Slack reinforces its intention to become a single platform for communication between work teams and groups, and makes it clear with its new features, which in practice also help avoid the use of other platforms such as Zoom or Clubhouse.
Huddles are simple, direct audio communications that can take place within Slack channels.
To this end, it has reinforced Huddles, your audio meeting platform (somewhat similar to Clubhouse voice chats or Discord audio meetings, but limited access to existing Slack groups) Introduced a year ago. Its function is to quickly and easily start meetings or audio chats from a previously created Slack channel or with a single user, as a “Audio DM”. But that feature seems to have fallen short and is now being expanded.
In addition to adding an image through a video chat or the option of share screen between multiple usersnow Huddles also adds a meeting-specific chat thread that allows to concentrate all the conversation coming from it in a single space.
Unlike meetings through Zoom, from Slack it is pointed out that conversations via Huddles are not as intrusive and that they have an average duration of 10 minutes, compared to the 30 minutes of average of a meeting through Zoom. But some users may need the visual input that using the camera provides, hence the addition of this new feature.
In fact talks through huddles will continue to start in audio-only format and only if the interlocutors so wish can a small window be activated where the video captured by the camera will be shown. A small window that, also if necessary, can be enlarged to fill the entire screen. Because despite everything, and as Tamar Yehoshua, product manager at Slack, explains, “some users still prefer the look of Zoom.”
The participants in one of these meetings will also be able to share their screens, which will allow them to work on a common board in view of all, counting on this other new incorporation of the specific chat thread for said meeting that will serve, in practice, as a record of the conversation for later reference.
