And the fact that Durovs realised this like 10 years before NYT led to Telegram
WhatsApp did it at least as early (not sure when exactly they introduced group chats), and is much more widely used.
How Group Chats Rule the World
41–50 of 86 posts
Re: How Group Chats Rule the World
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like this is standard since 2015
Sounds right to me. I remember that around 2011-2012 IIRC, back when WhatsApp used to cost 99 cents, half my friends actually paid for it. The next few years were spent trying to get people to migrate out of other apps (like Facebook Messenger) into it. By 2015 there were very very few people using mainly FB in my circle.
WhatsApp said it cost 99 cents, but I don’t recall ever being charged for it. I distinctly remember installing it on my parents’ phones with a credit card number in the App Store that had no credit, and it always worked fine.
Re: How Group Chats Rule the World
#43> 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 2…
MMS pre-dates iMessage, but even today MMS does not support persistent multi-party group chats. You can create a group MMS, but it's stateless; you can't change the membership in any way without creating a new entry in your chat list; this naturally fractures the community (people using old group chats instead of the one with the current membership, etc.)
The specific implementation details do matter; and I think that this fundamental weakness of MMS has created the space for WhatsApp, iMessage, etc to thrive.
Re: How Group Chats Rule the World
#44> 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 2…
I've tried WhatsApp and all kinds of other modern IM software. To be honest I still haven't found anything I liked better than ICQ (before it got enshittified).
One thing I wish more apps offered is per-contact visibility.
Re: How Group Chats Rule the World
#45> 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 2…
> MMS allowed messaging multiple people from phones before 2008.
In the same way that email allows "group chat", i.e. in a painful unergonomic way that nobody would subject themselves to if it's at all avoidable.
It's also incredibly expensive in many places and has never really caught on outside the US.
Re: How Group Chats Rule the World
#46People will always seek out communities they can trust. The web and social media were once interesting but have become phony, conformist and cliché due to aggressive cynicism, commercialization & censorship. Group chats (for now) are places where authentic conversation still exists. Group chats can still discuss creative and unique solutions with less risk to one’s reputation.
Soon AI will infiltrate the group chat and the conversation will move elsewhere. People will have a private conversation at any cost.
Re: How Group Chats Rule the World
#47[flagged]
[deleted]
Re: How Group Chats Rule the World
#48It'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…
The 'solely online' group chat really doesn't seem to be the norm for all but a very specific demographic. It's also very different from what is being discussed in the article.
The demographic is 15-25, by the way. It's not unusual for younger crowds to find themselves in sole-online groups - there's a lot more elasticity and cultural acceptance for that kind of behavior in those groups.
Re: How Group Chats Rule the World
#49It'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 don't think this demographic is as common as you'd expect - it feels very niche and internet-culture-y.
That said, I've always been amazed at some of these groups I've been a part of. There is a long-lasting group of game developers I was a part of when I was very, very young. Somehow, someway, the site has stayed alive, and I have logged in probably once a year to say hi to old friends. I've never met them in person. We exchange emails maybe... at a half-year, year, or even longer basis. But we always respond to each other eventually. And we've managed to somehow maintain contact in this super strange way.
It's really incredible.
Re: How Group Chats Rule the World
#50So 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…
My wife met one of her first boyfriends on the Religions discussion chat on AOL. IRC dates back to 1988.
I met some people on both Compuserve and Prodigy, although I'm no longer in contact with any of them.
Still friends with some people from the WWIV BBS days in SoCal.