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Slack opens high on the stock exchange, but will the boom last?

Trading as “WORK” on the stock exchange, Slack is initially valued at it at $15.7 billion. The stock market flotation comes after Slack has become more focused on re-orientating towards a “collaboration hub” rather than just being see as a chat app. With the flotation, Slack, as Digital Journal reported, has adopted a model similar to that used by Spotify in 2018, which obviates the traditional IPO approach.

The app is aid to have https://www.businessinsider.com/slack-8-million-users-ipo-2018-5 and 3 million paid users. The extent of the take-up is such that Slack is also being watched closely by competitors, such as Microsoft. Slack also continues to innovate, such as building technology that will tell a user how their language changes depending on the time and who the user is talking to.

Despite he number of active users, Slack has recorded a net loss of $138.9 million (despite securing revenue to $400.6 million), and this raises concerns with some market commentators about its longer-term prospects.

As an example, Dan Latendre, founder and CEO of Igloo Software, a digital workplace platform with a Slack integration, tells Digital Journal: “The market is flooded with productivity apps, collaboration tools, messaging, file sharing software and more, which makes it difficult to determine where the future of the workplace is headed. Slack’s millions of daily users can lead us to believe that the next generation of workers want to communicate in real-time. However, the true sweet spot of workplace collaboration is a mix of tools that provide both email-like and chat messaging capabilities, as well as houses all company files.”

There are also concerns about the long-term viability of chat solutions. For example, Jeff Corbin, CEO of APPrise Mobile, told Digital Journal that peer-to-peer solutions are not necessarily the best ways to offer deskless employees what they need in order to thrive and be satisfied. He says that Slack is not: “inherently built for the deskless constituency or large enterprise organizations. It’s also not a cost-effective or sustainable solution for enterprises needing top-down employer to employee communications

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Dr. Tim Sandle is Digital Journal's Editor-at-Large for science news. Tim specializes in science, technology, environmental, business, and health journalism. He is additionally a practising microbiologist; and an author. He is also interested in history, politics and current affairs.

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