Slack, Peloton resolve widespread outages

Yahoo Finance Live's Brian Cheung and Akiko Fujita examine the resolved outages affecting the Slack and Peloton apps, in addition to commenting on the outlook for companies seeking to return to the office.

Video Transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: Well, if you are one of the thousands of workers who rely on Slack to communicate, probably didn't get a whole lot done yesterday. The workplace app owned by Salesforce first started reporting outages around 9:00 AM. It lasted until around the afternoon. The company tweeted a message of thanks to its users for their cooperation during the downtime.

Now, if you tried to get in a workout while Slack was off, you may have noticed there was an outage with Peloton as well. The fitness app reported problems with users taking classes in its platforms around 11:00 AM yesterday. That was resolved around noon.

And Brian, we're talking about Slack and Peloton. GitHub also reportedly had issues. This is kind of the reality, I guess, of just having to have that connection to do anything. I did not have issues with Slack, by the way, on my laptop. And I know a lot of us here at Yahoo Finance did. And productivity just comes to a halt at that point, right?

BRIAN CHEUNG: Yeah, I mean, we use Slack here. And a lot of people, whenever there's a big outage, whether it be Slack or Gmail, it's like, well, it might as well just take the whole rest of the day off because I can't do anything. I mean, you're stuck at home. That's the only source of communication that you have. I like to look at it from a more positive light. I mean, I thought it was the most glorious hour or two hours of my life when no one was bugging me and I could just kind of have my tea and sip it and read the news. But of course, Slack did come back online, and then we were back at it.

But I think all of this just underscores the need for, in some cases, human interaction to hedge against what is the cyber risk of your major productivity tools that so many workplaces are leaning on going down. If we were in the office, for example, and Slack went down, well, I could just go walk up to you, Akiko, and then bug you in person, right?

So I think that that might be a reminder for people that are using these types of workplaces and workspaces, which isn't everyone, by the way, right? I mean, there's a difference between the productivity tools that white collar versus blue collar workplaces are using. But I think it just underscores the importance of, in some cases, not relying everything that you use in your workflow on the internet or technology. Sometimes old-fashioned communication is always [INAUDIBLE]

AKIKO FUJITA: Well, I mean, communication tools like Slack have really become increasingly important during the pandemic, especially for those of us have been working remotely. I'm sure if we're all in the same newsroom, it's easy to just go across the room and do that. That hasn't necessarily been the case. And Slack has been the one way to connect.

I will challenge you a bit, Brian, though. I don't know if it led to more communication. I got text messages. You know, we went on Google Chat. I mean, there's so many other ways to communicate without picking up the phone and calling. That's probably the last resort. I was going to call out our producer, Val, who, by the way, will text me when she knows that I'm not paying attention on Slack.

BRIAN CHEUNG: Oh, you're not just going to get a text. You're not just going to get a text.

AKIKO FUJITA: But there's so many different avenues, yes. But Slack, I would argue, at least here at Yahoo Finance, is the most productive way to get things done. And that kind of came to a halt yesterday.

BRIAN CHEUNG: Yeah, I'm pretty sure I saw Val knocking on my window physically when I wasn't responding to the phone calls or the text messages, but I mean, you know, look, I think at the end of the day, it wasn't necessarily neater, though, right? I mean, we tried to set up, like, a Google Chat in Gmail. We tried to have text messages going. We tried to have email threads going. I mean, either way you cut it or slice it, there was no protocol for how to deal with something like that going down.

And maybe that's the hedge instead, in the absence of having everyone back in the office of people who have moved, to handle that, to say, if our major communications channel goes down, how will we communicate? Either way, what's interesting is we don't know the reason for why these outages happen. We don't know if they were connected between Peloton and Amazon. And just for the record, even though we're dressed like it, it wasn't the two of us that were responsible for the outages as well, so just want to clarify.

AKIKO FUJITA: No, we were not--

BRIAN CHEUNG: Yeah, we look like we were behind that.

AKIKO FUJITA: --texting each other.

BRIAN CHEUNG: But yeah, we were not.

AKIKO FUJITA: By the way, by the way, Brian, the call function on Slack is very underrated. I use it more and more because I get so frustrated.

BRIAN CHEUNG: It's great.

AKIKO FUJITA: Having to put everything in there, at some point, you're like, let's just call each other.

BRIAN CHEUNG: The Slack call is great.

AKIKO FUJITA: I don't have to use the phone. We can do it in Slack.

BRIAN CHEUNG: The Slack call is great because it takes over your whole screen, and you cannot avoid it. You have to pick up. It's the best.

AKIKO FUJITA: Note to everybody here at Yahoo Finance. I know when they don't pick up, I'm being ignored.