(Disclosure: I work at Microsoft but not on Teams / Office)
I've used Slack for 2+ years, hipchat for ~1 year, Discord for gaming for years, and now Teams for ~1 year. For work, I like Teams best.
In my mind the most significant, perhaps the only significant, difference between Teams and the rest is the threaded-by-default approach. It was hard to get used to at first, but this make it so much easier to keep track of different conversations that would otherwise overlap. In my mind, it's the best of both chat and email. Slack kind of does this but it's not nearly as seamless. You have to hover over the small reply icon and most of the time people don't do this. In Teams, you are forced to use threads and I think it is a good thing. Teams definitely has its quirks but with the velocity of improvements I've seen, most have already been fixed and I'm optimistic the rest will all be ironed out before long.
I don't even include Skype for Business in this comparison because in my mind Skype for Business is in a completely different category. It doesn't do the same things. And I can't think of another software product I dislike as much as Skype for Business / Lync.
I've used Slack for 2+ years, hipchat for ~1 year, Discord for gaming for years, and now Teams for ~1 year. For work, I like Teams best.
In my mind the most significant, perhaps the only significant, difference between Teams and the rest is the threaded-by-default approach. It was hard to get used to at first, but this make it so much easier to keep track of different conversations that would otherwise overlap. In my mind, it's the best of both chat and email. Slack kind of does this but it's not nearly as seamless. You have to hover over the small reply icon and most of the time people don't do this. In Teams, you are forced to use threads and I think it is a good thing. Teams definitely has its quirks but with the velocity of improvements I've seen, most have already been fixed and I'm optimistic the rest will all be ironed out before long.
I don't even include Skype for Business in this comparison because in my mind Skype for Business is in a completely different category. It doesn't do the same things. And I can't think of another software product I dislike as much as Skype for Business / Lync.