Slack laid out its plan to stay ahead of its workplace chat competitors today with new products for its 2.4 million daily active users, up from 2 million in December. The big changes will center around message enhancements, greater Usability, and voice and video chat. You’ll soon be able to switch directly into a voice or video chat inside of Slack.
Slack also plans to make a full what-you-see-is-what-you-get text formatting tool for messages. And for big companies, Slack is improving its billing system so large teams can quickly get started.
Outside its own product, Slack is building out an ecosystem of third-party apps, integrations, and bots. While others might be able to copy its features, they won’t be able to copy its community, drawn to the network effect of the market leader.
In December, Slack announced it had 2 million daily active users and 570,000 paid seats. It leveraged that momentum to get its A-list investors to compile an $80 million Slack Fund for investing in its developer ecosystem.
Beyond the roadmap, Slack spent the conference highlighting teams like NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, Charity:Water, and medical researchers who are using Slack to stay in touch.
Today’s event was led by April Underwood, who Slack promoted to VP of Product in January. She opened the day saying she was just going to tell everyone what Slack plans to build rather than being secretive. “We like to be really open and transparent because we want your feedback” says explained.
If Slack’s strategy pans out, it could pull away from the pack and solidify itself as the next staple of the enterprise. Because everyone needs to communicate, Slack could become ubiquitous enough to serve as a social hub and identity layer for other enterprise apps.
We’ll have more soon as the press conference at San Francisco’s Public Works continues.
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