Slack is jumping into the video chat game with an update to their Huddles service, which will now include video chat, screen-sharing and a chat thread specific to each Huddle. This update will undoubtedly create competition with the popular video chat service Zoom and others like it, such as Meet, so people will be able to have quicker face-to-face chats without the need to sit in meetings.
The original Huddles feature was audio-only, and typically used for quick chats between colleagues. For example, if someone wanted to explain something to a colleague that felt too tedious to type out, Huddles were the next best thing. According to Slack’s internal research, the average huddle was 10 minutes long.
“What’s nice about Huddles is it’s not intrusive. It’s not like your phone is ringing and you have to pick it up. I can hang out in the huddle, listen to the nice background jazz music, and wait until you’re free,” said Slack head of product Tamar Yehoshua.
Even with the new features, Slack still wants Huddles to feel as non-invasive as possible. They will continue to start as an audio-only chat, because their goal is still to “reduce social pressure to turn on your video.”
However, at any point the Huddle can switch to a video chat in its own separate tab, causing it to be unrecognizable from a Zoom, including reaction emojis for meetings.
One feature that differs from Zoom, though, is that multiple people can share their screen at one time, which allows for a more collaborative work environment that could even rival working in-person. They will also save chat threads from each video meeting to look over later, and cannot be pre-scheduled on the app like Zooms.
Huddles will cap out at a max of 50 people, so it may not be poised to replace Zoom just yet.
