Slack is a communication platform that allows businesses and teams of all sizes to communicate effectively. The enterprise software platform is owned by Salesforce and has proved to be a very effective tool during the COVID-19 pandemic when everyone was working from home.
Having said that, Slack is introducing a real-time audio feature called ‘Huddles’ that works similar to Discord and is aimed at increasing work productivity with impromptu office meetings, but with audio. The company is intending to address Zoom fatigue with this new feature and it also serves as a beneficial business strategy to introduce real-time audio because every other technology company is doing so, since the inception of Clubhouse that opened up a brand-new market for audio-based platforms.
Tamar Yehoshua, Chief Product Officer at Slack says that the new Huddles feature is an alternative to impromptu conversations that happened at offices which don’t really happen now because everyone is working from home. Having been sitting on your home desk setup and working, attending Zoom meetings one after the other is tiresome and is now referred to as ‘Zoom fatigue’ which is definitely a real deal.
Slack introduces Huddles as a low-pressure alternative to having quick and easy conversations with your team or office co-workers regarding anything without the need of actually scheduling a meeting on Zoom, leaving everything and paying full attention to the meetings.
Anyhow, Huddles is for business communications and works in similar ways to Discord which was originally created for gamers to connect over audio while gaming. Slack users can create impromptu meetings on Huddles either in an existing channel or in direct messages. As and when you see that a Huddle has been started, you can quickly join in to be a part of the conversation. Slack users can either chat in real-time or send pre-recorded audio for other team members who can then respond in a similar fashion.
Furthermore, Slack is also working on addressing the need to collaborate and have a meeting when all members of the team aren’t online at the same time. As mentioned in a report by Engadget, Slack is testing to roll out the “Schedule Send” feature that can help the host to schedule a meeting smoothly while others will be online and available on the set date and time.
All in all, Slack is working to make its platform, the most useful one in the business setting and with these new features coming up, the communications platform is going to blow up in the industry.
