Slack has seen a massive surge in users during coronavirus pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has had a huge impact on the working lives of people across the world. Some have taken pay cuts, some have lost their jobs, and many livelihoods are still at risk.

But as more and more people work from home under government recommendation, there are also companies that have seen the opposite happen.

Slack is one of them.

On Wednesday night, the CEO of the instant messaging platform, Stewart Butterfield, took to Twitter to describe how recent weeks have affected the company.

The thread Butterfield posted is a long one, chronicling how the situation unfolded from early March — and, interestingly, how the number of Slack users sky-rocketed.

On Tuesday. March 10, Slack hit 10 million simultaneously connected users. After that, it quickly passed the 10.5 million and 11 million milestones.

Butterfield also shared three charts, from March 12, 16, and 23, chronicling the number of “newly created teams on Slack which we believe to be for workplaces.” 

You can see the massive spike in the second week of March, as more and more companies began encouraging staff to work from home.

He also went on to compare Slack’s growth in recent weeks with its growth in the second half of 2019, saying that the company added 5,000 customers in Q3 and Q4 combined, but had added 9,000 in Q1 this year alone.

Butterfield ended the thread with an offer — for workers “on the frontlines fighting COVID-19” to use the service for free.

COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus, has infected over 416,000 people worldwide. Over 18,500 people have died.