Slack's only been around for two years, but it's already one of the most popular (and chic) team messaging tools on the digital block.

Today we're looking at what makes Slack tick.

Not much Slack

Slack was launched in August 2013, the brain child of colleagues Stewart Butterfield, Eric Costello, Cal Henderson and Serguei Mourachov.

The quartet originally developed the service as an internal communication tool for their workplace.

Talk isn't cheap

At launch Slack attracted 16,000 users.

Today Slack has close to 3 million daily active users, and 800,000 paid accounts.

Teamwork

There are now 60,000 teams on Slack, and they spend lots of time on the service.

The average team user spends 320 minutes every weekday on Slack.

Security breach

Slack was hacked over four days in February 2015, meaning user data including emails, usernames, and passwords were compromised.

In response Slack introduced two-factor authentication.

Growth spurt

Things are looking up for Slack. The company has an estimated annual revenue of US$64 million, and is enjoying a 5% growth in weekly users.