Slack trivia: 70 amazing facts about the software that the investors love!

Slack is an American cloud-based set of proprietary team collaboration software tools and online services and as it seems the investors love it!

So do you want to find out some more trivia and facts about it?

1. Slack is an American cloud-based set of proprietary team collaboration software tools and online services
2. It is developed by Slack Technologies
3. Slack began as an internal tool for Butterfield’s company Tiny Speck during the development of Glitch, a defunct online game
4. “Slack” is an acronym for “Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge”
5. Slack launched in August 2013
6. In January 2015, Slack announced the acquisition of Screenhero, a specialist in voice, video, and screen sharing
7. In March 2015, Slack announced it had been hacked over four days in February 2015
8. And that some user data were compromised
9. The data included email addresses, usernames, hashed passwords, and in some cases, phone numbers and Skype IDs users had associated with their accounts
10. Slack added two-factor authentication to their service in response to the attacks
11. Slack was previously compatible with non-proprietary Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and XMPP messaging protocols
12. But the company closed the corresponding gateways on May 2018
13. In August 2018, Slack bought the intellectual property assets of Atlassian’s two enterprise communications tools, HipChat and Stride
14. Slack offers many IRC-like features
15. Including persistent chat rooms (channels) organized by topic, private groups, and direct messaging
16. Content, including files, conversations, and people, is all searchable within Slack
17. Users can add emoji buttons to their messages
18. On which other users can then click to express their reactions to messages
19. Slack’s free plan allows only the 10,000 most recent messages to be viewed and searched
20. Slack teams allow communities, groups, or teams to join a “workspace” via a specific URL or invitation sent by a team admin or owner
21. Although Slack was developed for organizational communication, it has been adopted as a community platform
22. Replacing message boards or social media such as Facebook or LinkedIn groups
23. Public channels allow team members to communicate without the use of email or group SMS (texting)
24. Public channels are open to everyone in the workspace
25. Private channels allow for private conversation between smaller sub-groups
26. These private channels can be used to organize large teams
27. Direct messages allow users to send private messages to specific users rather than a group of people
28. Direct messages can include up to nine people
29. Once started, a direct message group can be converted into a private channel
30. Slack integrates with many third-party services and also supports community-built integrations
31. Major integrations include services such as Google Drive, Trello, Dropbox, Box, Heroku, IBM Bluemix, Crashlytics, GitHub, Runscope, Zendesk,[27][28] and Zapier
32. In December 2015, Slack launched their software application (“app”) directory
33. Consisting of over 150 integrations that users can install
34. In March 2018, Slack announced a partnership with financial and human capital management firm Workday
35. This integration allows Workday customers to access Workday features directly from the Slack interface
36. Slack provides an application programming interface (API) for users to create applications and automate processes
37. Such as sending automatic notifications based on human input, sending alerts on specified conditions, and automatically creating internal support tickets
38. Slack’s API has been noted for its compatibility with many types of applications, frameworks, and services
39. Slack provides mobile apps for iOS and Android in addition to their Web browser client and desktop clients for macOS, Windows, and Linux (beta)
40. Slack is also available for the Apple Watch, allowing users to send direct messages, see mentions, and make simple replies
41. It was featured on the home screen of the Apple Watch in a 2015 promotional video
42. Slack has been made to run on a Super Nintendo Entertainment System via Satellaview
43. 8,000 customers signed up for the service within 24 hours of its launch in August 2013
44. In February 2015, the company wrote that around 10,000 new daily active users were signing up each week
45. And had more than 135,000 paying customers spread across 60,000 teams
46. By April 2015, those numbers had grown to 200,000 paid subscribers
47. And a total of 750,000 daily active users
48. Late in 2015, Slack passed more than a million daily active users
49. As of May 2018, Slack had over 8 million daily users, 3 million of whom had paid accounts
50. At the time of its S-1 filing for IPO, dated April 26, 2019, Slack reported more than 10 million daily active users from more than 600,000 organizations
51. Located in more than 150 countries
52. The Financial Times wrote in March 2015 that Slack was the first business technology to have crossed from business into personal use since Microsoft Office and the BlackBerry
53. In 2017 a writer at New York magazine described it as “a compulsion, a distraction[, a] burden … another utility we both rely on and resent”
54. Slack was recognized as the best startup of the year 2017 at the 10th Crunchies Awards, organized by TechCrunch
55. The digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has cautioned that “Slack stores and is able to read all of your communications, as well as identifying information for everyone in your workspace”
56. While commending the company for “follow[ing] several best practices in standing up for users” concerning government data requests
57. Such as requiring a warrant for content stored on its server
58. And awarding it four out of five stars in its 2017 “Who has your back” report
59. The EFF also criticized Slack for “a broad set of exceptions” to its promise to notify users of such requests
60. And for other privacy shortcomings
61. Slack has been criticized by users because the data are stored exclusively on cloud servers under Slack control
62. This is found to be a particular issue for users with large teams
63. Who experienced issues with connectivity within the app
64. Access to archived messages, and the number of users for a given “workspace”
65. Slack has additionally been criticized for a recent change to their privacy policy
66. Allowing access to all public and private channels by workspace administrators
67. Without the need of consent from any parties using the app
68. According to the policy, Slack users would not be notified when their information is being accessed
69. Other notable issues include being criticized as addictive, an inhibitor to productivity
70. And showing personal information such as email to other users by default