After years of broken promises, Slack is bringing us threaded messages directly into popular communication app. The best place to find an example of threaded messages is Reddit, but threading messages first started with forums and emails.
Rather than starting a thread in the mainstream, you can directly reply to messages, similar to how you would respond to a Facebook status. From there the thread breaks into the flex panel, where you can continue a separate conversation. If you close out of the flex panel, you’re able to rediscover the conversation in an “All Threads” panel. You won’t get notifications in threads unless someone uses a keyword or uses your name. Last, if you have a witty comment or important message, you can share the message with any channel for everyone to see.
Threading a conversation has its pros and cons. Overwhelming, the idea of a non-sequential conversation ruling the app means you can break into separate conversations to talk about where to go to dinner, what design changes you need on a website or comment on an off-topic message without breaking the flow of things. It’s exceedingly important to large Slack groups with multiple conversations going on at once. Now you’re able to branch out and talk with one person, but allowing everyone to see what’s being said and even enabling them to jump in.
Threading conversations can also become a problem because everyone is talking about something in a thread, making topics hard to impossible to follow. I’m worried I’ll start seeing dozens of threads on messages, making it hard to skim all at once. Now I’ll have to jump into multiple threads to find out what I missed, instead of being able to just read on the message screen.
Tell us in the comments below what you think about Slack adding in threaded messages.