Slack is adding its own Instagram Stories feature for work, but why?

Slack is introducing something that kind of sounds like their version of Instagram Stories. They’ve called it Clips—which lets you create and share audio, video and screen recordings so that your coworkers can watch and respond to whenever it’s most convenient for them.

“If our shared remote work experience has taught us anything, it’s that we can enjoy the benefits of flexible, distributed work and find new ways to be productive. But how and when we collaborate with team members—like trying to schedule a synchronous meeting across multiple time zones—still reflects our old ways of working,” wrote Slack.

The idea is to eliminate unnecessary meetings, or to lessen the amount of meetings people might have during the day. Like Slack says in their announcement, there’s “no need to juggle calendars and find a time that works for everyone to meet”.

Once your Slack updated, you’ll be able to see a Clip icon wedged between the other icons where you would usually post. You can then select different kinds of “Clips” that you can send—including your entire screen, and something called “flowchart”, which you can presumably prepare before recording your Clip. You also have the option to show yourself on Camera View.

After pressing record, you can begin to present your work through the Clip and treat it like how you would present in a meeting. When you’re done, the Clip will be sent to the Slack channel.

According to Slack, the Clip is designed to be “inclusive and accessible”. You can speed up or slow down the video, watch with live captions, and open up the transcript to jump to specific parts of the conversation. You’re also able to respond through text, audio or video. Recordings made in Slack “are archived with searchable transcriptions”, contributing to your organisation’s bank of knowledge.

The new feature might actually help with eliminating meetings, and save time—as you’re able to watch a Clip in different speeds. As a lot of us are still working remotely, it could also save time by eliminating things like poor internet connection during live meetings. Sure, it might also get rid of what could possibly be the only time someone talks to another person—but that’s overrated anyway.

Clips begin rolling out today. However, they will be only be coming to all paid teams by this fall.

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