Before the end of Slack 2020, stories like Instagram and its communications software are getting ready to introduce to-talk-talk audio. Both additions are born out of the remote work that we are all adjusting to during the epidemic era. Slack hopes that these features will reduce constant video calls or invalid text conversations, and that most people will immediately return to office interaction without experience for months.

Instagram stories are designed to share your everyday life experiences with friends and family, slack stories are not really about your pet videos, favorite foods or holidays. Slack sees video snippets as a way to provide check-ins and status updates to remote employees, for example, or sets a daily agenda for a team.

“It’s a lot like an Instagram story or a Snapchat story, but in Slack,” Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield explained in an interview with the video feature of the new story. Edge This week. “A joke turned out that soon all the software would come to it and I thought it was fun then. But especially during the epidemic, and the difference between how we move forward as an organization, it means it’s time.”

Slack

“Instead of having this 15 minute daily stand-up meeting, can we record the video earlier … and get rid of the 15 minute meeting?” Butterfield asked. Slack is still experimenting and prototyping how stories will be displayed, but these short videos should appear alongside channels so that people can use it as a way to check in with each other or even as a status update form. Butterfield says, “It’s a little more than a humane way to update,” and a more informal and flexible way for people to attend meetings without holding a dedicated person.

Video conferencing has never been a major part of Slack, and just as Zoom has entered the mainstream, the company’s live video and audio calling features have not been a major issue. The rest of the slack has adapted to this new era where everyone is suddenly jumping into more and more video calls for work and even social activities. Slack partnered with Amazon earlier this year to switch to Chime for voice and video calling, and is now experimenting with features outside of conventional video calling.

“Video conferencing isn’t clearly going, but I think it’s a legacy of the last 20 years of a prominent communicator,” Butterfield explains. “Given what has happened to our mobile devices over the next 20 years, especially as consumers, I think we need more space than just video conferencing as a means of communication using voice and video.”

In addition to featuring new stories, Slack is also planning to introduce instant audio. This will work similarly to push-to-talk as a feature to enable spontaneous calls with peers across channels.

“The idea is that we already have channels … Starting a call or scheduling a call can feel overwhelming when we’re at the office at risk or shouting at someone a few desks away, so it feels very light. We’re trying to recreate it, ”Butterfield says.

It will act like a discorded call, like listening to audio that is always available, where there are always available voice channels that people can expect and go out and peers can chat online and chat. “The idea is that the call isn’t something that starts and ends, it’s something that you enter and leave, and the call is always permanently connected to the channel,” Butterfield explains.

This seems like an ideal feature for smaller, more fast-paced parties where you need to quickly discuss any project or idea quickly without scheduling a full video call. “It’s not something that will jump on people, it was meant for very specific participation,” Butterfield says. “This is usually meant for small groups that are working very closely with each other on a specific issue.” Voice can also be more intrusive than a normal text-based slack conversation.

These two new audio and video features are still at the prototype stage of Slack, but Butterfield says they should come “sometime this year.” And only a few months left That year is 2020, It is safe to say that these features will appear soon, but they may be marked as beta or may roll out gradually.