Workplace messaging platform Slack was experiencing outages Wednesday, with a peak of more than 3,000 people reporting problems with the service on DownDetector.
Key Facts
Slack’s tech dashboard first reported issues with people connecting or loading the communication platform at 10:27 a.m. EST.
About 2,000 people had reported issues with Slack as of 12:13 p.m. EST on DownDetector, a website that tracks outages across platforms based on user reports—down from the peak of about 3,100 at around 11:35 a.m.
At 12:26 p.m. EST Slack said its “investigation is still in progress with regard to deprecated functionality for Slack features such as workflows, threads, sending messages and API-related features” and updates will be provided as available.

What Parts Of Slack Are Down?
Slack’s tech dashboard indicated users were having trouble with logging in, messaging, connectivity, apps/integrations/APIs and workflows—though there were no reported issues with notifications, search, huddles, workspace administration or canvases, as of 11:30 a.m. EST.

Key Background
Slack is a cloud-based messaging platform owned by Salesforce, which announced it was acquiring the platform in 2020. It has more than 200,000 paid customers and is active in more than 150 countries. The company began in 2009 in Vancouver by Stewart Buttefield—who had helped build photo-app Flickr—who set out to make “an artful, non-combat massively multiplayer online game,” TechCrunch reported.

The game, Glitch, ultimately crumbled and around 2012 Butterfield told investors the startup was going to start making a messaging tool for workplaces.

It launched toward the end of 2013 to positive reviews and demand.
Big Number
$27.7 billion. That’s how much Salesforce paid to purchase Slack in late 2020, marking the biggest acquisition for Salesforce at the time.