It is, but slack seemed to go for a more corporate angle (along with Microsoft Teams), and there's not really anything for more casual users. On the other end of the scale we have Skype but that's more for personal chatting and their group conversation support is very week.

They have found a pretty good niche with a lot of users. Just like how reddit did with subreddits. There are a lot of "smallish" communities out there, based around games, likes, twitch/youtube channels, etc, and they all need some place to hang out when they're not in saig game/channel.

I think right now what matters most is who comes out winner with the biggest community, monitezation can come later.

It is bizzare to me that Google's hangouts product didn't end up filling this niche. I cannot understand why they followed FB lead instead of working to dismantle the attraction of closed messaging systems. Topical group chat seems like it would just naturally fall out of circles, hangouts, and wave.

Discord is targeting the gaming community, though it can also be used as an alternative to Slack, which is, for example, what the devs behind Yarn (https://yarnpkg.com) use it for: https://discordapp.com/invite/yarnpkg

One can't organize a Slack server for free (at least without funny hacks via github), so that won't happen.

> Slack's plan.

Destroy IRC

Wow, someone has no freaking sense of humor.

Getting flagged for a Danger 5 quote? Someone just lost all their nerd cred.