Popular messaging service and collaboration tool Slack, has announced they’ve acquired messaging service Astro, in the process announcing they will be shutting the email service down.
The move to acquire Astro appears to be in response to the popularity of the service amongst users. Astro integrated an AI assistant – AstroBot – into Slack, giving users the ability to manage their email, view the email addresses of members of the Slack workspace and more.
Slack has acquired the email-alternate startup with the aim of bringing the email and messaging channels closer together in a centralised solution, while acknowledging the huge importance of various cloud offerings:
Our goal is to make it as easy as possible to help teams shift conversations to where they would be most productive — in a channel, alongside the relevant context and software tools teams use at work, from ServiceNow and Salesforce to Workday and Box.
The only downfall to the move is the announcement that Astro will be shutting down as of October 10th, though no date has been given for when the email management functions from Astro will be returning to Slack.
In May last year I took a look at Astro, their email client aimed at not only improving the email experience but making it easier and more intuitive for users. Astro took some getting used to and if I’m honest, I ran out of time to adjust to the workflow. But what I did notice was a steady reduction in my email count daily.
As a regular user of Slack, I can only see an upside to the acquisition and the integration of new and innovative technologies in the platform. Is this potential start of big changes and innovation for users benefit? Only time will tell.
What changes would you like to see in Slack with the integration of Astro and their team?
A lot of people figured Astro was just being put in the shopfront to be eventually bought up by one of the big boys.