Slack Clips is Slack’s answer to Instagram stories

In a great innovative stroke of genius like Silicon Valley has never seen before, Soft announcement this week that it will become the latest in a long line of tech companies to deploy a Stories-style feature.

At the annual Dreamforce conference hosted by its parent company, Salesforce, Slack announced that the feature, which will be known as Loose clips-will allow users to share video, audio, and screen recordings in channels and direct messages. The announcement comes almost exactly one year after Slack confirmed last fall that it was experimenting with an “asynchronous video” feature that would allow users more flexibility in how and when to join business meetings. ..

“Imagine the daily stand-up meeting that takes place from 9 am to 9:15 am every morning. What if you could save your update at 8:53 am and watch the others at 10:51 am when it’s most convenient for you? »Slack wrote in October 2020 blog post preview the feature. “It gives people the information and updates they need, with a certain flexibility that is generally lacking in the current configuration. “

Slack is, of course, not the first company to experiment with a Stories feature designed after Instagram’s content flow disappeared in recent months. The decoration of the sacred rooms of the museum to try to make ‘stories’ happen are Reddit (which is currently testing a new short video stream on its iOS app), Twitter (who recently canned “Flesets”, his version of Stories, after less than a year) and TIC Tac (which is rumored to be experimenting with a disappearing Stories characteristic of its own).

But rather than being an outlet for users to experiment with wacky face filters, as many other Instagram story features have been, the iteration of Slack was seen strictly as a way to share. work-related updates. It should be noted that the feature appears to be explicitly designed to work in the home work settings that employees increasingly find themselves in during the pandemic. Sharing updates on Slack Clips would make it easier for coworkers to share updates across time zones, for example, by eliminating the dreaded process of finding a meeting time that works for disparate team members.

Slack is rolling out Slack Clips now, and all paid teams should be able to access the feature someday. this autumn.