Email has been the major communication vehicle through my career. The work team I joined a year ago uses Slack. Our employer's official vehicle for "chat" is Teams. My team's high school interns prefer Discord. Some friends use FB Messenger. Others use text.
I have no preference. In the end, all of them can send messages point-to-point or broadcast. You can share documents in all of them. (I haven't tried it in Discord but I assume you can.) I can communicate and get work done in any other them.
Just a few observations.
1. Trying to figure out who communicated where can become challenging.
2. Better integration with "productivity" apps can make 1 less challenging. For instance, a co-worker requests a new API by a certain date. If it's done in Slack, for example, it would help to have it appear in my task list without my having to add it manually. Likewise, a friend sends a message in FB messenger about a cookout: having it go to my calendar would be helpful rather than my remembering a week later which app she sent the message in so I can put it on the calendar manually.
3. My employer is notorious for abusing email. We have message threads with 10-20 people and dozens of replies. Often I would love a way to opt out: a real opt out, not a reply with a request to Reply All minus me. Not having this feature is a deal breaker for email going forward IMO.
In my opinion the real power of slack is the historical search. I can't tell you how many times in my career i've asked a coworker to foward me some email that has critical information in it. On slack, that information is available to me, even if I joined months after that information was distributed. It reduces the amount of information that is imprisioned.
That's one of the ways Slack is more chatroom-like. Good point.
Email would be a bit clunkier as someone from the email thread would have to forward it to you or reply all with you in it. It's an alternative, but not as slick as Slack.
I agree with you. The one thing about just muting a thread is that if that is client side, the rest of the thread may still be assuming you are up to date. I think we need a better way to handle group email/text that isn't "shout at the world".
Email has been the major communication vehicle through my career. The work team I joined a year ago uses Slack. Our employer's official vehicle for "chat" is Teams. My team's high school interns prefer Discord. Some friends use FB Messenger. Others use text.
I have no preference. In the end, all of them can send messages point-to-point or broadcast. You can share documents in all of them. (I haven't tried it in Discord but I assume you can.) I can communicate and get work done in any other them.
Just a few observations.
1. Trying to figure out who communicated where can become challenging.
2. Better integration with "productivity" apps can make 1 less challenging. For instance, a co-worker requests a new API by a certain date. If it's done in Slack, for example, it would help to have it appear in my task list without my having to add it manually. Likewise, a friend sends a message in FB messenger about a cookout: having it go to my calendar would be helpful rather than my remembering a week later which app she sent the message in so I can put it on the calendar manually.
3. My employer is notorious for abusing email. We have message threads with 10-20 people and dozens of replies. Often I would love a way to opt out: a real opt out, not a reply with a request to Reply All minus me. Not having this feature is a deal breaker for email going forward IMO.