Agreed. These purchases seem to work the best when they're used for defensive purposes and to round out a product offering that already has a substantial userbase.
Whatever gadgets they might hang off the app, they're fundamentally a way for people to talk to each other. If you don't have the people, why would you need a slick implementation? As you mentioned, the app would go out of vogue and users would move on.
Amazon making a bid here sounds like a play for a decent social seed, likely steming from users of its core properties (shopping and dev). Of all the mega-corps, Amazon is one of the few that has all the pieces and user-engagement, but no social component.
Which is ironic, because their properties would play a lot better with one than, say, Google or MS. And starting with something like Slack (bottom up vs top down) is an interesting move.
Whatever gadgets they might hang off the app, they're fundamentally a way for people to talk to each other. If you don't have the people, why would you need a slick implementation? As you mentioned, the app would go out of vogue and users would move on.
Amazon making a bid here sounds like a play for a decent social seed, likely steming from users of its core properties (shopping and dev). Of all the mega-corps, Amazon is one of the few that has all the pieces and user-engagement, but no social component.
Which is ironic, because their properties would play a lot better with one than, say, Google or MS. And starting with something like Slack (bottom up vs top down) is an interesting move.