Enlarge / A Microsoft workplace (to not be confused with Microsoft Workplace).
Microsoft Groups might have solely been round for 2 years, however the group-chat platform is already bigger than one among its important rivals. Microsoft introduced that Groups has greater than 13 million each day energetic customers. The quantity rises to 19 million when weekly energetic customers. Which means the service is now formally greater than Slack, an unbiased platform for on-line chatting and collaboration.
That is essentially the most particular Microsoft has gotten but with details about its group-chatting platform. The one different replace the corporate gave was again in March, when it revealed that 500,000 organizations have been utilizing the service.
Along with the viewers information, Microsoft shared some upcoming options for Groups. At this time, it’s rolling out what it is calling “bulletins,” which permits essential information to be highlighted in a channel. It plans to roll out channel moderation and precedence notifications, which is able to ping a recipient each two minutes till a response is made, later this month. Lastly, cross-channel posting will likely be coming “quickly.”
Microsoft launched Groups to customers on Workplace 365 subscriptions in March 2017 after which added a free model in July 2018. The service has been pitched as a alternative for Slack ever since launch. Catching up so shortly in viewers measurement over two years when Slack has been round since August 2013 is a feather in Microsoft’s cap and could also be a motive why it has opted to attend so lengthy to announce any numbers about Groups.
Regardless of the plain comparisons, Microsoft and Slack have loads of cases the place they don’t seem to be focusing on the identical audiences. Microsoft has a longtime fame amongst enterprise companies, and being part of the Workplace 365 suite makes it a most well-liked selection for teams which are already working in that ecosystem. For smaller organizations, and even giant ones that rely extra on Google programs, Slack stays another.
