Slack Goes Down for Second Time in a Week, Disrupting Numerous Workplaces

Urian B., Tech Times 03 August 2023, 04:08 am

Slack is one of the many types of workplace software that a lot of companies use to facilitate collaboration and communication in their different departments.

Recently, the workplace chat app has been hit by issues. It has been down or not working for the second time in a week, causing major inconvenience to its users.

Slack Allows Businesses to Have Staff Communicate With Each Other Through Online Services

According to the Independent, the recent technical issues on Slack came just days after another outage at the app last week. It was reported that Slack users complained about not seeing the images properly or could not access the platform at all.

The outage, which happened during the working day in the UK and US, has reportedly disrupted many workplaces that use the app to communicate with colleagues.

It also occurred amid the rise of working remotely, when many workplaces relied on apps like Slack to communicate with co-workers. The Independent reported that the previous problems were more significant and resulted in users from around the world being unable to send messages or sign on.

Slack Issues Affected Many Individuals, Leading to Users Not Being Able to Load Threads, Images, and Admin Pages

According to reports, the recent problems did not appear to affect all users, and most were more limited in scope. On early Wednesday morning, Slack's official status page was updated to say that users "may be experiencing issues loading threads, admin pages and images."

The company further noted that it was investigating the problems. Many Slack users have turned to X, previously known as Twitter, to report issues with the chat app. Down Detector, a tracking website, saw a massive spike in the number of people reporting problems.

However, The Verge reported that the problems had been resolved after an hour. The company said, "Slack is now back up," and "users may need to reload their apps to see this restoration."

Slack has experienced many outages like this in the past, but the outlet said they were typically resolved within a couple of hours or less.

77 Out of the Fortune 100 Companies Are Reportedly Using Slack, Including Uber and Other Popular Businesses

Whether the latest problems were limited to specific platforms or locations remained unclear. It was reported that Slack has over 200,000 paying customers, which includes those from 77 of the Fortune 100 companies.

Some of these US biggest firms, which use Slack for their business communications, include Uber, Target, Airbnb, and Expedia. According to The New York Times, the outage reportedly lasted 65 minutes and started at around 5 a.m. ET.

Workplace software tools like Slack usually charge on a monthly, per-user basis and offer video conferencing, workflow structuring, or digital spaces for water-cooler gossip.

As work increasingly moves remote, these services are needed to keep companies running smoothly and to increase employee productivity as these tools get different parts of a company working together.