Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Group Chats Rule the World

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 86 posts

Re: How Group Chats Rule the World

#31

Post by Dioxide2119 »

So I'm pretty (very?) young compared to most HN luminaries. I've never even started a company much less did something HN famous like writing the LGPL. But I love to hear these discussions.

I'd love to ask the elders this: when did you first start doing group chats, as in multi-user chat rooms with roughly permanent de-anonymized identities?

So, I was in jabber IM rooms in my first job, we didn't use cell phones, but there was an IT department chat, a companywide chat, etc.

Later technologies include lync/skype4biz, hipchat, teams, slack, and zoom.

Limiting myself more to the article's definition (mobile-first group chats), I'd say it was Google Hangouts, GroupMe, WhatsApp, then Signal, now its Signal + discord + FB messenger + all the millions of apps that just should be parts of libpurple / beeper.

But for those of you who remember eternal september, when did the group chat as those dot com babies like me know it first start out?

Re: How Group Chats Rule the World

#32

Post by rkagerer »

Dioxide2119 wrote: post #31

So I'm pretty (very?) young compared to most HN luminaries. I've never even started a company much less did something HN famous like writing the LGPL. But I love to hear these discussions. I'd love to ask the elders this: when did you first start doing group chats, as in multi-user chat rooms with roughly permanent de-anonymized identities? So, I was in jabber IM rooms in my first job, we didn't use cell phones, but…

CompuServe, before there was much of an internet. Friends to this day with someone I met on there.

Re: How Group Chats Rule the World

#34

Post by rootusrootus »

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 was the kind of kid that was in front of the computer all day anyway.

The author of the article actually calls that out specifically, and then points out she isn't talking about that older phenomenon, but how the advent of smartphones brought this sort of group chatter into our existence no matter where we are at any given time. To people who weren't used to spending all their waking hours in front of a screen already.

From the article:

> This kind of communication has been technologically possible for decades now, but for much of my lifetime it had to occur in fixed locations (in front of computers) at fixed times (when you were all online; this was back when the idea of being “online” or “offline” still had meaning). Then smartphones smashed that distinction.

Re: How Group Chats Rule the World

#35

Post by beeboobaa »

massysett wrote: post #18
dingnuts wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Get it through Apple, cancel anytime through Apple's UI. This does of course require you to have Apple devices. However I am much more likely to subscribe to low-dollar subscriptions through Apple, precisely because I know I can cancel with no issues.

Amusing how to americans apple is the only way to get decent consumer protection. Your government has failed you.

Re: How Group Chats Rule the World

#36

Post by bakuninsbart »

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…

Millenial here, my group of friends is probably falling outside of the norm, but there's been a distinct drive away from social media in general. A good half does not have any public social media like Twitter, Instagram etc ("private" being things like whatsapp or telegram). A good quarter has reverted to old Nokia phones and respond to emails within 3 business days.

Sometimes I get a tinge of fomo when thinking about what others do with social media, but when I dwell on it for 5 minutes, I realize I just don't care that much.

Re: How Group Chats Rule the World

#38

Post by lxgr »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #22

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…

It's the opposite for me: Group chats are mostly for banter (i.e. I use them exactly as portrayed in the article); if I need something urgently from somebody there I'll DM them.

At least WhatsApp also allows turning off all notifications for a group chat other than the ones you're directly tagged in; not sure if iMessage supports the same.

Re: How Group Chats Rule the World

#39

Post by [deleted] »

bakuninsbart wrote: post #36
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…

Millenial here, my group of friends is probably falling outside of the norm, but there's been a distinct drive away from social media in general. A good half does not have any public social media like Twitter, Instagram etc ("private" being things like whatsapp or telegram). A good quarter has reverted to old Nokia phones and respond to emails within 3 business days. Sometimes I get a tinge of fomo when thinking abou…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN