popularity as we see with Slack, etc.

Short-sighted marketing bullcrap like this is exactly why I got out of the industry. It's an embarrassment.

Such douchebaggery.

The ad literally shows a geek-looking person aghast at a dudebro with a faux-hawk. I don't know about everyone else here, but I intuitively identify with the geek. Who is this targeting? It just increases my affinity with their competition

If you're angering people on Facebook, isn't this going to cause them to hide / report your ad? Which in turn is going to effect your relevance score and make everything waaaaaay more expensive?

No, only pissing people off on Twitter. We have been testing FB ads and to our surprise our "tame" ads work very well there. We have not even tested the dreaded, horribly offensive "so last year" on FB. Not sure the difference but there is definitely a big diff between Twitter and FB audiences. Any ideas why?

"Marketing is war. You are fighting for your company’s life, by way of attention and sales. If you aren’t willing to go to war, you might as well surrender and go home and knit cat stuff for Etsy."

Amazing line, and the next one too: "The best way to attack a competitor is to find their soft underbelly and tear it to shreds with tooth and claw."

I'm kind of tired of every company trying to present themselves as the nicest guys in town. This is much better.

Ha! I like that Marco. "nicest guys in town." Nice guys finish last? Fact is if everyone here knew us personally, they'd say we a nice guys. But when faced with the daunting, dubious task of taking on Slack this strategy made the most sense. And it is working. If it wasn't we'd have stopped a long time ago. Marketing is hard but fun stuff. Thanks!

Interesting choice in stock photos. I'd almost prefer no photos at all (text only post) as opposed to a bunch of tangentially related generic stock photos that pull attention away from the relevant content (text)

It is an interesting question, I disagree with just about everything in the article.

The question is this, if you have to essentially identical goods, and neither price nor features are sufficient to differentiate them, how do you change market share?

I spent some time embedded in Sun's marketing group and that taught me that classically this is called product positioning. It is marketing's task to create a system for "scoring" the products, contextualize this in terms that the market accepts as legitimate, and then shows how the product scores better than the competition (positions it ahead of the competition). When you are effective at this, you can "drive" your competitors, by forcing them to spend time creating competitive features which you already have in order to counter your marketing message.

So for chat programs I'm surprised that Ryver (already at a disadvantage with a crappy name) doesn't try to define some new standard of excellence and then market leadership in that standard, say "we encrypt all of your chats so even we cannot tell what you're talking about." or "pre-built integration api in more languages" Etc. Some features that then can use to say they are better than Slack when using that score. Looking at the Tuft & Needle example the article uses, the billboards get the attention but the positioning is "the competitors rip you off and we don't."

The Ryver positioning is "We are free for things that you have to pay Slack for."

Which might be effective except there is a trail of people with scars where they used some 'free' component of something, and then it was suddenly "not free" or "no longer available" as the team was acqui-hired. So "we are more free" is in fact a big red flag to a lot of people that the company is clueless and has no future. To make the message more robust, it would need to be something like "We are already a profitable company based on these other products we're selling, as a result we can offer you the same thing Slack charges for, for free."

But I doubt they could do that. It is likely that somewhere there is a data scientist who has a spreadsheet that says "x% of our free customers buy y% of our upsold products, if we could get to 'z' active users, and the ratio holds we will be able to continue in business." But anyone who has been in a startup or watched a startup knows there is unlimited demand for 'free' and just boosting the MAU numbers with "tricks" rarely boosts the sales rate. This is because the tricks don't bring in customers who are genuinely hearing the message, it brings in customers who fall for the trick. And those sorts of tricks are the things that make "growth hacking" a pejorative in some places.

Bottom line, I get the whole "if nobody knows you exist, nothing else matters." kind of mindset that will lead to creating awareness, but it only works if you can effectively position your product to take market share from the incumbent. That seems to be missing.

> "we encrypt all of your chats so even we cannot tell what you're talking about."

FWIW, the bit about end to end encryption (including channel names, attachment meta data, etc.) and being created by an established company with other profitable products describes SpiderOak's Semaphor pretty well.

> Ryver (already at a disadvantage with a crappy name)

I only just realized it was supposed to be pronounced "river." I've been pronouncing it "rye-ver" in my head this whole time.

+1 to crappy name.

First and probably last time I ever heard of Ryver. I thought Discord was something like Slack?

Discord is Skype or Teamspeak, plus a bit of Slack.

It's largely targeted at gaming, as a way to put together a chatroom, a group call, and Steam integration fluidly. I could actually see it as a work client, but mostly it's the easiest group-gaming-chat product going.