Have you used WhatsApp lately? Did you notice the new WhatsApp-for-web option? Oh boy, it is super awesome! I feel that its the long awaited missing piece of the puzzle.
And, what really struck me hard about WhatsApp-for-web is that this new capability is going to make life super difficult for Slack! Here is my reasoning!
One of the biggest issues with introducing new apps to a community is adoption. Its just so hard to get people to adopt new things. Don’t shake your head, We people in the tech community are no different. Try getting people in a high tech engineering team to move from SVN to GIT. Yeah thats an exercise in futility.
This was the exact issue faced when we tried to introduce an asynchronous messaging system into the office. We already had Google Apps so hangouts was omnipresent but there were never any discussions going on over hangouts. It was merely a way to ask someone a question or as we mostly did, send links to one another. People still worked around email threads where someone always forgot to use reply all.
So, we decided to consider using a chat room app. We considered hall.com, slack.com, and even good old IRC. Among these slack looked the most promising! And, then came the deal breaker – Is $6/person/month really worth a chat room app? And, the next thing we knew was this initiative has vaporized and back to square one!
Yesterday’s announcement has re-opened this topic! We already had a WhatsApp group but the key issue is it was mobile only and no web version. It was painful to carry on a conversation beyond a few messages. So fruitfully long discussions never flourished. We realised quickly using a real keyboard was crucial to carry on a discussion. The hunt was still on until last night when whatsapp themselves solved the problem.
With 600+ million users, virtually everyone including your grandma is on WhatsApp now and hence ‘adoption’ is never a question. With $1/year pricing it is super affordable. And, now with the web version it just seals the deal!
What do you think? Post your comments on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8929740)
All opinions expressed in this blog post are personal and is not endorsed by OrangeScape / KiSSFLOW.
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