Slack is reportedly adding new features to its platform that will introduce social media-like stories and push-to-talk audio by the end of the calendar year.
In an interview with The Verge, Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield detailed some of the new features the platform wants to bring to its users to help them better acclimate to remote work and cut down on the length and quantity of video calls and inefficient communication.
While Instagram stories are designed to share your every day life experiences with friends and family, Slack’s stories aren’t really about videos of your pets, favorite food, or vacations. Slack sees the video snippets as a way for remote workers to check in and provide status updates, for example, or to set the daily agenda for a team.
“It’s very much like Instagram stories, or snapchat stories, but in Slack,” is how Slack’s CEO, Stewart Butterfield, explained the new stories video feature in an interview with The Verge this week. “There was a joke going around that soon all software will have it, and I thought that was funny at the time. But especially during the pandemic, and the difference in how we as a company are approaching work, means it’s an idea that’s time has come.”
Instead of a daily 15-minute meeting, the video element can be prerecorded and viewable as a story, much like we see on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. The short videos would appear alongside channels and allow users to check in with one another without wasting time on a video call.
The Verge notes that videoconferencing has never been a core feature of Slack, and that’s been highlighted recently as videoconferencing giant Zoom comes into the mainstream and other platforms like Microsoft Teams and Google Meet boost their video features.
Slack has had to adjust, including partnering with Amazon to switch to Chime for voice and video calling to bring much-needed conferencing improvements to the platform.
According to The Verge, the company is also planning an instant audio, push-to-talk feature that will allow for spontaneous calls with coworkers within channels.
“The idea is we already have channels… starting a call or scheduling a call can feel pretty heavy whereas when we were all in the office leaning over or shouting out to someone a couple of desks away with a question feels very lightweight, so we’re trying to recreate that,” says Butterfield.
This always-available audio sounds like it will work like a Discord call, where there are always available voice channels that people can hop in and out of and see co-workers online and chatting. “The idea is that the call isn’t something that starts and stops, it’s something you enter and leave and the call is always there permanently associated with the channel,” explains Butterfield.
The feature could be useful for smaller teams that may need to quickly huddle and discuss details of a project without the hassle of scheduling and setting up a video call.
Both features should arrive by the end of the year, Butterfield told the website
If you enjoyed this article and want to receive more valuable industry content like this, click here to sign up for our digital newsletters!
Leave a Reply