Slack Growing Faster Than Any Software Ever

Slack Technologies is growing faster than any software company ever, and it is changing the way we communicate in the workplace. Slack Technologies launched in August 2013, but before February of last year, few had ever heard of it. Slack emerged, seemingly overnight, and is now being used in every business in tech. Slack software, a “kind of sophisticated group chat with dozens of other software services that your company may already use, has spread like wildfire in the corporate world,” according to The Verge.

Currently, more than 30,000 teams use the software, a number that has doubled in the past six weeks. Although Slack offers a free version, 73,000 people are paying customers, either individually or through their businesses. The paid version offers integration of the service with others, and it you can be pinged whenever someone mentions your company on social media or opens a support ticket in ZenDesk. Slack’s projected annual revenue has been growing each month by $1 million.

Some, including its own employees, are puzzled by its meteoric rise to fame. The fastest-growing enterprise software in history has been likened to a glorified chat room. But, perhaps it’s because of its humble beginnings—its rise from the ashes of a failed video game.

The Inquisitr reports that the company’s founder, Stewart Butterfield, started the service as a “by-product of an earlier gaming startup, Glitch, as a way for geographically dispersed team members to communicate with each other.”

However, critics agree that Slack is innovating workplace communication. The proliferation of messaging services means that your work communications are fragmented across an ever-increasing number of places: email, Skype, Google apps and Hangouts, iMessage, and SMS, to name some of the most popular. Slack consolidates it all, in one place, with powerful search.

Part of Slack’s success is that it encourages engagement, which is shown to be “off the charts, with users spending nearly 10 hours logged-in to the app every day.” Further, Slack is so popular that some companies offer it as “an employment perk alongside on-site messages and bottomless bacon-tray Fridays in their job listings,” according to a profile of the company in Wired.

The benefit of using Slack is that it can reduce the time spent on other productivity-related tasks. Butterfield says, “Give people that kind of view into their organization, and you see them sending fewer emails, hosting fewer stand-up meetings and organizing fewer conference calls.” The company aspires to host the entire history of corporate communications.

The next step for Slack is message replies, so that when you respond to someone in a Slack room, your conversations will be organized by conversation. And, after receiving many requests, to be able to “favorite” a message. And, Slack will soon let you comment on a message by using any emjoi you want. Slack Technologies is revolutionizing workplace communication, and it’s no wonder why it’s growing faster than any software company ever.

[Image via Canadian Business]