Slack's messaging platform is getting voice, video and screen sharing soon

There aren't many work collaboration tools that you'd describe as being a joy to use, but Slack, the latest startup from Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield, actually manages to come close. Now in addition to slick text and document collaboration (it's crazy fast), Slack will soon get voice and video chat, as well as remote screensharing. The company announced today that it's snapped up Screenhero, a startup that was aiming to go toe-to-toe with the likes of Webex, whose features will slowly be absorbed into the Slack platform. It's not the first collaboration tool to get video and voice chat -- HipChat has had them for a while, and plenty of organizations use a combination of Microsoft's Yammer and Skype -- but their addition gives people one less reason to count Slack out as they beg their companies to adopt it (ahem, Engadget editors).