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Microsoft Advertising IT

Slack's Response to New Microsoft Teams Ad? 'Ok Boomer' (msn.com) 260

An anonymous reader quotes Business Insider: Slack tweeted a video on Thursday comparing a Slack ad and a Microsoft ad, showing the similarities between them and implying the Microsoft ad copied Slack's concept. The video was captioned "ok boomer," a phrase that has turned into a meme for millennials and Gen Z to voice their gripes with the baby boomer generation... Slack is leaning into its status as the young, hip startup by calling out its older, more established competition: Microsoft...

On Tuesday, Microsoft announced that Teams hit 20 million daily users, while Slack most recently announced just 12 million users. Slack's stock took a dive after the announcement. Although it has fewer users, Slack points to its user engagement, saying that users enjoy using the app. Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield said that Microsoft sees the company as an "existential threat."

The Verge notes that "a lot of businesses will opt for Teams simply because it's bundled as part of Office 365."

And ZDNet reports that a partner at one of Slack's early investors even tweeted an image showing Google Trends' top five rising queries for Microsoft Teams. #1 is "how to stop Microsoft teams," and also include "how to turn off Microsoft teams," "how to get rid of Microsoft teams", and "Microsoft teams keeps reinstalling."
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Slack's Response to New Microsoft Teams Ad? 'Ok Boomer'

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  • by marktoml ( 48712 ) * <marktoml@hotmail.com> on Saturday November 23, 2019 @03:34PM (#59446524) Homepage Journal

    Nope.

    (no comment on MS Teams, don't have to use that)

    • Teams seems ok. Calls and sharing works a bit better than in Skype, but it's a heavier app with all sorts of crap bolted on. It's getting rolled out here now, though I don't have to use it for anything yet so the experience is pretty limited admittedly.

      But anyway, Slack is gonna get rolled so hard, it's won't even be funny. So they should probably have their fun while they still can.

  • Chat apps (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Empiric ( 675968 ) on Saturday November 23, 2019 @03:44PM (#59446536)

    Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield said that Microsoft sees the company as an "existential threat."

    Yes, like Yahoo Instant Messenger was an existential threat to Microsoft. I remember... wow, was that a close call for Microsoft's survival.

  • "Ok Slack" (Score:5, Funny)

    by david.emery ( 127135 ) on Saturday November 23, 2019 @03:47PM (#59446546)

    I don't like Microsoft, but this boomer just removed Slack from his machines.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      I don't like Microsoft, but this boomer just removed Slack from his machines.

      OK Boomer.

      • by mschuyler ( 197441 ) on Saturday November 23, 2019 @04:25PM (#59446670) Homepage Journal

        "OK Boomer" is shorthand for "Would you like fries with that?"

        • by sexconker ( 1179573 ) on Saturday November 23, 2019 @10:44PM (#59447520)

          "OK boomer" is the rallying cry of aging millennials with no life prospects.

      • by msauve ( 701917 )
        "OK Boomer."

        Millenials agree: Boomers are OK!
    • Slack doesn't understand their customer base if they think there aren't "boomers" using it at work.

      When someone says "ok boomer", I hear "I'm mental midgit". It's such a stupid phrase and completely backfires on the one saying it.

      • by msauve ( 701917 )
        "Slack doesn't understand their customer base if they think there aren't "boomers" using it at work."

        Slack gets the vast majority of their revenue from subscription plans, mostly corporate.

        Slack doesn't understand their revenue source, if they think Boomers don't hold the purse-strings for most of it. I say "revenue source" because they're unprofitable, so they'd best be careful dissing a deep-pocket, long-existent competitor like MS.

        (oh, also, Teams sucks, so there's always that)
    • Slack can pound sand with it's new broken wysiwyg editor. So mad.
  • by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Saturday November 23, 2019 @03:48PM (#59446552)

    Slack's Response to New Microsoft Teams Ad? 'Ok Boomer'

    Kk Zoomer

    (O.K. -- Typing These Two Letters Will Scare Your Young Co-Workers [nytimes.com])

    • Slack's Response to New Microsoft Teams Ad? 'Ok Boomer'

      Kk Zoomer

      (O.K. -- Typing These Two Letters Will Scare Your Young Co-Workers [nytimes.com])

      Next, Slack and Microsoft will start slapping each other and yelling "Your app is so fat ..." jokes.

      [ Meanwhile, the rest of us will continue to use email and get our shit done. ]

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      OK boomer. Some anonymous person wrote to the NYT complaining about the damn kids and you think it's real.

    • Nice. “OK” isn’t just neutral but it works in most languages. Kk? It is used here in the Netherlands by young people, but as an adjective that’s shorthand for “kanker” I.e. “cancer”. The sentiment of that adjective in English is something close to (but more offensive than) “fucking”, e.g. “die kk vent” = “that fucking guy”.

      Let’s hope this crap doesn’t catch on.
      • by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Saturday November 23, 2019 @05:02PM (#59446772)

        You might want to read this article O.K. -- Typing These Two Letters Will Scare Your Young Co-Workers [nytimes.com]

        I have been informed by my Millennial and Gen Z co-workers that the new thing I’m supposed to type is “kk.” To write “O.K.” or “K,” they tell me, is to be passive-aggressive or imply that I would like the recipient to drop dead. To which I am tempted to respond, “Believe me, if I want you to drop dead you’ll know.”

        • by Calydor ( 739835 )

          So being professional when addressing people in your profession is being passive-aggressive. Good grief.

          I can't help but feel that we have achieved such a wonderful and peaceful world that people desperately grasp at ANYTHING they can use to get a rush of adrenaline from being 'attacked'.

        • You might want to read this article O.K. -- Typing These Two Letters Will Scare Your Young Co-Workers [nytimes.com]

          I have been informed by my Millennial and Gen Z co-workers that the new thing I’m supposed to type is “kk.” To write “O.K.” or “K,” they tell me, is to be passive-aggressive or imply that I would like the recipient to drop dead. To which I am tempted to respond, “Believe me, if I want you to drop dead you’ll know.”

          Mkay. I'm offended unless people use Mkay.

      • [ Sorry for other reply, didn't scroll up far enough to see you were already in my thread ... ]
    • Personally, I prefer the classic "okay." My coworkers know I refuse to use social media so they don't bother telling me when I've inadvertently violated some digital social convention.

  • Neat! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Saturday November 23, 2019 @03:51PM (#59446562)
    OK, Slack is for children. Good to know. We won't use it in our company, that's for sure.
    • The great part is "OK, boomer" is supposed to be arrogantly dismissive but the fact is Microsoft is fucking crushing Slack. Microsoft can just respond "OK,...who are you again?" since Slack is just a weed getting run over by a tank.
      • by Calydor ( 739835 )

        Arrogantly dismissive? All I hear is, "Well, you're a poopyhead!" It's the retort of someone who has NO actual point to make nor the intellectual capacity to express one if they did.

  • Ok Boner? (Score:5, Informative)

    by slackisforstupidmoro ( 6405970 ) on Saturday November 23, 2019 @03:52PM (#59446566)
    Slack is just a blatent copy of irc but made a lot worse through single company centralisation and adding tracking (surveilence economy)... you'd be pretty stupid to use either. Just setup your own company irc node.
    • Slack is Skype which is the umpteenth generation of chat apps going back to at least Unix talk/ytalk. None of them is special or has any unique features. Slack is certainly not an existential threat to Microsoft. My company uses slack. At best it sometimes isn't annoying. On a good day. It often drops notifications, has a primitive interface from 2005, minimal configuration options, doesn't allow blocking or let users remove themselves from spam groups, or turn off the spammy slackbot. They have very
      • Slack's 15 minutes (Score:4, Insightful)

        by L_R_Shaw ( 5544684 ) on Saturday November 23, 2019 @04:46PM (#59446736)

        > Chat apps come. Chat apps go. This is slack's 15 minutes.

        That really is the story. Microsoft creating a iteration of workplace chat that integrates with their existing ecosystem and huge numbers of Microsoft customers switching to it is the least shocking tech news there could possibly be.

        What is the story is how the hell Slack got its absurd valuation for a product that can be and is being easily duplicated and improved upon.

        * There are no vital Slack patents
        * There is no unique Slack technology or IP
        * And there is almost zero cost to switch to another chat platform

        The one time I used Slack a few years ago its was nice to not have to mess with people installing native software but I ended up having to deal with people wasting time on the useless - IMO - plugins that really did nothing to improve productivity. It was clear the only real productivity was coming from the basic chat.

        Perhaps larger companies or different team structures benefit from the Slack features beyond basic chat but I have never seen the real world measurable benefits.

        I don't think Slack as a company is worthless but it almost certainly has a lot more downside in its valuation.

        • > Chat apps come. Chat apps go. This is slack's 15 minutes.

          Chat Apps come, Chat Apps go,

          And some Apps peter out you know

          But Slack is there through thick or thin,

          Peter out, or Peter in.

    • by Amouth ( 879122 )

      /\ this /\

      All i ever saw in slack was an IRC server with video chat and screen sharing... really sad how far we haven't come.. kinda like /. just a BBS without the dial-in #!

      • Seriously, though, just how many bells and whistles *CAN* you bolt on to a text-based chat system? Pretty much everything that's available can be distilled down to "A pretty front-end to IRC." It's one of those things that's a solved problem that doesn't need another solution. Really, the only advantage to Slack is the way it integrates with everything under the sun. Want to control your CI/CD stack, file and resolve tickets, do your expense reports, get and resolve your PagerDuty alerts, and share your

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      So how do employees search the archive of your company IRC node? How about file distribution, are you going to send individual copies to every user in a channel? If they want that file or not? Or do they have to request the person send it to them individually?

      Slack also integrates with other apps, like Outlook for calendars or Salesforce. How do you do that in IRC?

      When you think everyone else is an idiot chances are you didn't understand why they did something.

      • search:
        * control-f
        * install apache lucene
        * install apache solr
        * ...


        file distribution:
        * /dcc
        * fileserver (every company has one... share-drive)
        * dropbox


        integrations:
        * IRC bot(s)
        * https://duckduckgo.com/?q=irc+... [duckduckgo.com]


        As for "when you think everyone else is an idiot...", and i'm not saying that you have inferred that everyone here is an idiot, but humour me and follow the comments here... the "everyone" seems to be saying that slack is [for the most part] stupid! maybe e
  • *Laughs in Netflix and IRC*

  • Slack is a product which any reasonable tech company can duplicate with a small team in a matter of weeks. If you are a company like Microsoft which owns Skype, or Google that own Hangout, or Facebook who own Facebook messenger, copying Slack is pretty much a matter of reskining a tool you already have.

    I don't understand why anyone thought Slack could actually survive without being crushed by the competition who already have a massive user base.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 23, 2019 @04:00PM (#59446594)

    "OK boomer" has got to be in the top 3 retarded memes ever. It always says more about the person using it than their target, you might as well go around with a badge saying "I'm an idiot durr!".

    • by DavenH ( 1065780 ) on Saturday November 23, 2019 @04:06PM (#59446620)
      It's definitely adolescent. Dismissal isn't an argument. Remember when as teens we'd say "whatever" to everything?
      • Remember when as teens we'd say "whatever" to everything?

        No.
        I was respectful to older people, when they deserved it, and avoided (or ignored, if couldn't avoid) those who didn't deserve my respect.

      • I remember when television made that up and people bought it. It played into the "adult victim" culture of the 90s.
      • I'm a boomer, and I enjoy saying it to people just to be ironic. Is irony still a thing? Probably not.

        OK me.
      • by 0100010001010011 ( 652467 ) on Saturday November 23, 2019 @05:22PM (#59446818)

        isn't an argument.

        Not all people deserve an argument. As a millennial that turned 37 this year it's supposed to be a dismissal to the same bad advice we've been getting from boomers since we were young.

        There is a large demographic that just thinks if you put on a suit and have a nice handshake you can just walk in and firmly shake the boss's hand and tada, job. They grew up when everything was in abundance. And despite that not how the world or resumes work anymore (and haven't since I've been in the job market), that style of advice still persists.

        "Ok Boomer" gets me back on my day a lot faster than trying to have an argument with someone that doesn't care to listen and still thinks millenials are 15.

        • Good thing I don't trust anyone over thirty. I might have to take your moaning and whining about the unfairness of it all more seriously. I just turned 34. By the time I turned 14 I suspected that most information floating out there was trash, by the time I turned 24 I believed it, and now that I'm 34 I can prove it. Nonsense is a fact of nature. Whose fault is it for believing the nonsense?
          • Whose fault is it for believing the nonsense?

            Ours, which is why it's easier to just say Ok Boomer instead of continuing to listen to their nonsense.

            • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

              by Rockoon ( 1252108 )

              Ours, which is why it's easier to just say Ok Boomer instead of continuing to listen to their nonsense.

              'Cept you are pushing nonsense yourself.

              The reason the old folks should be listened to is because its never as simple as your young minds think. In the case of the boomers, they fucking invented the environmentalism and other stuff your generation always harps on about as if you yourselves invented it. They learned about the consequences of over-simplification directly through that.

              They wanted to save the trees, and thus plastic became the choice material. Your generation wants to ban plastic, the stuf

          • Good thing I don't trust anyone over thirty.

            I just turned 34

            It sounds like you don't trust yourself.

            By the time I turned 14 I suspected that most information floating out there was trash, by the time I turned 24 I believed it, and now that I'm 34 I can prove it.

            Only mathematics can be proved.

            Nonsense is a fact of nature.

            This quote is nonsense.

        • I wouldn't say the Boomers had it all in abundance. My friend's dad was disabled due to Polio. My dad was drafted during Vietnam. My mom was one of the first women in her workplace. A "good job" followed by a pat on the butt and a comment about her legs was a daily occurrence. One of their friends (who is an African American) recalls segregated schools. My mom recalls restrictions on birth control for "married couples only." Abortion was illegal. Both my parents tell of regular drills at school for a

      • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday November 23, 2019 @05:40PM (#59446868)
        For 20+ years Gen X have been trying to convince Boomers to stop voting against their own interests and get behind things like Universal Healthcare, meaningfully addressing climate change, ending the endless wars (drug and traditional ones) and a whole host of other issues that would improve everybody's lives except a handful of billionaires. The Millennials joined in trying to get the Boomers to do these things maybe 10 years ago.

        All we got for it was "Sure kid, whatever, better things aren't possible [twitter.com], now get back to work.

        OK boomer is us saying "enough, we give up. You outnumber us and will for 20 years. There's nothing we can do. We'll just have to wait you out and pick up the pieces. You win. We lose".

        Thing is, what I like about "OK Boomer" is how much it pisses boomers off. Because it says to them, "we don't respect you". And man, the Boomers want respect. They don't want to actually _do_ anything to _earn_ respect (like the aforementioned items). They feel like they earned it because they gave birth to us (who the fuck asked you to) and because they're old.

        Anyway, if you don't like being dismissed and you want respect, go do something to earn it. And if you won't do that, don't be surprised when we blow you off and go back to waiting for you to die so we can fix the mess you left us.
        • I'm curious how open borders in a first world welfare state is a thing that would be in literally any American's interests. In fact that's the crux of the problem, for anyone who isn't in the bottom 40% of the population voting for any Democrat is literally voting against your own best interests, and this is doubly true if you are in the top 20%.

          I would also vote for a sane universal care, I'm all for getting climate change under control and ending wars. You've sold me. Only... there's a whole lot of stupid

          • by Mashiki ( 184564 )

            We are in a no-win situation, we really need some sort of parliamentary system.

            As someone who lives in a country(Canada) where a parliamentary system already exists, no you don't. You think things are bad now? What do you think it would be like to have the same government forever, and said government gets worse and worse every year. And the only actual change that happens is when the highly dense cities finally start feeling the bite that smaller cities and rural folk were feeling 20 years before that. Parliamentary systems are much closer to soft-dictatorships then anything else.

        • Not all Gen X, nor all Boomers, nor all Millennials are the same. Your diatribe conflating entire generations as if they don't contain unique individuals isn't consistent with reality. For example, I'm part of Gen X and many of the politicians I disagree with are Boomers who some famous Millennials love to support.

    • Consider the group that came up with it. It makes sense. It's just a more stupid version of the boomers who came up with the "never trust anyone over 30!" nonsense, forgetting one day soon that would be them. I only just got used to the idea that I have to come down hard on millennials and fire them quickly if they don't get their shit together. I can't even remember how many useless millennials I've shit canned. Now I have to deal with people even more rude and stupid? Try that ok boomer shit when you
    • "OK boomer" has got to be in the top 3 retarded memes ever. It always says more about the person using it than their target, you might as well go around with a badge saying "I'm an idiot durr!".

      It's something B1FF would say.

  • pff. Millenials. Am-I right?
  • by Sumguy2436 ( 6186944 ) on Saturday November 23, 2019 @04:10PM (#59446634)

    Here you have this hyper-politically-correct generation that screams various perceived -isms at every opportunity. Yet the biggest meme they can come up with is one of pure discrimination, discrimination on the sole basis of something people have no influence over: their age.

    It's so full of delicious hypocrisy. For that alone it makes me chuckle.

    • Between "ok, boomer" and "woke", I've had about enough of the goddamn internet these days.
    • That's the extreme left for you, they're fucking abhorrent. and as someone who is generally left leaning, these people shit me to no end.

    • by 0100010001010011 ( 652467 ) on Saturday November 23, 2019 @05:24PM (#59446828)

      "Boomer" isn't an age. It's an attitude. "OK Boomer" is a perfectly valid dismissal of GenX or even some millenials as well.

      It's the attitude that you just need your bootstraps and nothing else. And if you can't get a job in industry you must have a bad handshake or didn't insist on talking directly to the boss.

      It's a dismissal of those out of touch with the reality of the majority.

    • Here's a crazy idea (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday November 23, 2019 @05:33PM (#59446854)
      Gen X and the Millennials aren't hyper PC, you've just been told that by right wing media in order to foster a sense of them attacking you so that you'll vote against their interests (and yours, for that matter).

      Just as an example, We graduate about 2000 gender studies majors a year nation wide. That's .02% of total graduates. Throw in the ethnic studies students and you can get that to a whooping .04% PC degrees. Meaning 99.06% of degree holders have nothing to do with PC.

      Face it, you've been had.
      • I'm living right next to where half the students for a huge university pass by every day. There's nothing but vegan soyboygirldiverses and impotent hipsters on neon fixies with no gears or even brakes pushing so hard they nearly prolapse.

        So I know them. Have to talk to them every day. Fact is, that they are extremely insecure and full of triggers that have their entire house of cards of a shadow of self-confidence come down.
        And the extroverts of them (usually easily visually recognized) WILL lash out when t

    • Here you have this hyper-politically-correct generation that screams various perceived -isms at every opportunity. Yet the biggest meme they can come up with is one of pure discrimination, discrimination on the sole basis of something people have no influence over: their age.

      It's so full of delicious hypocrisy. For that alone it makes me chuckle.

      You do realize "OK boomer" is an ironic response to the constant barrage of "millenials are lazy" and "millenials are spending all their money on avocado toasts" nonsense coming from out of touch people, right?

      No, you probably don't, otherwise you wouldn't have posted that. But that's OK, boomer.

    • I agree, it IS amusing. The group of people most likely to criticize others for being weak and overly sensitive also happen to be the ones that have a complete fucking meltdown when they hear it.

      "Why are you being so mean to meeeee?? I can't even use an emoji to indicate how sad I am because I don't know how they work or even acknowledge their existence! Wah!"

  • by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Saturday November 23, 2019 @04:12PM (#59446644)

    ... with the exact same music illustrating how Slack ripped off IRC.

    • by Amouth ( 879122 )

      +1 my thoughts exactly!

      just a reminder of why i'm not rich - i wouldn't believe people pay real money for this stuff..

    • Wouldn't it be closer to Jabber? IIRC IRC didn't support images or other meta-data.

    • Using the IRC protocol in their software is hardly ripping it off. Is Google's Chrome ripping off HTTP?
  • I'll see you at your delisting in 3 years.
  • You can tart it up in pretty colors, but all this was figured out over a decade ago.

    Slack is somehow losing hundreds of millions of dollars against decent revenue, providing an IM app.  It boggles the mind.
  • This meme too will blow over in an instant. Gen Z'ers have the attention span of a goldfish.
  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday November 23, 2019 @04:59PM (#59446764)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I'm gen-X and while it doesn't offend me I would look at anyone using it unironically (meaning intending only the inherent irony) like they are a moron. I do try to use it a lot with no meaningful context or in especially cringey circumstances so I can wear it out a little faster for the youngs because fuck them.
  • by shellster_dude ( 1261444 ) on Saturday November 23, 2019 @05:22PM (#59446820)
    "Ok Boomer" is funny when it makes fun of a patently absurd belief that it held by someone suffering from rank nostalgia and rose color glasses. As a retort because you don't have a good argument, it is pathetic and weak. For example, suppose you have a product that has been around much longer than the competition, and your product is getting clobbered by said competition, maybe instead of making snide pathetic attacks, you should shut the fuck up and build a better product.
    • It's the equivalent of telling someone they are 'mansplaining'. It instantly identifies you as an idiot, unless you are doing it mockingly to mock people who seriously use 'mansplaining' outside of a _very_ limited context. I find it especially hilarious when some dude is tagged on twitter as 'mansplaining' for simply offering his entirely reasonable opinion on something.
  • OK? Really? Aren't zhey woke enough to realize that OK means white power [adl.org]? Slack must be racist and hateful, and thus anyone who uses them must also be racist and hateful, and deserve getting punched in the face repeatedly.

    Damn slack Nazis...

  • user engagement is the real figure here

    how many of those teams users are office drones that dont use teams, but its been installed by the it department for everyone.

Hackers are just a migratory lifeform with a tropism for computers.

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