The more wisened business folk I talk to the more I hear about Slack taking hold, the messaging and chatting app quickly becoming a staple of offices and remote workplaces here at home.

All of this ends rather badly for Skype, and now Slack’s latest announcement is a real kick in the nether regions for the once mighty messaging and calling program. Below from QZ:

The makers behind the chat app announced yesterday that Slack users who are messaging each other will soon be able to have a voice call as well, and eventually a video call. No timeline has been given for either feature.

You wanna know just how popular Slack is becoming across the world? Crunch these numbers:

Slack’s rapid rise has already made it a darling of Silicon Valley. Just a year after its launch, investors valued the business chat app at over $1 billion. It was pegged at $2.8 billion as of last April, despite annual recurring revenues of just $25 million. That valuation is thanks to Slack’s fast-growing, devoted customer base, which has skyrocketed from 500,000 daily active users in January 2015 to 2.3 million daily active users today.

I know what you’re thinking – there’s no way you can handle teaching your parents and grandparents how to use a new program. I suppose that user base may not go anywhere, but experts are predicting a slow demise for Skype:

Skype, which is part of Microsoft, is mostly a two-trick app, and used for voice and video calls. Skype probably has more users that Slack right now, but some of its most valuable, paying “business” users are likely to fall into that “also using Slack” category…

Microsoft’s reaction to Slack’s rise hasn’t instilled much confidence Skype will be a priority in the future…If internet history tells us anything, Skype is on its way to becoming the AOL of voice and video calling apps.

Ouch, you had to go and throw AOL into the mix – if that doesn’t spell online disaster nothing else ever will.

[source:qz]