It funny that, everywhere in my circle, people are going "damn, we need to find an alternative now".

It really says something about a company that people see their name getting close as a sign they should stop using a product.

Is this specifically a problem with Salesforce? I think people would have this reaction with almost any company that purchases Slack. It represents a shift in focus from being a messaging company to being a piece of a bigger portfolio. That shift alone is much more important than whatever the other pieces in the portfolio happen to be.

If it had been Microsoft buying them I would have been like, well, they've done ok with GitHub so far. And I begrudgingly feel that way as someone who reviles their flagship OS and office products.

How do you feel about Heroku then? Salesforce purchased them about 8 years ago.

I've never used it. But I did use a CRM product a while ago that got purchased by SalesForce, and it was a disaster.

I doubt they care. What I suspect Salesforce realised long ago was that they don't need to appeal to their end-users, they just need to appeal to the managers in charge of signing contracts. In that regard, Slack is a fantastic fit.

Sadly I suspect the people saying "we need to find a Slack alternative" today are the same ones that have been saying "Slack sucks" this whole time, to little effect.

Come to zulip! We switched our company to zulip wholesale after covid forced work from home onto everyone, and wow, talk about a force multiplier.

zulip is one of those rare pieces of software that really gives me joy to use.

feature-by-feature on paper, it doesn't necessarily stand out compared to the crowded landscape. It's not a new distributed protocol or anything unique.

but you really can tell it's well crafted, with love as slack used to say. And if you don't believe me, you can inspect the source code yourself!

How does it compare with Matrix?

It says much more about the people saying that than anything.

Salesforce is a reasonably good operating entity, I don't see any reason for Slackers to flinch.

But consider that 'Slack' was a movement - literally the name, the original premise, there was a corporate/hip aspect to it. Which now it's not, just the opposite, because it's 'Salesforce'.

So at least in part - 'it's not cool now'.

Agreed, the reactions I'm seeing here feel more more emotional than rational. (Which is totally legitimate. Emotions are a dominant factor in product "love".) If the product were to get worse, there are any number of effectively-equivalent (if not as lovable) substitutes.

It's 'legit' to feel a certain way, the opposite to make decisions about business and productivity that way.

The real trick is, to figure out all those things we do that we think are based on utility, but are not.

The Saab ad comparing their car to the Jets the make appeals to our 'every little boy wants to be a pilot' fantasy.

But the Ford ads that tell us how 'strong' our vehicle is going to be ... even though many of us will never, ever use them for this purpose.

Like the guy with 1000 different tools in his shed - he buys them 'because they are useful'. But really, it's the 'emotion/novelty' of utility, not actual utility.

At least 1/2 of the tech industry is driven by this, it's hilarious. We HNers, so neurotically passionate about whatever it happens to be ... are the most guilty.

Of course a lot comes out of purely speculative and creative use of technology, it's just that we should be better at discerning.

Slack, if it's bad, is probably because it's a noisy channel, not because it's Salesforce.

> It's 'legit' to feel a certain way, the opposite to make decisions about business and productivity that way.

That seems very reasonable from a purely rational POV, and I know we all like to think of ourselves as rational creatures. (It reminds me of this: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/rational-2)

TBH it would be the same in case Microsoft would buy them out. Its really hard to get out of the shadow of failed products.

Products that people started hating with passion.

This seemed to be the response in every conversation I've had with people about Slack being acquired. No matter who acquired Slack, it just seemed like negative value to the existing customers who signed on for a ubiquitous messaging platform.

I guess it's the 21st century equivalent to being purchased by Computer Associates -- which was known as the place where good software goes to die.

This is what I am excited for.

I have wanted our company to move away from Slack to something w better thread discussions.

We have long resisted Salesforce because of pricing, say, compared to Pipedrive for CRM.

I am interested to see what happens with pricing and many orgs locked data.

I know we do not pay for the high uptime plan.

Most are quick to overreact but in reality, the switching costs are non-trivial.

Heroku's consistent user experience post-Salesforce-aquisition gives me a little hope. It would be nice to hear Salesforce offer some assurances of product independence, though.

I agree Heroku has in this way been a model acquisition, but in this instance I can't see Salesforce being able to make those assurances – they likely see Slack as a key interface for their products and services, and integrating the two to support that vision will require oversight.

I can still see a world where Slack is a tool that continues to operate and serve its customers, similar to Heroku post-acquisition, but Salesforce augments their services with Slack tie-ins (and vice-versa).

Short: there's a middle ground I think they can strike.

> The combination will create the operating system for the new way to work, uniquely enabling companies to grow and succeed in the all-digital world.

I'm just complaining, but... Why do people write things like this? I see it in my own employer and our marketing material, too. It's confusing bullshit that is devoid of any meaning.

It's not really devoid of meaning if you understand the space. Roughly, Salesforce is about processes and Slack is about communication. Think about handling something like responding to a RFP. Salesforce is good at breaking that down into several pieces of work and assigning them to different people, but the communication and UI sucks. Slack makes communicating across a team easy but lacks the tools to build in formal processes. Combining those will, at least theoretically, end up as a better product.

The text targets key partners, investors and other financial people who needs to be convinced that this is indeed The Best Deal Possible for everyone involved.

Its for managers. It works.

Wow. I had to use a Salesforce tool once, and I can confidently say that the only worse things out there are various online tax return forms and Workday.

Great for Matrix though. I love Slack, and think this is one of the worst possible ends for it, from the users POV. I hope it was a profitable exit for the founders and employees though.

I am also surprised, as I'd think the COVID pandemic would have boosted its use. Though, after thinking about it I've seen MS Teams everywhere outside of Open Source and startups. A post-mortem of why they sold, and the events leading to it, would be an awesome thing for one of the founders to do.

"We will remain an independent & open platform. We want to be a multiplier on the value of your entire software investment."

"We'll still be Slack. I'll still be the CEO."

Source: https://twitter.com/stewart/status/1333901107978936320

"SlackForce" here we come.

The clash of meaning in those two words says it all.