Here are the messaging apps that Slack crushed on the way to his IPO

Slack was late in the world of messaging applications in the workplace. When he arrived in 2013, he did not seem to be offering anything new – chat rooms and direct messaging were already available in many applications. However, its co-founder, Stewart Butterfield, presented it as a powerful alternative to email and, over time, as a command center for the workplace that would integrate all the other software used by a company in a single interface . The slackening is spreading like wildfire and is worth at least $ 7 billion today, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The company now plans to make its stock available for purchase: the company filed its initial public offer aujourd & # 39; hui. It is expected that it will become one of the most valuable technology companies to go public since Snapchat.

He was not so far without carnage. Slack has beaten tons of messaging apps while he was heading to the NYSE, cleverly incorporating fun features (unlimited reactions to personalized emoji messages) alongside just the ones needed (retention features records for large companies).

An application that it has not necessarily beaten yet and which is probably its main rival: the Microsoft Teams. Microsoft bundled teams with Office 365 subscriptions, which becomes useful if you always use Word, Excel, and PowerPoint instead of Google alternatives. By making Teams free for Office 365 users, Microsoft has essentially made the service a simple default setting for many, which could pose a challenge for Slack. The number of users in the teams is also hidden, although we know that 329,000 organizations were on the service last September.

Here are some of the rival applications that have come – and in some cases have disappeared – since Slack arrived.

Internet Relay Chat

The grandfather of the Internet chat is even older than AOL Instant Messenger. It's an open protocol, so it's still alive and vibrant, but it just did not reach the scale and popularity of Slack, maybe because it was a little rough.

Skype

In the early 2010s, Skype was a common choice for workplaces to send quick messages when needed. However, as a versatile messaging app, Skype has never really made any adjustments to its business users and was sorely lacking integrations with other services. For more than ten years, he has not even been able to record calls. I remember very well that Skype has allowed you to make international calls for a few dollars, but it has never been great for remote work. His animated emojis were also super nerdy.

HipChat

HipChat was literally eaten by Slack, who acquired it from Atlbadian in July of last year. Slack watched very similar to HipChat when it was launched – but HipChat was slow to add third-party integrations, and it lacked the free version that made Slack a hit with small startups. Atlbadian attempted to launch a real competitor to Slack, Stride, in 2017, but abandoned it after getting little traction.

Google Hangouts Chat

Google Hangouts Chat remains a cult favorite thanks to its unlimited messages, easy access to other Google services and more visible threads. However, as a lightweight chat client, Google Hangouts Chat never had to compete with a business-grade solution like Slack. (This had to be the work of Google Hangouts Meet, which is a different thing that exists … exists.)

The workplace of Facebook

Facebook has launched a version of its social network for the office in 2016. However, two scandals related to the confidentiality of personal data have had adverse consequences on Workplace, which is slow to gain momentum due to the lack of privacy. concerns about how Facebook uses our data.