Microsoft Working On Skype Teams, Its Slack Competitor (mspoweruser.com)

Earlier this year, we heard rumors that Microsoft was interested in purchasing the popular team-chat app Slack for as much as $8 billion. The deal never happened, so naturally, Microsoft has decided to make a Slack-like app. Microsoft-centric news blog MSPowerUser reports: Meet Skype Teams. Skype Teams is going to be Microsoft's take on messaging apps for teams. Skype Teams will include a lot of similar features which you'll find on Slack. For example, Skype Teams will allow you to chat in different groups within a team, also known as "channels". Additionally, users will be able to talk to each other via Direct Messages on Skype Teams. Skype Teams will also feature Threaded Conversations, which is a major feature that's lacking on Slack. With Threaded Conversations, you can simply reply to a message on a channel by clicking on the reply button and anyone else can join the thread whenever they want -- just like Facebook Comments, or Disqus Comments. Microsoft, of course, isn't leaving out some of the core features of Skype on Skype Teams. Similar to Skype itself, teams will be able to make video calls in a channel or privately. To take this even further, the company is adding the ability to schedule online meetings, which can be quite useful for large teams.

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[Anonymous Coward]

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Where is Slack video?

[SuperKendall]

Slack is already pretty established and so I would think Microsoft would have a hard time here...

Except that Slack still doesn't support group (or any) video.

Not that Skype video was all that great, and I fear for the quality of group video there... but something is better than nothing (or at least probably better than Hangouts which some teams I've been on used).

Slack needs a kick in the balls to improve so I'm glad someone has come along to do the kicking.

Re:Where is Slack video?

[rabbit994]

Microsoft goal is to incorporate it into O365 to increase it's value. Something Skype For Business Online doesn't have is persistent chat which is pretty critical feature. If Microsoft could make Slack like replacement for O365, that would mean some of our customers can get rid of their Slack Subscription.

Re:Where is Slack video?

[Anonymous Coward]

https://slack.com/apps/A0F7YS351-google-hangouts

Re:Where is Slack video?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Except that Slack still doesn't support group (or any) video.

Wrong. It's as simple as..

$ /appear lets.video.chat.channel

If anything, Microsoft needs to focus on making a better WYSIWYG editor in Office360. The current one is total crap and causes more issue than it solves.

Re:Where is Slack video?

[Teckla]

Slack is already pretty established and so I would think Microsoft would have a hard time here...

Microsoft won't have a hard time here.

Skype Teams will be part of Skype for Business, and Skype for Business is part of Office 365, and many/most companies buy their employees O365 subscriptions. Thus, Skype Teams will be "free". Companies will choose the "free" option because they're too stupid to realize that sometimes paying for something saves them money in the long run.

Microsoft is just leveraging their Office monopoly to crush a competitor. You know, business as usual.

It's unfortunate, because Slack is really nice, and Skype is a pile of crap.

Re:Where is Slack video?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's unfortunate, because Slack is really nice, and Skype is a pile of crap.

The Slack app for windows runs like complete dog shit.

Re:Where is Slack video?

[SuperKendall]

Yes. we've used Hangouts before, but the integration is really poor and the quality sucks so hard that most times we all had to switch to audio only.

Re:Where is Slack video?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything new UX designers touch gets so bloated... The Slack client feels as if it itself is Google Chrome, and it is the only non-browser I've seen which takes process delegation to the extremes only reserved by that or all the other bloated browsers.

It takes SEVERAL 70-100 MB processes for a single session and in workplaces such as mine there were more than 2 official instances. I had a 4GB (3GB available thanks to 32-bit OS) last year and when loading Skype (100MB), Outlook (120MB), Firefox (1.2GB when using flash), helpdesk telephony (100MB), IRC (30MB), Antivirus, and Slack (300-400 MB) there was little room to open Word docs or PDFs, let alone a secondary browser for troubleshooting. We threw money at the problem and 3 years down the road we'll probably be seeing the hard limits being grazed again when the RAM max gets reached.

Re: Where is Slack video?

[Anonymous Coward]

$ /appear lets.video.chat.channel

Now that IS simple. And here I was looking for a button.

Re:Where is Slack video?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope and you will be surprised. I hate m$ with a passion yet I use skype religiously. My friends use it, my family use it, my co-workers use it, my company use it. Simply I can't ditch Skype even tho I really want to get rid of it...
And m$ knows this so they piggyback the chat app. Just like google did with g+ and youtube comments.
Big corporates are no longer stupid like in the 90's. If they have 1 hit product then they stuff their every new products into it.

Re: Where is Slack video?

[Anonymous Coward]

Silly you. That command should be well known. Everyone uses it. I think it's been the standard command for 15 years. My parents even know that command. (\/00B. /sarcasm

Re:Where is Slack video?

[q4Fry]

That is because the Slack client literally is Google Chrome.

Hell no

[ilsaloving]

No thank you. Between their wanktastic Lync/Skype For Business product, butchering Skype, their barely functional netmeeting, and their original Access product that was so terrible that they gave up and re-used the name for their equally bad database product, Microsoft has a long and cherished history of putting out collaboration software that makes fingerpainting in a bucket filled with phlegm, vomit, and diarrhea, a viable alternative.

I'll stick with Slack, TYVM.

Re:Hell no

[Anonymous Coward]

Over in the real business world that isn't silicon valley start-ups, Lync/S4B is actually really functional. The only sad part is the Skype "skin" that they've plastered all over it -- it really is a separate product with separate features entirely, but a vaguely similar U/I color scheme.

Re:Hell no

[Anonymous Coward]

We've tried a few of these things out at work. No way I'm going to use Spy^WSkype for anything unless I'm attempting to contact NSA directly. But Slack is about the gayest thing I've ever encountered, and this assessment is from a guy who's farted semen bubbles out of his ass. Everything about Slack feels like a goofy collaboration where HR and Marketing tried building a productivity suite, without getting input from anyone who actually has to use it.

Re:Hell no

[DuckDodgers]

I haven't tried it for any large scale teams, but Rocket.chat is a great open source Slack replacement for small teams. It may scale well, I just don't know.

Re:Hell no

[ilsaloving]

It's cute how you just automatically assume that I'm not in the "real business world", just because you were lucky enough to have a trouble-free Lync experience.

We have a client that uses Lync. The number of issues I have seen have basically guaranteed that I will *never ever* use Lync. Between connection drops, not being able to connect at all when people are on different networks, to screensharing not working right... and woe is you if you have to use the Mac version. They've dropped the ball so badly on the Mac version that they haven't even gotten around to renaming it like they did with the Windows version.

So if it's working for you, then all the power to you. I don't know what your environment is like, but having seen how it behaves across a widely distributed team across multiple offices, networks, and countries, it would be faster and less frustrating to record your voice into a WAV file, put that file on a USB drive and physically mail that key to it's destination, than to try to make Lync work flawlessly.

If lync were just some gimmicky consumer-level tool, then I would be less critical of it. But it's marketed as a mission critical business tool. That means I expect it to work, flawlessly, every friggin' time, with no fuss and no excuses. The only thing that should prevent it from working is if our whole backend is up in flames.

Re:Hell no

[Whatchamacallit]

You forgot SharePoint which is horrifically bad...

Re:Hell no

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that Rocket.chat says in its install docs that you have to disable SELinux before installing on CentOS tells me a lot about the quality of the product. Mostly that it's shitty.

Core Features

[MrNickname]

Microsoft, of course, isn't leaving out some of the core features of Skype on Skype Teams.

Like NSA back doors. For your safety, of course.

Laughable

[srgolwskepg]

IRC had this 30 years ago.

"Those who do not understand UNIX are condemned to reinvent it. Poorly." comes to mind, i.e. "Reinventing the square wheel", a well known sign how Microsoft performs business decisions. Does not invent, just makes poor implementations of other existing inventions, then pushed out with windows as a critical non-stoppable update (as Skype was).

Look at the MS smart phone for another example. Does it has 0.1% market share still? Late to market, and poorly implemented.

There's already "Skype for Work", why is a third parallel implementation of a sucky app needed? Fix the first two instead! _Do one thing an do it well_

Re:Laughable

[MightyMartian]

Having used a Windows 10 mobile device (an 8" tablet), all i can say is I now fully understand why Windows smart devices are collecting dust. The interface is, for lack of a better colorful metaphor, just plain fucking awful on small devices. I have a 13.3" Dell ultralight where the touch display is fairly usable as a tablet, but below, say, 10 inches, Windows 10 is by far the worst touch experience I've ever had, and that includes the really low end shitty touch displays. At the moment, my only real plan is to hook it up to my TV and a portable 2tb external drive and a Bluetooth keyboard and use it as a media machine, because, compared to my four year old Nexus 7, it is a supreme steaming pile of shit as a tablet.

Re:Laughable

[ProzacPatient]

I too find it humorous how everyone is going crazy over re-inventing IRC. I guess IRC just isn't "Web 2.0" enough to catch the attention of people who get all hyped up by buzz word marketing. Maybe IRCv3 will catch some attention eventually if they ever get around to getting an official RFC document published.

Re:Laughable

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure that tablet was Win10M? Win10 and Win10M are not the same, and I've never seen a Win10M tablet. I'd love to find one. (It's probably full Win10 in tablet mode if the screen is 10.0" or larger.)

Windows 8.1 was great on a tablet. Windows 10 is incredibly mediocre on the same tablet. (Mine is an Asus TF100 from late 2013, and the problems with Win10 aren't due to slowness.)

What made Win8.1 great on a tablet was the swipe-from-edge UI mechanic. Left was Alt-Tab, right was a task-tray of sorts, and top and bottom were both application menus. Win10 lacks all of that, even in tablet mode. In its place, the swipe-from-edge mechanic does some really strange things. Left is still Alt-Tab, but it doesn't quick-cycle. Right is nothing, and there's no way to get the functionality that was removed. Bottom brings up the entire desktop-style taskbar, which is worse than useless. Top brings out a pull-down widget that is just confusing. Sometimes its in a pseudo title-bar with a close button, other times, it just hangs out at the top of the screen until you swipe again, at which time it shows the application menus as it should have a swipe ago. Basically, don't use Win10 on a tablet. Either get a desktop or get a tablet that runs Win10M. Surface is an exception, since it's basically a laptop anyway.

Windows 10 Mobile is great on a phone, and if you can find one, a tablet as well. (My experience is with a Lumia 950XL. Best. Phone. Ever.) It has none of the stupidity of the Win10 "tablet mode" UI. The back/Windows/search bar is at the bottom of the screen pretty much all of the time. If its not, a bottom-edge swipe will show it. Holding the back button brings up a non-quick-cycle Alt-Tab equivalent, which also serves as a task manager. IMO, Android and iOS don't even come close.

Re:Laughable

[NotInHere]

Wow that site looks like slashdot beta.

Re:Laughable

[UnknownSoldier]

Yup, I guess HipChat isn't "hip" anymore. :-)

Not just IRC but IM too. It has been that way since at least the ICQ days. I laugh at MS's incompetence:

Hey MS, how is that Office Communicator, Lync, and Live Messenger working out for you? Gee, how about getting _one_ messaging app to work properly first.

How many fucking times does IRC and IM's "need" to be re-invented???

Re:Laughable

[Teckla]

IRC had this 30 years ago.

I'm not sure if you're comparing IRC to Slack, or comparing IRC to Slack for Business. I'll assume you're comparing IRC to Slack.

As a very (very) long time IRC user, and before IRC was even invented, a multi-user BBS (with chat) user, I think I "know" online chat fairly well.

Slack offers some killer features IRC just plain lacks, like persistent chat (you can sign off for a few days, sign back in, and see all the messages you missed).

It also has "just works", and beautiful, web, iOS, and Android clients, and lots of really great features like uploading files to a channel that people can download anytime (even if they upload them while you're off-line).

Slack also supports images and plenty of other goodies IRC lacks.

IRC has tons of features, but most of those features aren't as important as the things Slack brings to the table, when it comes to wants and needs of most users. That's why Slack is so successful.

Re:Laughable

[Just Some Guy]

I love IRC. Have you used Slack, though? Think about why the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was popular: it was friendly and non-threatening. Same with Slack, really: even if it functions like IRC, it looks absolutely nothing like your favorite IRC client. Anyone in the company can start using it with basically zero training. It's pretty, brightly colored, approachable, and discoverable. HipChat could have won that space but their UI felt like they wrapped IRC in Java and called it a day.

Slack's made a killing off an IRC-alike that non-technical people genuinely like using. Microsoft seems corporately unable to improve upon the things that made Slack take over businesses by storm, but there's no technological reason they couldn't do it. There's a lot of room in this space for someone willing to put a premium on user experience.

Re: Laughable

[Anonymous Coward]

So friendly and non-threatening that a poster above had to point out that video conferencing is available, and you only have to type "$ /appear lets.video.chat.channel" to do it.

Remind me again which app is friendly and intuitive?

Re:Laughable

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of Alt-tab. The terminate and stay resident behavior from iOS and Android 5+ is a joke. The fallacy that all RAM must be "used" to be *more* efficient leads to having to swipe over and over like the day is long until you find the one task in the rolodex that you need to open (they are just imitating W7 "flip" when Kitkat's task manager was less wasteful by zooming out to see all your activities in 2D). As a result, browsers lack that same "extra" ram that helps us to avoid hard refreshes and thrashing of data plan resources.
When your commute goes underground even preloading tabs is useless when you go back to one of, say, 4 recent tabs just to see it unpredictably fail when you switch to it... the browser tries to reload it instead of getting it from cache, even if it is text-only with javascript forced off.

Re:Laughable

[MrDoh!]

Oh, I thought Slack was just a web UI plastered over IRC.

Re:Laughable

[Dog-Cow]

Code Snippets. I work at a development start-up. Code snippets are my favorite feature of Slack.

Re: Laughable

[Dog-Cow]

If you never use the product, you'll probably form stupid opinions about it. Slack supports plugins. The command given above for video is available via a plugin, which Slack knows about and gives you a link to install when you invoke the given command.

(They aren't plugins in the browser-sense, but I don't know what Slack calls them.)

Re:Laughable

[Anonymous Coward]

IRC is dead is what it is. I decided to go back and revisit my undernet days about a year/18 months ago. I use to troll a lot but I still found a few people I buddied up with. It was a shame what I found. 90% of the rooms I use to go to are no longer stable room and the few that were seemed to be inhabited by a couple of bots. They may have been users, I don't know but I did leave the client up and running for about an hour and in that time there was zero activity in any of the rooms I stayed in. It's kind of like going back and playing EQ from a n00b t00n all these years later... I guess you really can never go home again.

Re:Laughable

[Whatchamacallit]

Slack has been replacing IRC in many environments namely open source projects. It's easier to build a community without the wankers jumping in and being a royal PITA. IRC is great except for the rebel scum. Slack builds communities and it actually does offer IRC integration if IRC is your bag. Pretty sure Slack is mostly IRC under the hood.

Re: Laughable

[Anonymous Coward]

Integrations.

Slack's addons are Integrations, for when they don't want to re-craft the same wheel over and over again.

Meh..

[Anonymous Coward]

Working on it, huh? Let us know when you have something to release that we can look at.

Gone are the days when Microsoft could scare a product market and it's funders with announcements of what they're working on.

Re:Meh..

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe my memory is fuzzy but I don't recall that ever happening. Maybe it's just you and your odd ideas on how the world works that makes you think that anyone who's ever folded with software that may touch on an offering from Microsoft has done so only because big, bad MS was throwing its weight around. The fact is that most software that gets announced never makes it to a real market and always finding some way to blame that dastardly MS seems to be a hobby for a lot of people around here.

To your credit, at least you didn't have to call it Micro$oft.

Slack is lame except for the privacy policy

[Anonymous Coward]

I really don't much care for Slack. A lot of it feels half baked and looks like it was designed 10 years old.

Re:Slack is lame except for the privacy policy

[Sowelu]

Well, it's a pretty good replacement for IRC, which was designed more like 30 years ago, so I'll take it. Having worked at places that coordinated using IRC this is much much better.

Re:Slack is lame except for the privacy policy

[MachineShedFred]

Slack is actually a reasonably useable modern version of IRC without having to load a shit ton of bots and plugins, but where it wins is it's ability to integrate with so many other services, such as ScreenHero, Jenkins, JIRA, etc.

There's probably Slack integrations for most of the other tools you're already using, and it's a few clicks on some web pages rather than hours of installing bots or screwing around with conf files - this is where Slack becomes more than just IRC.

Re: Slack is lame except for the privacy policy

[Anonymous Coward]

Using Slack for corporate communication is a really bad idea though. There are plenty of open source alternatives which are just as good or even better. You really want something that you can deploy on your own servers so that you are in control of your own communication.

I'm working on one if these products, which have been run in production for well over a year. Don't buy into the Slack hype.

So much for Yammer......

[Danathar]

I guess people were right that when MS buys up a company chances are it might be where that company goes to DIE. If any product they acquired should be integrated with Skype to compete with Slack it should be Yammer...but I didn't hear a peep about that..

Re:So much for Yammer......

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft and GE have a similar philosophy. Buy up companies that might compete, and either use it or kill it. Most of the time when they use it, it's not implemented very well.

They are better at killing their competition.

Alternate Title: Microsoft working on next failure

[JoeyRox]

Microsoft is a black hole of corporate profits, where on one end it sucks in billions of dollars of profit from businesses established decades ago and on the other end where nothing comes out except darkness, silence, and failure.

Here Comes The Bloat

[alternative_right]

In the time since Microsoft has taken over Skype, the app has grown in size and appears to have slightly better picture/sound quality.

Now that they have free reign to add all the buzzword features, it will soon grow in size to one petabyte. At that point, Microsoft will make Windows a service within Skype, and run it all on Linux, completely confounding us all as their maniacal laughter rings out in the grottoes and caverns where they worship dark evil gods.

Re: Here Comes The Bloat

[Anonymous Coward]

370MB on my machine. For a fucking messaging program.

Quantity Versus Quality

[alternative_right]

Quantity: we need a new app!

Quality: let us improve the existing app!

I'd rather just improve IRC.

Re:Quantity Versus Quality

[MachineShedFred]

Then get on that. Make an improved IRC that integrates with dozens of other web services with a few clicks. You'll have a product worth $8B!

Re: Quantity Versus Quality

[Anonymous Coward]

I just don't get this need for integration into every product. I mean enough is enough. We all don't need to be connected. If we use dif products that's fine as long as our user base uses the same products.

Hey MS, here's an idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

How 'bout first unfuck Skype, then unfuck OCS/Lync, then build an unfucked bridge between them both, and then, if it's ever working, start building new shit (to fuck up again)...?!?!?

My friends moved to Discord for VoIP

[Kjella]

We still use Skype for DM, but all voice chat now goes over Discord as Skype had a habit of throwing us out of full screen when people joined/left the conversation. We are fairly casual gamers and form groups based on whoever is online, so it's not unusual for someone to join late or leave early. Also you can easily adjust volume per participant, which lets you decide your own mix if someone is being loud or quiet or talking too close/far from the mic. Otherwise the sound quality has been pretty equal and we pretty much never close connection, so it's not like Skype is bad... but it's not the best.

Re:Alternate Title: Microsoft working on next fail

[Anonymous Coward]

This is wonderful. Microsoft generals had a falling out at the lunch table, so now they're committing 100s of people to a dead-end project (and possibly job) while fragmenting the market. These same people won't be employable in 5 years and they still won't have a product.

Software teams - the modern day cannon fodder.

Discord

[Milosch1]

Looks like... Discord.

Yammer

[El_Muerte_TDS]

Wasn't Yammer supposed to be a competitor for Slack? Didn't MS buy them just for that?

Re: Yammer

[Anonymous Coward]

Yammer sold to Microsoft before Slack even existed, so you thought wrong.

Re:Yammer

[rat7307]

My former employer used Yammer integrated into office365, which is why this story comes as a surprise. My current employer uses slack ... well, we have slack but I'm yet to see a conversation on it....

Resurrected Skype

[Anonymous Coward]

If only they hadn't already damaged their Skype user base so thoroughly... what is going on in Redmond? Is it full on MBA run now?

Re:Resurrected Skype

[HornWumpus]

Brahmin MBA.

They don't come any dumber.

A new Linux version of skype would be nice

[zwarte piet]

The current one is years and years old

Re:A new Linux version of skype would be nice

[HornWumpus]

Every new version for Android is _worse_ than the previous.

Keep your old version. I bet it, at least, rings when you get a call.

Skype for Business for Mac?

[Eric Wayte]

It's September, and this product was supposed to be out this Summer...

Re:Skype for Business for Mac?

[lakeland]

The beta is not bad now, I don't notice any missing functionality.

I did have my computer run out of memory once while SfB was running, but I don't know if that was the cause. Otherwise it's worked just fine.

Plenty of "Slack Competitors" already

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

Rocket.Chat and MatterMost come to mind.

Re:Plenty of "Slack Competitors" already

[Anonymous Coward]

Deployed RocketChat where I currently work in place of Slack. Works great and people love it.

I need a new Skype product, hole in head

[Anonymous Coward]

This better be a component of Skype or Skype for Business and not another goddamned app.

I don't need some jackass Slack wannabe. I want Skype for Business to have persistent chats a la Skype so my fucking team will use the S4B we get forced into with the Office365 we bought because it was cheaper than getting fucked by Office + Sharepoint CALs.

Why not invest your fucking money in your existing fucking products? (Fuck!)

HIPAA Compliance

[Anonymous Coward]

Find me something as good as Slack for that is HIPAA compliant and I'll bite.

Re: HIPAA Compliance

[Anonymous Coward]

Two weeks from now: slack vulnerability released that gives root access to devices.

Above poster: but but but its HIPAA compliant guys. My boss told me it was safe.

Glad I can keep using Slack as-is

[HalAtWork]

Damn great, and love that I can use IRC clients since it his just IRC

Things are bad!

[Anonymous Coward]

For a minute my face lightened with hope. I misread it as Slash...

M$ doing a Slash clone and I think it's a positive change. Oops, things are real bad over here...

not interested

[neurojab]

Skype as an IM app has been awful for around 13 years. I'm just too familiar with the spinning skype wheel of death to take this seriously. Most other IM apps (such as Slack or HipChat)... you know... let you chat... and they do it consistently!

please first fix the old skype you broke

[jip_janneke1901]

Everyone I know of, has problems with skype, they images aren't delivered, changed messages, stay in waiting mode... It used to work fine, with V3, and every next version it became more ugly, and now every next it has more bugs...

I like

[Lauriy]

https://fleep.io/chat

Sunrise Again

[TylerJWhit]

Let's just hope they don't buy Slack out and then 'integrate' it into their preexisting software like they do with everything else.