[Update, Monday afternoon: Slack is back after its morning outage. On its system status page, the company offers instructions for any users still experiencing problems. The cause hasn’t been identified, but Slack says it plans to issue an update summarizing the issue.]

If you weren’t ready to return to work on Monday morning, you weren’t alone: neither was Slack, apparently.

The communication and collaboration service suffered a widespread outage just as workers were returning to their virtual workstations after the long holiday. As of publication time, Slack is back for some users, but the company acknowledges that performance is degraded for some. See the latest status updates here.

Could this be an opening for Slack alternatives? Some media organizations are looking to the outage as a chance to test Discord and Microsoft Teams. “I’ve heard bosses at various newsrooms have mulled pulling the plug on Slack over the last year. I suspect some will see this as a controlled experiment,” writes New York Times media columnist Ben Smith on Twitter.

The issue has larger implications for Salesforce, which is in the process of acquiring Slack for $27.7 billion, joining forces against Microsoft in business and communications apps.

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headline

Job Listings on GeekWork

Find more jobs on GeekWork. Employers, post a job here.