Productivity app Slack had a nice year, with the company stating that it now has 2 million daily users with 570,000 of them the paying kind. Slack has also created an $80 million fund for investing in other companies that create apps for Slack and other products that integrate into the app.
Slack, however, is not slacking off, as it continues to develop its product to make it better for users and developers alike.
Slack has created an app directory that lists all the 150 integrations available to the app, including Dropbox, Google Drive, Trello and Twitter. Administrations can browse through the integrations through the app directory and install the ones they want into the Slack instance of their teams.
Before the launch of the app directory, Slack's integrations were all grouped together. With the move, Slack has categorized the integrations to make it easier through browse through them similar to how users see apps on the App Store and the Google Play Store. With the app directory, Slack will also able to restrict some integrations from being shown if they do not pass certain requirements.
Developers have something in store for them too, as Slack released new APIs that are designed to simplify the process of creating new apps for Slack. One of the most interesting ones is the BotKit, which is an open-source framework for developing services that users can access with conversational interfaces.
BotKit builds upon Slackbot, which is capable of sending messages to new users of the app as an orientation to the service. Slackbot is very popular among users, and so developers created bots that are delivering different kinds of services. For example, startup Howdy developed a bot that carries out virtual meetings which facilitates the reporting of employees to their managers. Another bot named Birdly is a simple expense management tool for Slack teams.
With the platform expansion and the creation of the support fund for developers, Slack will see which integrations for the service are the most popular among its users, which could help shape its plans for new features and acquisitions in the future. Slack will also be able to introduce new integrations to the app, which has proven to be a good strategy in attracting and keeping new users.
