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Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

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Re: Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

#61

Post by wlesieutre »

Crinus wrote: post #28
YokoZar wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least your friends don't need a whole lot of instruction to join. Inserting pictures is pretty easy. And it's mobile.

I remember IRC in the late 90s, early 2000s having A LOT (like 9 out of 10) of people who otherwise had no idea about computers (remember droves of people disconnecting after 'Press Alt+F4 to get @'?). People who didn't knew the difference between a file and a directory (or folder) were on IRC with channels having hundreds of people. If someone can figure out Facebook (and trust me, Facebook is far from intuitive for…

Lack of conversation persistence is a real problem. It's 2019 and people expect to have it. If messages disappear into the ether while I'm not actively connected to the room, it's not going to work for participating in a group conversation.

Yeah you can set up some always-connected relay on a server and bounce your client through it to still get the conversation backlog when you weren't online, but it's not reasonable to expect an average computer user even have an always-connected machine to run it on, let alone actually get a relay working.

If they can use Facebook they could use IRCCloud, but that's $5/month and Messenger/WhatsApp/Discord/Slack are free.

Re: Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

#62

Post by kalado »

jacobedawson wrote: post #35
kalado wrote: post #23

I had that thought for months. I'll give you my business Idea for free for the next big social network, since I'd rather work on my game development: Chats based on hashtags. Are you watching the newest Game of Thrones ? Just search for #gameofthrones and enter the chat to talk with others. Chats go bad once too many people participate, so you split chats into channels of ~50. You can upvote messages and once they re…

I think part of the allure of private chats is that it's you & a small group of people who actually know each other - having a free-for-all and just splitting rooms up doesn't engender a feeling of togetherness any more than going to a random gathering of people with a single 'banner' topic. Twitter almost has the hashtag thing down. Human social groups have a purported manageable upper limit of around 150 people, so…

Oh I agree.

But I see this as an opportunity where you would split of the main chats by creating a more obscure named chat. Like you have a nice conversation with a few people and you can send them a private message "hey, lets continue this in #got-indepth" and then you invite others that you like.

You can have general conversations with a lot of people and break up into like minded groups naturally.

Moderation is a problem I don't know how to approach. Being able to ban people on a majority vote could be alienating.

Re: Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

#63

Post by lazyjones »

kalado wrote: post #56
no_identd wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Just search for #gameofthrones and enter the chat to talk with others. I invoke Poe's law: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2811#section-2.1 "Channels names are strings (beginning with a '&', '#', '+' or '!' character) of length up to fifty (50) characters. Channel names are case insensitive." Traditionally, people use channel names like #foobar. (if you wanna know what the other prefixes are for: & = local to server…

I honestly don't know what you are trying to say? I didn't mean using IRC (although you might of course).

He's trying to say that your "groundbreaking" hashtag idea is so similar to IRC that some people will be thinking you're being ironic.

Re: Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

#64

Post by nixpulvis »

wlesieutre wrote: post #61
Crinus wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember IRC in the late 90s, early 2000s having A LOT (like 9 out of 10) of people who otherwise had no idea about computers (remember droves of people disconnecting after 'Press Alt+F4 to get @'?). People who didn't knew the difference between a file and a directory (or folder) were on IRC with channels having hundreds of people. If someone can figure out Facebook (and trust me, Facebook is far from intuitive for…

Lack of conversation persistence is a real problem. It's 2019 and people expect to have it. If messages disappear into the ether while I'm not actively connected to the room, it's not going to work for participating in a group conversation. Yeah you can set up some always-connected relay on a server and bounce your client through it to still get the conversation backlog when you weren't online, but it's not reasonabl…

Well that's the whole idea behind Snapchat, but I get your point.

Sometimes I wish I didn't have so many messages saved forever tho, honestly.

Re: Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

#65

Post by qxcbr »

chongli wrote: post #51
yoz-y wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many irc channels are as easy to join as clicking a link. Webchat has gone a long way now.

That doesn't solve the problem of name registration, file/picture sharing, group membership/moderation, customization/emoji, planning, etc. that are handled easily with something like Facebook Messenger groups. IRC is super clunky by comparison.

No emoji/pictures/link previews is a feature to me. You know if someone posts a link nobody's going to click.

Re: Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

#66

Post by qxcbr »

xfitm3 wrote: post #50
dmitriid wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN has a very strange hate/love relationship with modern chat systems. Slack/Discord/whatever: they are proprietary, they are closed-source, they are bad. IRCCloud (which is proprietary, closed source etc.): oh, it's so good, use it.

IRCCloud's privacy policy should be of concern: "We keep logs of your IRC communications until you delete your account with us, or a connection, or channel. This means that, even if you stop using IRCCloud for a while, when you next log in, it will be as if you never went away."

So like any other messenger? You can delete your logs whenever you like, but they don't get deleted automatically.

Re: Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

#67

Post by jjoonathan »

iamben wrote: post #4

This rings very true. I'm down using Facebook/Twitter for work, or checking every 2 or 3 days if I'm bored, desperate or looking for something in particular. Instagram is about a 50% mix of pretty things and friends, but the pretty things post way more often, so the split is heavily in that direction. I'd say approximately a third of the friends I chat to regularly (late 30s ish) have left or don't use Facebook - but…

Suddenly google circles don't seem so silly after all.

Re: Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

#68

Post by cowmoo728 »

YokoZar wrote: post #11
alexgmcm wrote: post #10

30 years later and we have reinvented IRC, but worse as you can't use your own client, the protocol may not be public and it's harder to discover channels.

At least your friends don't need a whole lot of instruction to join. Inserting pictures is pretty easy. And it's mobile.

Yes but I currently have discord, hangouts, slack, line, and messenger installed, and have used keybase, signal, and matrix on top of that. It's a bit extreme.

Re: Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

#69

Post by kristianc »

jjoonathan wrote: post #67
iamben wrote: post #4

This rings very true. I'm down using Facebook/Twitter for work, or checking every 2 or 3 days if I'm bored, desperate or looking for something in particular. Instagram is about a 50% mix of pretty things and friends, but the pretty things post way more often, so the split is heavily in that direction. I'd say approximately a third of the friends I chat to regularly (late 30s ish) have left or don't use Facebook - but…

Suddenly google circles don't seem so silly after all.

The basic idea of Google Circles - that we have small circles that we share content and engage with, was basically sound.

Google+'s misstep was to overlay a clumsy UI and load a lot of the work of setting up and maintaining those circles on the user. Neither do a lot of users have the clean line between "Close Friend", "Friend" and "Acquaintance" clear in their head.

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