Getting back to work after the Christmas and New Year’s holidays was even harder than expected on Monday.
That’s because Slack, the business messaging app that’s become a staple for many workers to communicate with each other during the COVID-19 pandemic, crashed worldwide on the first full work day of 2021.
The company released a statement shortly after 10 a.m. Eastern on Monday noting that “customers may have trouble loading messages or connecting to Slack,” and adding that its team is investigating the issue.
Half an hour later, Slack Technology Inc.
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released another statement noting that it had no additional information to share, writing, “Thanks for bearing with us.” The entire system remained down for a couple of hours, before rolling back into service around 12:30 p.m. Eastern. The company posted an update explaining that, “While the issue is largely still ongoing, we believe some customers may see improvement in connecting to Slack after a refresh.”
While service was out, remote workers unable to send direct, real-time messages to their bosses and colleagues turned to Twitter to express their frustration, crack jokes — or, to commiserate over that collective “I’m not ready to go back to work yet” feeling, as well as fears that 2021 was shaping up to be just as chaotic as 2020.
More than 10 million users and 750,000 companies use Slack, the service has reported. Slack shares were down slightly during the disruption on Monday morning.
This article has been updated with Slack beginning to resume service on Monday afternoon.
