I had never worked on slack until this spring when I joined a company that used it. I don’t get what all the fuss is about. It is just an IM client?

Honestly I preferred Google hangouts because they were better integrated with my email.

Channels as far as I can tell are a mix of group chats or replacements for mass email distribution lists. Nothing special.

Also point 7in this blog is truly insane. The whole point of a dm is I don’t want others to see it.

Yes, it’s just an IM client. Like all in history, what matters is whether it can post images and whether other tools are integrated with it. Another generation will invent a new one and suddenly all app will say “Insert your $nextGenChat key here”.

You can rebuild a chat client, but you can’t make up for popularity. Atlassian tried twice: Once with HipChat, once with Stride, and failed at both - like everything Atlassian does, I know, but you have to admit they are popular in corporates.

Also, it’s so vastly better than MS Teams. But Discord is so vastly better that a lot of companies use it, despite it being aimed at communities.