Slack Introduces “Clips”: Brief Video Messages That Can Be Left For People To See At Their Convenience

For some time now, Slack has discussed going beyond text-based messaging. Today, the company is introducing its new Clip feature, which lets teammates shoot brief video messages and share them in Slack channels. 

The company’s CEO, Stewart Butterfield, sees the new tool as a method to interact with coworkers when a 30-minute meeting isn’t considered necessary. As an alternative, you can use a short video to explain whatever it is to your coworkers. 

Clips allows you to record sounds from a microphone as well as video from the screen. Their purpose is to make it easier for teams to communicate across time zones and reduce the number of meetings required in the hybrid work environment. Video clips are more valuable since you can still obtain the idea that would have been made in a complete meeting without really attending to get access to that material. 

Slack is also adding clips to Slack Connect, which will allow for premium organisations to partner with firms on free subscriptions. When GovSlack begins in 2022, it will run in a government-certified cloud environment.

It is possible to share Slack video clips in channels or private message groups. The videos come with live captioning and a transcript that can be seen in the Slack UI. In Slack, employees can respond using text, audio, video, or emoji because it’s the same as sending a picture or text message.

Slack has been working on this feature for over a year, and at first it sounded more like Instagram Stories, which would expire after a day, rather than video voicemails, which remain in channels. The tool has evolved from its early iterations, which used a stories-like interface, to something that is more in line with how users use Slack.

Clips appears to be the next stage in Slack’s strategy to meet the needs of companies that are transitioning to working from home in conjunction with a new mix of office work. The Verge report says it will be available to all paid users starting in the autumn.