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Comment by random3 | Hacker News Reader

Email is being replaced by Slack. Maybe RSS / Atom weren't good enough, but what they're being replaced with isn't better either. It's not just about RSS. It's about moving off open standards to closed properties. It's also more effort to integrate different sources as each one has a different API.

Indeed, nor the world nor freedom of information will die here, but that doesn't mean it's a step forward.

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> Email is being replaced by Slack.

Is it? I've never once used Slack. It's not on any of my devices. But email is and it works great.

Likely, there are people that have never used email either.

Well, there are no people who have used Slack who have never used email, because you need email to sign up for Slack.

While I obviously still use email, the company I work for doesn't use it. We only use slack (and various other communication tools like Github and Monday).

We use our personal emails to set up the accounts. It's an interesting experiment that seems to be working fine so far. Not sure how it will work as we continue to grow (only about 40 employees right now.)

> We use our personal emails to set up the accounts.

I would object to that. Personal and business don't mix.

I'm very likely a minority but I only hear about Slack when I'm browsing HN.

In my case from Bloomberg when the stock takes a hit.

> Email is being replaced by Slack

I don't know about this one. For example, I'm not going to invite every one of our clients to our Slack as a single-channel guest, nor am I going to be joining their Slack workspaces (if any of them even have one - most of them are in the Microsoft ecosystem). I'm also not going to do that with every vendor I'm in contact with, and so on — email is much more convenient. That being said, most of our internal communication within the company is on Slack, but that's a small slice of what emails are used for.

I'm not suggesting that it's replacing every use-case for email. But likely 90+% of internal communication within companies that use it. I've experienced this both in my previous large corp (20K+) job as well as my startup (<10).

The main difference is that Slack lacks a unique global id, so you can't add a user in Figma based on it's Slack ID unless you have a Figma / Slack integration. Email still rules for these use-cases - which is exactly why open-standards (such as email, RSS, etc.) are better than proprietary APIs that repeat the same use-cases over and over.

I'd say Slack replaces IRC chats, and, along the way, they transformed a niche tool into one more easily adopted by businesses. Instant messaging tools always cannibalize email conversations.

Microsoft are leveraging their monopoly in the office world to force teams onto the world, rather than things like Slack, Trello, etc.

>Microsoft are leveraging their monopoly in the office world to force teams onto the world

I'm by no means a MS fanboy but I find your comment odd...

How are they doing this exactly? I'm genuinely curious where you're coming from...

Teams is bundled into O365 but you can use Slack, Mattermost or whatever other product you want.

Lagre companies are paying for O365 because you have to have office.

Then why should they spend another $100-300/year/user for a tool that on paper does what things like Slack does.

I'd expect zoom to go the same way in the next 12-18 months too.

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