How Group Chats Rule the World • Hacker News Board

Re: How Group Chats Rule the World

#21

Post by Zenul_Abidin » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 4:56 PM UTC

jerojero wrote: post #5

It's interesting that for this journalist the group chat is always an extension and in some way connected to her "real" life. There is not really a mention as to how I, and I believe many other, really use group chats. Yeah. Of course I have a couple group chats with people I know... But these do not compare to the ones that I'm in that have been formed entirely online. The dynamics might be similar but in my experie…

Most Americans are only ever using iMessage so I guess that's what "group chats" means in this context.

Re: How Group Chats Rule the World

#22

Post by __MatrixMan__ » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 4:57 PM UTC

This author is clearly in a different world than I am. Group chats are strictly for coordinating. If something worthy of conversation happens in a group chat, the subsequent chat happens in a separate channel.

Otherwise people start tuning out the group chats and doing the wrong thing like trying to meet everybody at the wrong crag.

If there were more than 20 notifications in a group chat in an hour, you can bet that half of us have muted it.

Maybe it's just that us ADHD folk hang out with other ADHD folk.

Re: How Group Chats Rule the World

#23

Post by lotsofpulp » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 4:58 PM UTC

> In 2008, Apple made it possible to text-message multiple people at the same time, moving limited SMS messaging into their iMessage system — essentially conflating “texting” and “messaging,” collapsing group conversation into a single organized chain.

iMessage launched in 2011. MMS allowed messaging multiple people from phones before 2008.

Even though I and many in my social circle have had iPhones since summer of 2008, I would say it was WhatsApp that really made group messaging on smartphones blow up, maybe ~late 2009 or 2010.

Edit: Best source I can find says WhatsApp group functionality came out in 2011, so I am off on that, but I do remember WhatsApp functionality being better than iMessage for quite a few years (and I would say except for picture/video quality, it still is).

Re: How Group Chats Rule the World

#24

Post by Semaphor » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 4:58 PM UTC

marssaxman wrote: post #19

gbalduzzi wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this is standard since 2015

How dismally tiny this all seems! I miss being part of something that felt like a community. I don't know where to find that anymore.

Discord and telegram both offer that?

Re: How Group Chats Rule the World

#25

Post by beeboobaa » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 4:58 PM UTC

Zenul_Abidin wrote: post #21

jerojero wrote: post #5

It's interesting that for this journalist the group chat is always an extension and in some way connected to her "real" life. There is not really a mention as to how I, and I believe many other, really use group chats. Yeah. Of course I have a couple group chats with people I know... But these do not compare to the ones that I'm in that have been formed entirely online. The dynamics might be similar but in my experie…

Most Americans are only ever using iMessage so I guess that's what "group chats" means in this context.

[flagged]

Re: How Group Chats Rule the World

#26

Post by mmsimanga » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 4:58 PM UTC

somewhereoutth wrote: post #9

> one has become such a dominant feature of my social life that it is simply named “The Girls,” as if there were no other girls. (The act of naming of a group chat in iMessage indicates, to some degree, its staying power, no matter how silly the name itself may be.) Thus “The Girls” has become one of the first places any of us would look to make social plans. At least, I think so — it is highly possible that for one…

+1 WhatsApp. I was in early of Facebook and used it delightedly for a few years. Then it just went spammy for me and I also didn't like that people seemed to drift towards using it to show off their lives as opposed to connecting with people. WhatsApp groups on the other hand by virtue of not being public are more personal. In some of my groups we have full on debates which I think if they were public some members of the group would be cancelled.

Re: How Group Chats Rule the World

#27

Post by ilrwbwrkhv » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 4:59 PM UTC

larodi wrote: post #20

And the fact that Durovs realised this like 10 years before NYT led to Telegram

Arguably the best chat app in the world.

Re: How Group Chats Rule the World

#28

Post by beeboobaa » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 4:59 PM UTC

kridsdale1 wrote: post #6

bradhe wrote: post #3

[flagged]

Or you could pay for journalism.

why would i pay for some random newspaper from a different country?

Re: How Group Chats Rule the World

#29

Post by JumpCrisscross » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 5:00 PM UTC

dingnuts wrote: post #14

kridsdale1 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could pay for journalism.

if the NYT wants me to buy a subscription they are going to have to do something about the reputation they have for canceling one. Predatory company. Frankly I hope they go out of business along with most of the legacy media

> I hope they go out of business along with most of the legacy media

They're a phenomenally successful property [1]. And they're targeting the country's political and business elite.

If someone can't figure out how to cancel a subscription, they're probably not in the target market of any text-based product.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/08/business/media/new-york-t...

Re: How Group Chats Rule the World

#30

Post by internet101010 » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 5:00 PM UTC

jerojero wrote: post #5

It's interesting that for this journalist the group chat is always an extension and in some way connected to her "real" life. There is not really a mention as to how I, and I believe many other, really use group chats. Yeah. Of course I have a couple group chats with people I know... But these do not compare to the ones that I'm in that have been formed entirely online. The dynamics might be similar but in my experie…

>I think it stems from the fact that for the journalist "group chats" are linked to apple's technology "iMessage". But for me, when I think of group chats I think of discord servers, IRC channels, etc. I mean, Ive been using group chats for years before the smartphone came, and the experience I had back then is pretty much identical to the one I have today. I was the kind of kid that was in front of the computer all day anyway.

Same. My groupchats are small Discord servers with like 10-15 people. No blue/green text nonsense, don't have to deal with anything related to Meta, and notifications are easily customizable.