The Zoomification of Slack

The Zoomification of Slack

If you work in an office, chances are you spend a lot of time on Slack. The workplace messaging platform has become an even more important tool in the work-from-home era. And it has been rolling out new stuff that's supposed to replicate the office atmosphere, online. Last year Slack introduced Huddles—a spontaneous audio room you can join right in Slack—and it quickly became became the fastest-adopted feature in Slack's history. Now the company is adding video to Huddles, inching toward becoming a full-fledged video conferencing service.

This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED writers Lauren Goode and Gilad Edelman chat about the Zoomification of Slack, whether we really need another video chat app, and what this all means for how we communicate online.

Show Notes

Read Lauren’s story about how the future of Slack looks a lot like Zoom. Read Mat Honan’s 2014 WIRED profile of Slack founder Stewart Butterfield. Here’s Clive Thompson’s piece about how it’s time for “maximum viable product.”

Recommendations

Gilad recommends getting a chef’s pan. Lauren recommends using the Calendar chatbot in Slack.

Gilad Edelman can be found on Twitter @GiladEdelman. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jaksot(426)

How to Quit Your Tech Job

How to Quit Your Tech Job

Jessica Powell was the top communications executive at Google when she found herself Googling, in no uncertain search terms, how to quit her job at Google. She tried approximately 837 different tactic...

8 Maalis 201953min

Alex Kipman’s Holographic Tendencies

Alex Kipman’s Holographic Tendencies

Microsoft just unveiled a brand new product, but it really doesn’t want to hype it. That’s according to Alex Kipman, technical fellow at Microsoft who is credited with inventing Kinect and HoloLens. K...

1 Maalis 201952min

You’ve Got to Know When to Fold ‘Em

You’ve Got to Know When to Fold ‘Em

At its flagship phone event this week in San Francisco, Samsung announced not one but four different versions of the new Galaxy S10: A phone with a 6.1-inch display, a plus-sized model, a “less expens...

23 Helmi 201942min

The Treacherous Allure of OG Usernames

The Treacherous Allure of OG Usernames

Product designer and internet native Chris Messina was lucky enough to snag the username @chris on Instagram back when Instagram was known as Burbn, and, like all of his early usernames, it became a p...

15 Helmi 201959min

The App Smackdown

The App Smackdown

Move fast and break app store rules: That very well may have been Facebook’s motto for awhile now, only, we’re just learning about it this week. After TechCrunch reported that Facebook was sidesteppin...

1 Helmi 201949min

Amazon Delivery Bots Are Here

Amazon Delivery Bots Are Here

Kids are particularly terrible for robots. At least, that’s what researchers in Japan discovered when they let a robot roam around a shopping center in Osaka in 2015. A group of kids antagonized the r...

25 Tammi 201942min

Nike’s Truly Smart Sneakers

Nike’s Truly Smart Sneakers

Self-lacing sneakers have been the dream since Marty McFly first rocked Nike MAGs in 1989, but most attempts at turning shoe leather into smart sneakers have been expensive, produced in small batches,...

19 Tammi 201946min

The Best of CES

The Best of CES

We came. We saw. We touched a lot of gadgets. This week was the annual CES, one of the world’s largest consumer electronics show, and WIRED’s team was on the ground covering all of the top tech trends...

12 Tammi 201952min