Slack groups are on the rise. With recent surges in remote working and the popularity of small-group messaging outside of work, it makes sense. Slack communities are like an online forum for niche interests, and it’s not uncommon to belong to more than one Slack group.

This also presents a problem: Slack was originally intended as a messaging services among coworkers, something that employees consistently check throughout the day. But if you belong to several Slack groups, it’s really easy to fall behind on threads and messages.

Enter: Lowdown, a new app that turns community content from Slack into an auto-generated newsletter.

“Last year I started a Slack community which grew to over 800 members, but I noticed that many of the people who joined didn’t engage and eventually disappeared. I desperately wanted a way to re-engage with these members so I could remind them of the valuable content my community offered. If I could do that they’d know what they missed and could return to get involved. That’s when we had the idea to highlight the post's members engaged with the most in a weekly newsletter.” - Lowdown co-founder Steven Hylands

How it works: Lowdown watches whatever Slack channels you want, and then automatically resurfaces the posts in those channels with the most replies/emoji reactions in newsletter format. If you currently run a Slack group, you can auto-subscribe your entire membership to Lowdown or ask your community members permission via a Slackbot DM. Your “newsletter“ will then be sent to subscribers every week, with no manual input from you.

Judging by the reaction on Product Hunt, people really dig this idea:

“This could be very useful, I’m starting to drown in Slack communities.” - Chris

“200% value added to any Slack community.” - David

“I'm part of a few Slack communities and I struggle to keep up sometimes, but I don't like feeling like I've missed useful or entertaining content so I generally have to find time to scroll through the various channels for updates - not great. Thank you for creating this, huge problem solved!“ - Melissa

Raise your hand if you’re getting Lowdown to handle all your Slack groups. 👋

There's now a password manager for you and your friends to share Netflix/HBO/Spotify/Disney+ logins. Is this legal? Lol. 🔐