Video? That's so not what we care about, says Slack, as it signs video deal with AWS

Slack has reported strong growth for the first quarter of FY 2021 and declined to measure its performance by comparing adoption rates with Microsoft Teams. The San Francisco-based company's revenues jumped 50 per cent year-on-year to $201.7m largely thanks to the working from home surge. The company now has more than 122,000 …

[Robert Grant]

> including its audio and video call service, Chime, to power the back-end of Slack calls

Probably smart. Teams' best feature is one-click video calling that doesn't have terrible video quality. Slack's video is...not great.

[DemeterLast]

As an Uglo-American, I protest this new fascination with video calls.

If it can't be handled over email with 7-bit ASCII, I don't want to be involved.

[Falmari]

DemeterLast

I know it was a joke but I really like the video calls as we are in lockdown its the closest you can get to really taking to someone.

I hate email's chat even the phone I can't really engage converse with people unless I can see them in person I really need to see their body language. But video not a bad substitute for face to face conversation in the real world.

[RM Myers]

I hate to be pedantic during the pandemic,

but are periods in short supply now, along with toilet paper and liquid soap?

[AgentOrange]

FY2021, really?

re: "Slack has posted strong growth for the first quarter of FY 2021 and declined to measure its performance by comparing adoption rates with Microsoft Teams."

Did you mean Fiscal Year 2020 by chance?

[JudeK]

Re: FY2021, really?

Hi there.

Slack's fiscal 2020 ended on January 31, 2020. The 3 months ending April 30, 2020 are the Q1 of its 2021 (https://investor.slackhq.com/news/news-details/2020/Slack-Announces-Record-First-Quarter-Fiscal-Year-2021-Results/default.aspx).

Tech firms and their reporting periods - gotta give those expensive accountants something to do, don't you?

Have a great weekend

[P. Lee]

Re: FY2021, really?

Forget the murder hornets, accountants are now pretending 2020 never happened.

If I were a Slack shareholder, I'd be prepping my shrink/exit strategy. It is quite difficult to compete with even a mediocre product when it comes bundled from the OS provider. (ooh, hello ie6!)

This is a problem when trying to compete in an environment with cloud. Anyone can scale to eat your lunch and if that someone can cross-subsidise from massive profits elsewhere and is the incumbent in every customer, it is very difficult to win. I think the best hope is for an AWS buyout for their desktop service.