Slack back at ya: Messaging platform is back up after outage

28 Jun 2018

Image: Kaspars Grinvalds/Shutterstock

Messaging platform working normally again. So are the millennials.

Some referred to it as ‘hipster hysteria’ or ‘millennial meltdown’ after Slack went offline for a few hours.

But now, the messaging platform is functioning again and discombobulated employees no longer have to make awkward eye contact or remember how to use their email properly.

Slack, which uses the tagline ‘where work happens’, suddenly stopped working yesterday (27 June), likely garnering a collective ‘WTF’ from stumped workers around the globe followed by a collective ‘OMG, what do I do now?’

People who normally communicate through GIFs were no doubt rendered speechless and had to take a break.

The first problems started to occur around 10.25am in the UK but the problem became widespread around 2.20pm onwards. The outage affected workplaces in the UK and the east coast in the US in particular.

Okay, relax and … breathe

Fortunately, the platform was back up and running globally by early evening in the UK and early afternoon on the US east coast, after Slack reported on Twitter that it had isolated the issue.

Hopefully, the issue was only a glitch as Slack normally boasts 100pc uptime and is beloved in workplaces where collaboration is critical.

The versatile platform, built upon the traditional internet relay chat (IRC) system, allows colleagues to communicate and collaborate instantaneously within groups, share documents and more.

According to Slack’s latest figures, there are now more than 8m daily active users across more than 500,000 organisations that use the platform. The company has more than 3m paid users, and 65pc of companies in the Fortune 100 are paid Slack users.

We’re glad to have you back, Slack.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com