Brent Simmons on “Group Communication App Models:”

[Slack] may be the proof that there’s just one model that clicks for people doing group communication: chat. Chronological order. Real-time. Small, one-sentence-sized message-entry box at the bottom.

I don’t mean that Slack’s success is inevitable because of its model — but I believe that that model may be necessary. Had Slack worked like Glassboard, or like my hypothetical Twitter-like Glassboard, it would not have succeeded. (Is my theory.)

In other words, people like chat, and everything else is too much trouble and not enough fun.

I don’t see as much tension in these two models as Brent does. In fact, I tried to push Justin into giving Glassboard both of these modes so a user could swap between the river and a simple thread as needed.