Slack product roadmap revealed in public Trello board

Slack, a popular messaging client used by companies of all sizes around the world, recently did what most companies never do: it made its road map completely public. Pretty bizarre, especially considering the company has plenty of competitors.

But Slack said it sees things differently and that, ultimately, it thinks sharing its roadmap will help customers and developers understand where it plans to move as a platform. “Platforms do fail,” the company explained on Medium. “We’ll make mistakes but we’re building for something much greater. We are building for a future where Slack is dwarfed by the aggregate value of the companies built on top of it. This is our success as a platform — when the value of the businesses built on top of us is, in sum, larger than we can ever be.”

So what’s coming?

According to Trello, where Slack published its roadmap, it plans to streamline its app directory in the near term, in addition to building out interactive messages and an events API. Further down the road, it plans a developer dashboard, in-product app-discovery, app ratings and reviews, support for additional file types and more.

Slack didn’t reveal how far out its near, mid-term and long-term goals are, but the Trello board does make it abundantly clear it has major plans for its chat platform.