Silicon Valley hubris. Slack rose quickly and it can fall just as quickly. Being anointed by Silicon Valley doesn't make real success a foregone conclusion.
Seriously, am I missing something?
Hipchat was basically unusable for me. Constant crashes, sloppy integrations, poor search, and a notification system that did more harm than good.
Slack is completely different. Pre built integrations mean I don't have to spend time writing a bot. Starred search means I can find that message from a few months ago with the click of a button. Auto responses mean I can inject some humor into conversations during the work day. Image comments mean I can use slack to gain feedback on wireframes. I could go on but theses are just some of the things that make slack far better than Hipchat.
You know what you need to do, to keep these teams happy? You need to continue have a minimal tool that does the thing that people need -- screen sharing -- and does it well, instead of bludgeoning them with a massive general-purpose communications suite that they don't want, which is essentially what you were just cheering about in your recent email.
I'm sure you'll make more money this way, but you needn't expect the people you're abandoning to be happy.
Maintaining a minimal tool for screen sharing is a nice idea in theory, but I know from experience that we do best when we're able to focus on one thing. And we really want to do a great job of making the integrated communication + collaboration experience as awesome as we can. Based on many conversations with our customers, I know that communication of the sort Slack provides was something that most of our users either needed or already used within Slack. Agreed, that it's most and not all of our users, but we can't really make everyone happy all of the time. I do believe we are making the most people the most happy through this, though.
This is absolutely, 100% the way I feel. I look back to AOL Instant Messenger as a classic example of a product that forgot to do one thing well... and that's why I bet you hadn't thought of AIM for quite some time before reading this.
That said, best of luck to Screenhero going forward. Video chat w/ screen sharing is a crowded space and I'm sure they needed to hedge their bets.
As a software developer, I've put off adding more features into my products for several years now. All because I feared introducing features will make my users think it's "bloated", "violating the Unix philosophy", etc.
But over the years, I've found that most users actually want more features. Most of them want more business value. And that there is value in having features integrated/builtin instead of external.
When I tell people "no, we don't do that, but you can use that other tool in combination with mine" most of them are like "what? I have to use TWO tools"? The "simple tool that does one thing" philosophy mostly appeals to a small number of hardcore nerds, but the rest of the world wants more features, more integration. They don't want theoretic purity.
The fact that I didn't add features and only focused on bug fixes actually hurted the reputation of my software in the grand scheme of things. So yeah, I'll be adding more features from now on.
For example, MSN file transfers have always been broken. They never managed to fix that before MSN's shutdown.
Google Talk file transfers are similarly broken.
No support for Skype.
No support for webcams.
All these issues have been open for years. They only introduce basic bug fixes but not much else.
They also approved of screenhero (I can guess why, but it would be a guess).
They have not approved of slack, hipchat, etc. for client-related communications because they are nervous about having that much liability not under our control. It also makes it difficult for our contracts team that would then be required to explain that client data could now be in either Google Apps or Slack.
I would say that these decisions are going to be SOP for a consultancy of a certain size.
I don't necessary agree with all of these decisions, but I understand and try to empathize with the other parties that would be inconvenienced.
Edit:
I think what happened is that screenhero got a verbal and passionate following within our consultancy that the decision to use screenhero was 'encouraged' into being adopted. We started using it under-the-radar when it was free and when it became paid, the organization realized how many people were using it successfully. It was a ground up effort.
It makes me sad that a tool we found so useful across our organization (which you can see above is incredibly fragmented) is being made inaccessible. I know you're trying to do right by your users and we're just a weird edge case, so no bad feelings. Just wish it were not so :(
I agree with your sentiment at the end of this sentence. I've gone through this as an individual. Sometimes you just need to cut the slack and regroup using a standard toolset for the organization (or group, or sub-group, etc.). Otherwise, org-wide (or group-wide) communication simply becomes too difficult. Or "fragmented", to borrow your diction.
I haven't used Slack or Screenhero, but I hope Screenhero thought through some of these potential "second order" effects on their customers that the acquisition would have before signing on the solid line. Hopefully the founders didn't just have $$$ in their eyes.
That's one of the primary risks of using/adopting a new service/system/product, in my view. Will the people building the product, and actively selling people on the idea, actually defend the product once "acquisition is in the air"...
When can we get Screenhero features in Slack? Any beta testers required? :)
However, in the grand scheme of things, I (and our team) feels that this is the best step forward for everyone involved (including Screenhero users). Slack is on its way towards becoming the de facto communication tool used by teams (both big and small), and an integrated Screenhero + Slack product just makes the most sense for the most people.
I would love to learn more about why your team can't use Slack, and what we can do to mitigate the issues you've outlined and others that you may not have outlined yet. Please feel free to add me to Screenhero (j at slack-corp.com) and let's have a deeper conversation about this, if you're open to it.