[HN Gopher] Instant Messenger History: Lessons for the Threads E...
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Instant Messenger History: Lessons for the Threads Era of Social
Media
Author : cpeterso
Score : 30 points
Date : 2023-07-13 21:01 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tedium.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (tedium.co)
| Zak wrote:
| > _John Gruber... has suggested... instant messaging was a dead-
| end technology_
|
| I use Signal and WhatsApp daily. Most people I know use some sort
| of IM, though for some of them it's only iMessage.
|
| It's interesting and a little surprising that none of the PC-
| based instant messaging services popular in the early 2000s were
| successful in making the jump to mobile, though some did produce
| mobile clients.
| lintroller wrote:
| Mobile providers had no incentive to let the instant messaging
| services on their network when they were charging 10 cents per
| SMS message.
| toast0 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the major messengers all had integrations
| with at least US mobile providers. Because if you didn't have
| a messaging plan, you'd get charged 10 cents per message as
| it was delivered over SMS.
|
| IMHO, the reason a mobile first network was more compelling
| than a desktop first network is that people tend to have
| their phones on them, while their desktops tend to be at
| their desks. For better or worse, you can always reach me on
| my phone.
|
| Tencent developed QQ on desktop and then WeChat on mobile,
| but afaik, didn't bridge the two networks.
| 5- wrote:
| current pidgin lead developer has been writing rather
| entertaining posts on pidgin and generally im history:
|
| https://dev.to/grim
|
| e.g. https://dev.to/grim/where-did-the-name-libpurple-come-
| from-4...
| distantsounds wrote:
| I would absolutely love to run my own little TOC/OSCAR server and
| host my own private AIM community. The only implementation I
| found is the closed-source AIM Phoenix project, is anyone aware
| of one?
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Threads is an entire era now? Surely it's a _liiiiittle_ too
| early to make that claim.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| I think it's fair to say that we have a post-twitter, or elon-
| twitter era when all of a sudden Twitter has a bunch of
| competition that it's never really had before. I wouldn't say
| it's _Threads '_ era, but it does seem like something has
| happened.
|
| Something has to be said about about the fact that _now_ Meta
| decided to launch a Twitter clone.
| soperj wrote:
| Why? Did something have to be said when Google launched
| Google+? Or any of the other social platforms?
| mjfl wrote:
| but Twitter didn't even matter when it was just Twitter.
| Twitter was a minor, failing social media site up until Musk
| bought it.
| kalupa wrote:
| not sure that's been corrected yet. Seems to be becoming
| more minor and more failing
| gumby wrote:
| I can't argue with this:
|
| > Twitter was a minor, failing social media site up until
| Musk bought it.
|
| Maybe "slowly failing", accelerating after the purchase.
|
| But I _slightly_ disagree with this:
|
| > Twitter didn't even matter when it was just Twitter.
|
| I think twitter was disproportionally more significant,
| though not as hugely so as its denizens believed. If there
| were a graph of "number of subscribers" (X) vs "influence
| over Zeitgeist" (Y), Twitter would appear a little above
| the curve.
|
| The reason is that a lot of journalists corresponded on it
| so things discussed on it would appear in the press.
|
| I started using it last summer or so -- a few months before
| the sale. I never (and don't) like the short form. I'm more
| likely to see something outside my "bubble" on TW than FB,
| but frankly FB is more useful to me (I just want to know
| news about my friends and family, and their kids,
| basically, plus cat and dog pictures). Climate Twitter is
| pretty good; for some reason the same kind of thing doesn't
| appear on FB (Machinist FB is good and there appears to be
| no Machinist Twitter that I can find).
|
| If this sounds like a defense of twitter: it isn't. I'm
| just saying that "didn't matter" is probably too absolute.
| It never mattered a lot, though.
| scrumper wrote:
| Maybe it's fair? It's the first major persistent broadcast
| messaging platform since Twitter popularized the concept with
| non-computer nerds.
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