“We’ve received word that all workspaces are having troubles connecting to Slack,” the chat client said on June 27, after users discovered they couldn’t connect to Slack’s mobile, browser and desktop apps. “We’re currently investigating the issue, and will have updates shortly. Our team is still looking into the cause of the connectivity issues, and we’ll continue to update you on our progress.” Slack’s latest update at time of publication said: “We have no new information to share just yet, but we’re continuing our efforts. Your patience is truly appreciated.” You know what that means: EVERYBODY PANIC!
“Slack is so integral to my work life that when it’s down I’m honestly surprised that anything else still works. like wow, twitter is fine? my phone still texts? the english language still makes sense? my eyes still work?” Sophie Ho tweeted. “Slack is down so I can’t share memes with my friends so have resorted to printing them out and leaving them on their desks,” Dave Jewitt (@IrregularDave) also tweeted. Perhaps @Dictionary had the best response to the outage. “Slack. A decrease in activity, as in business or work. See also: What happens when #Slack is down.”
“Slack is down. Be free. No gods no masters no editors,” Spencer Ackerman (@Attackerman) added. “i feel most in the media bubble when my entire timeline is just people complaining about slack being down,” Joon Lee (@JoonLee) added. “With @SlackHQ still down,” David French (@DavidAFrench) said, “I can only communicate by phone, text, email, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, GroupMe, Instagram, and Snapchat. Now I know how my grandparents did business.” Ha! Others shared memes of Spider-Man, Finding Nemo, and Dwight Schrute from The Office, which seems like a very apt metaphor for this office-based panic.
https://twitter.com/BadwolfTX/status/1011965069196963840
https://twitter.com/LiannaBrinded/status/1011968928422260736
Right now, GChat users are laughing to themselves, but Slack being down is no joke. Around 500,000 organizations and 8 million people use Slack worldwide according to the company, per Fortune, with 65 companies from the Fortune 100 having paid Slack workspaces. The chat system has become essential to some businesses’ productivity (or to users’ lack thereof) so having it down right now is disrupting everything.
Normally, Slack doesn’t stay down for long. The last outage took place on May 23, where Slack was down for 20 minutes. As of time of publication, the outage was reaching two hours. “We’re still in rocky waters, and are trying to stabilize our connectivity issues. Thanks for sticking with us,” Slack tweeted.