I guess, yes, there is a benefit to Slack in the sense that they would have more signups overall. But what I was really going for was that it wouldn't benefit them on a large scale, meaning that people that do stuff like what he does would have to move to Slack, which is most likely not going to happen without large incentive. I doubt that he has enough "clout" to drive a noticeable number of people to Slack over a long period of time. The only way that this would change is if Slack marketed itself differently.

> Third, by my reading, the author is implying that this setup would be useful for many others who want to offer a good chat service for online learning, paid support, or a multitude of other reasons I can't think up. It sounds like a great idea to me.

Yes, but Slack isn't really built for some of these purposes and it shows in the way that people see each other within the app. I.e. I see all of my coworkers within Slack, which is not what you want with tech support. I can see it being useful for a student-student interaction, but it would have to be augmented to allow specific student-teacher collabs because all people (at least in the way I understand) are on the same "level" and can see everyone and all the channels, which might be counter-productive to learning because it becomes like AIMing your classmates at that point.

> Finally: you'll probably get more out of the internet by being more concerned about content than tone.

Thanks dude! When I use the Internet next time I will be sure to think about this comment. :-)