Slack Huddles — for those meetings that could be emails but are now calls

What you need to know

Slack has announced Huddles, a new feature for quick meetings that used to happen spontaneously in offices.
Huddles are Slack’s new “audio-first way to start live conversations.”

Now everyone has a new way to stop you from getting any work done.

Slack announced Huddles today — a new feature that it hopes will replace those quick little chats we used to have at our desks, or over by the water cooler. Or in the bathroom. Whatever they used to happen, now they’re going to happen in Slack.

You can see where Slack is going with this. Now that more people are working from home it wants to give them a way to have quick, informal chats that might not happen otherwise. That’s exactly how Slack describes it, too.

Before, you might have dropped by a coworker’s desk to hash out an idea, or caught up with a colleague in the hallway to debrief after a big meeting. Those casual conversations, which aren’t burdened by formality or timeboxed to 30-minute increments, not only build team camaraderie, but often evolve into an idea of something greater. To help re-create those spontaneous moments wherever teams work, we’re introducing Slack Huddles, a lightweight audio-first way to start live conversations.

Slack says that starting a new Huddle is just one click away in any DM or channel, with anyone who is part of that conversation then able to come and go as they please. It all sounds a bit like Clubhouse to me, but that’s probably because every company has been borrowing Clubhouse’s features over the last few months.

There’s more to today’s announcements and you can read all about it on the Slack Blog. None of it is as interesting — or as snark-worthy — as Huddles though. Sorry to disappoint.

These new features come a week after Slack rolled out the ability to schedule messages to be sent later.