Microsoft Teams Overtakes Slack With 13 Million Daily Users (theverge.com) 89
Microsoft is finally revealing exactly how many people are using its Slack competitor Microsoft Teams. From a report: The software maker says that more than 13 million people are using Microsoft Teams daily, along with more than 19 million weekly active users. This is the first time Microsoft has revealed an active user count, and the company's previous update was that 500,000 organizations were using the service back in March. This figure is above the more than 10 million people who use Slack daily. Slack revealed its 10 million daily active user count earlier this year, and it used the same figure back in April in a financial filing. Team communication service Slack, which has been around for much longer, was valued at north of $20 billion when it went public last month.
Further reading: Microsoft Might Crush Slack Like Facebook Crushed Snapchat.
Further reading: Microsoft Might Crush Slack Like Facebook Crushed Snapchat.
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well it's not like a large number of companies are paying for office 365, and get teams bundled in for free. Whereas slack charges money.
No, that can't be it.. it makes no sense to use something that's either 'free' or already included in your subscription vs using a totally separate product that you may, or may not have to pay for.
Netscape is also the dominate browser for a reason after all.
The thing about free (Score:3)
well it's not like a large number of companies are paying for office 365, and get teams bundled in for free.
Lots of things that are "free" are not worth using.
As you can see from a lot of responses here, a lot of people are Office365 subscribers yet do not use Teams. One previous company I did some contract work for was also like that, all of our communications were over Slack even though in theory they could use Teams "for free".
That illuminates a problem with using Teams actually, It may well be free for
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Lots of things that are "free" are not worth using.
That doesn't stop profit crazed companies from using them.
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That illuminates a problem with using Teams actually, It may well be free for people in your company, but if they have to deal with anyone outside the company suddenly you are talking actual money, And so most companies end up using Slack because so many external people use Slack.
I'd wager Microsoft's longer term goal involves federation capabilities that allows collaboration between any Office365 subscribers.
It'll probably get to the point that it will wind up being a selection criteria for contractors, consultancies and business partners that they have an Office365 subscription so that they can federate with whoever is hiring them. It'll wind up being a little like now, where you expect that whoever you hire has Microsoft Office and can just use whatever documents you send them n
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We have a paid Slack and Teams. It's definitely a consideration to drop slack since we have teams. But currently it's still inadequate. Our largest problem with teams is it's super inefficient with space. Wayyyyyy too much white space and no embedded videos etc.
Doesn't matter (Score:3)
Doesn't matter. The "investors" have already bought the overpriced stock. Slack is cancer anyway, the sooner MS drives this entire market segment into the ground, the better it is for everybody.
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because "investors" absolutely cannot sell now that it's a publicly traded corporation.
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They can't sell it back to the company, unless the company is willing to buy.
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WTF is wrong with you? Slack is excellent for what t does. Far better than teams.
WhHat, are you some sort of idiot short seller?
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Who? (Score:2)
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Where I work everyone uses Discord.
You work at Twitch?
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Wow! (Score:2)
Just hours ago they were about to overtake Slack, now they did! [slashdot.org]
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But for a lot of businesses, like our own, we are being encouraged to migrate to Teams from Skype for Business. That's likely the cause for increase usage. We are not a tech company, hardly use group chats, just a company using Office 365.
For simple IM, Teams seems like overkill. Plus basing the desktop client around a web browser ensures for slow and bloated performance compared to an actual native client.
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Plus basing the desktop client around a web browser ensures for slow and bloated performance compared to an actual native client.
I'm not sure it matters, though. If the actual native client would have ran at a blazing 100 times the required speed, while the slow and bloated browser-based version chugs along at only twice the required speed... nobody is going to care, because the requirements were met in either case.
In the native-client scenario, of course, supporting both a web version and a native version (or more likely, several native versions, if they want to support MacOS/X and Linux and Windows) means increasing development an
Teams? (Score:2)
Never heard of it.
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Never heard of it.
Congratulations on not running Office 365.
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Never heard of it.
Congratulations on not running Office 365.
Oh. OH. Ok. No, we don't run the Office suite at all at my current job. And I really miss it. Just kidding!
Is this what used to be called Office Communicator?
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Is this what used to be called Office Communicator?
Nope! They renamed Office Communicator to Lync for a few years and now it is Skype for Business [office.com] which is not compatible with Skype [skype.com]
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Skype for Business which is not compatible with Skype
This makes me laugh even harder than when we found out that OneDrive for Business was not only incompatible with OneDrive it was actually SharePoint Online.
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Skype for Business which is not compatible with Skype
This makes me laugh even harder than when we found out that OneDrive for Business was not only incompatible with OneDrive it was actually SharePoint Online.
Wow. I can't think of anything that might be worse than SharePoint. Except SharePoint Online.
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"Skype for Business which is not compatible with Skype"
Damn, they make their product names more and more specific.
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Valued (Score:2)
Now it is valued $3B less than last month. I give them 5 years.
Describe “active” (Score:3)
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Same. Work for a big hardware company, we all got automagically added to Teams, as part of the general MS business stack. No one has sent a single message in it. We all use Slack. I'm sure they're pumping the numbers with these kinds of situations.
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This was their secret for decades.
For a long time you couldn't even remove Skype for Business and the earlier Microsoft Lync from your computer with doing Registry edits as an Administrator.
Microsoft Usage Claims (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember when they claimed 2/3rds of Windows 10 users used Edge - https://www.thurrott.com/windo... [thurrott.com]
Re:Microsoft Usage Claims (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember when they claimed 2/3rds of Windows 10 users used Edge - https://www.thurrott.com/windo... [thurrott.com]
Well, you do usually need an initial browser to download Chrome or Firefox...
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Re:Microsoft Usage Claims (Score:5, Interesting)
They're probably not lying, though it's definitely worth noting that at my work, we're using Teams to replace both Slack/Mattermost, and Lync/Skype For Business.
In a great number of cases, it's likely that people are jumping from Microsoft's old, terrible product to their newer, better one. Lync or whatever you want to call it was a nightmare, and Teams is a step up. I don't know that Teams is better than Slack or Mattermost, but it'll do.
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I don't know that Teams is better than Slack or Mattermost, but it'll do.
Exactly why Microsoft Teams will take over from Slack. Big corps are full of users that need the basics and not much more.
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Remember when they claimed 2/3rds of Windows 10 users used Edge - https://www.thurrott.com/windo... [thurrott.com]
Yeah except as part of a standard corporate package for Office 365, complete integration with Sharepoint services, Onenote, and Outlook, along with them progressively destroying Skype, I'm inclined to believe them.
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along with them progressively destroying Skype
To be fair, Skype for Business is Skype in name only. It isn't Skype at all.
At least with consumer Skype they're listening. They did bring back the non-Metro Windows client after customer backlash.
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I'm talking about Skype for Business. Every update seems to make the software worse. Since our backend servers have been upgraded we end up with more connectivity problems than ever before. I now suffer a myriad of issues where I'm able to join and hear calls but unable to share desktops because they decoupled these two functions and seemingly broke one of them.
Skype for Business's one benefit that gives it some serious staying power is the ability to federate between corporations which means in my phoneboo
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Coming up with new and surprising ways to count users is how Microsoft kept itself propped up at the top of the "innovation" chart for decades and decades.
Microsoft does not innovate technology, but they do innovate business methods, as Netcraft confirms.
Misleading (Score:3)
I'm sure that bundling Teams into the Office365 installer and forcing it to load on startup without the ability to turn it off until you sign into the app has nothing to do with why there are suddenly 13 million users.
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Errr Teams does not run on startup by default. You actually have to open it first time to do so.
Also there aren't "suddenly" 13 million users. This has been a process of feature creep while slowly attempting to shit on Skype.
Expect 13.1million users assuming the rest of the world does absolutely nothing by the end of the year since we've been told by IT that Skype is getting disabled in December and to jump on the latest bandwagon now.
And managers *will* jump on this bandwagon, just when some MS rep shows s
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It does run on startup on my >40.000 people "company".
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also automatically installs itself
microsoft is installing the software themselves and then calling each machine they installed the software on a user
misleading is an understatement
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My manager recently added all of us to a Team for this. We haven't used it. I'm certain no one will unless forced.
My (large) org uses Teams...It's not a Slack rival (Score:2)
They are different comms models.
TV didn't kill books
IM didn't kill email
slack didn't kill email
Userbase is irrelevant.
I classify them on their goals and asynchronicity
Email - completely async - good archival - good for COOPERATION (can digest periodically and not get interrupted)
BB model (eg redit) - somewhat async - somewhat archival
Teams - (sits here) part BB part chat - doesn't do anything well, but does everything only slightly terribly.
Chat (eg Slack) - mostly realtime stream of consciousness (+ addons
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Teams - (sits here) part BB part chat - doesn't do anything well, but does everything only slightly terribly. Chat (eg Slack) - mostly realtime stream of consciousness (+ addons) for realtime COLLABORATION (need to monitor continuously to get value, but get faster answers).
So you clearly don't know what Teams does!
Teams is several modes of collaboration and communication rolled into one: Skype/IM, Skype/VoIP, Yammer/Chat, Yammer/Docs, Multi-channel (Slack/Chat) via Outlook Groups/Yammer Groups, BB via add-ons, 100% archival, 100% online-content embeddable (a la SharePoint, Office Online).
The only thing Teams is NOT is completely async e-mail.
Neither "Teams" story listed the submitter (Score:2)
I'm wondering if he has an @microsoft.com email address...
No, they send it by mail bundled with $$$$ (Score:2)
So... (Score:2)
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MS didn't leverage the Monopoly to attack discord, the did it to attack slack.
I'm sure Discord will be attacked by MS soon.
Slack should sue for monopoly abuse (Score:2)
Since MS forced it on many, many business 'partners' specifically to leverage there install base against Slack.
Leverage office monopoly... (Score:2)
Kill off Slack
Profit!
Unless the EU or the USA decide to go anti-trust on Microsoft... again.
Microsoft began as a bunch of evil bastards. Unsurprisingly it still is.
How many iterations of this app did MSFT produce? (Score:2)
Let's see how many iterations of chat applications Microsoft produced and discontinued over the years. Some of these are completely separate apps, e.g. Skype for Business wasn't even Skype.
Microsoft Communicator
Microsoft Lync
Skype for Business
Windows Messenger
Microsoft Office Communicator
Exchange Instant Messaging
And this doesn't even include MSN Messenger, a.k.a. Windows Live Messenger.
It is to a great part beause of the downgrade (Score:2)
Quite many organisations use office 365, and have used the fairly good Skype for business for phone conferences. It is actually pretty good for that.
But starting at some point Microsoft prompts to "Upgrade" to teams for any such installation whenever anyone with admin rights logs in.
The "Upgrade" removes the fairly goof Skype for business and dongrades the organization to teams. The teams is a LOT worse for phone conferences and no organization that I know actually uses the chat.
So it is just switching use