Slack vs. themselves vs. Clubhouse

It’s been a buzzy week for Slack.

On Wednesday, the company dropped Slack Connect Direct Messages, giving anyone the ability to DM anybody else on Slack, outside of company borders.

Engineer Manager Derek Hollis noted in their Product Hunt launch:

“This is new technology that relegates email to the fringes of business communication.”

Some users were excited about the potential, while others on Twitter showed concern that DMs could be misused by bad actors. Slack leadership was quick to respond making some immediate changes, like removing the ability to customize the invitation that’s sent when starting a DM with someone new.

We look forward to seeing more updates to Slack Connect. In the meantime, Slack’s CEO Stewart Butterfield talked about Slack’s future plans for audio in a recent Clubhouse with Josh Constine. Stewart shared plans for new features including ephemeral video (i.e. Stories) and audio messages for quick voice notes — something similar to what users of Yac have been doing for a while now.

He also revealed that Slack would soon have a feature akin to Clubhouse where users can drop into rooms for conversations without needing to schedule a meeting or initial call. We’re interested in how this can match up with the DM feature — can Slack take a piece of corporate Clubhouse?

Have any more questions for the engineering team on Slack Connect while you wait for audio and Stories? Ask the makers on their launch page.

Speaking of Clubhouse, we're on every Friday at 11am PDT for our Weekly Roundup. Today we’re talking no-code with Ben Tossell, CEO of Makerpad, off the heels of its acquisition by Zapier.

If you missed last’s week’s Clubhouse, we’ll let you slide. Check out our recap. Loom cofounder Shahed Khan joined us to talk about Loom’s growth. The video messaging tool has grown its user from 3,000 to over 10,000 users post-Product Hunt launch and Shahed’s had plenty of fascinating insights to share.

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