Microsoft Teams has been growing steam since it launched in late 2016, taking a direct shot at the likes of Slack. In just a few years, the service has already reached 13 million daily active users, putting it well ahead Slack’s last report of 10 million daily active users.
Despite these numbers, Slack’s co-founder and CEO Steward Butterfield stated that he isn’t worried about the numbers, saying that “if it’s based on the bigger distribution,” then he doesn’t believe “that’s really a threat” (via CNBC). Instead, he explains that as a service like Teams grows, it becomes more difficult on the overall quality of the service:
“I think that it’s harder and harder, not because there’s anything wrong with Microsoft, because it’s hard for us at this point, given the size that we’re at — it’s hard to maintain a real focus on quality, on user experience, and the bigger you get, the harder it is. So if the competition was based on the quality of user experience, and that’s where all the effort is, that would probably be more daunting for us.”
Even while Teams does hold an edge over the number of daily active users, Slack is still backed by a higher number of organizations. Microsoft’s advantage might primary be due to the fact that Teams is included with Office 365, whereas Slack is its own subscription.
Still, Butterfield noted that Microsoft has been an excellent partner in helping them provide Office 365 calendar integration into the service. “Whatever Microsoft does, we’re still going to do the same thing that we would do for customers,” he said.
Which service do you think has the lead? Which one is used by your organization? Feel free to let us know in the comments.
