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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

#81

Post by brootstrap »

00deadbeef wrote: post #70

We had group chats in IRC, MSN, AIM, ICQ, etc. What's new?

My take: what is new? People want to own an $800 phone that can browse the web, do group chat, run apps etc. I get a kick out of modern ads, although they are probably effective (just not on me).

"Buy this $800 iphone 10x-r so you can send animated images to your grandma & grandpa. Or run an app that puts an smiley imoge over your face"

I understand for some people this is a great feature. Or how about being able to 'unlock your phone' with your face. Great that is totally cool (not), but sure go ahead and drop a grand on the new iphone if you want to.

I dont really agree with the article. Technically these group chats might be sending info over the wire. But normally i wouldnt really associate a group chat with "the internet".

Re: Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

#82

Post by ulisesrmzroche »

qxcbr wrote: post #65
chongli wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You’re in the super tiny minority that actually likes IRC. Why would you think everyone’s the same way, even when all evidence points otherwise?

Re: Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

#83

Post by astazangasta »

jamesgeck0 wrote: post #73
qxcbr wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There are other groups who heavily use these features. We've got over a thousand custom emojis in my Slack at work. Our interactions would be just slightly less rich without :badpokerface:, :sadpanda:, or :superhero:.

Balls. Emoticons were plenty rich, they just require too much creativity for this lazy set.

Re: Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

#84

Post by ulisesrmzroche »

donatj wrote: post #20

When I hit my early 30s a few years ago all my friends moved away and had kids. Getting them together even in a virtual form to do anything in a synchronous way has become basically impossible - it leaves me longing for the days of AIM and IRC when it was very easy to make friends online. I haven’t had a decent conversation with a stranger in years.

Ever been to a bar?

Re: Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

#85

Post by Fnoord »

nathanlied wrote: post #71
Fnoord wrote: post #59

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. Who exactly is "HN"? How did you even decide "HN" has opinion X or Y? I'm fine with Discord because its mostly used for gaming. Given the previous options (Ventrilo, TeamSpeak, Mum…

I'm not fine with Discord as a replacement for TeamSpeak. I recognise some of its advantages, but the voice quality is absolute garbage when compared to what you can get TeamSpeak to do.

Can you be specific? I don't need high quality voice quality for gaming. I need it to be good enough. I've been content with Ventrilo's GSM voice quality as well. My issue with Ventrilo wasn't the voice quality; it was the lag!!

Re: Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

#86

Post by yoz-y »

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.

I agree. The irccloud is trying to alleviate many of the problems in retro-compatible way. It has stuff like history, snippets, images and so on.

Re: Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

#87

Post by hombre_fatal »

yoz-y wrote: post #86
chongli wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree. The irccloud is trying to alleviate many of the problems in retro-compatible way. It has stuff like history, snippets, images and so on.

I pay for IRCCloud, but the problem is that it only fixes everything for you. It does you almost no good when nobody else can receive a message after they close their laptop or go through a tunnel.

The IRC communities speak for themselves. Pretty much all regulars, no new blood, tiny, and opinionated grouches that are kinda hard to stand. You'd think #javascript or #node.js on Freenode would be pretty big. Nah, I'm on there every day and it's about 10 regulars. I could list off the usernames off the top of my head.

To put that in perspective, my Slack community for people who like building MUDs has more regulars and it's hard for me to think of a smaller niche. If you're trying to set up a community and you think IRC is good enough and you refuse to offer alternatives, your stubbornness is only disserving your users and community.

I can think of many more options too, like how Elm's IRC channel makes you think nobody uses the language, yet Elm's Slack community is thriving and more fun to participate in than #javascript and #node.js, and is far more popular.

Re: Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

#88

Post by ctvo »

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.

There's more to a product than a protocol and foundational similarities. Whenever someone uses this to distract away from the success of Slack, for example, I question if they realize that UX, design, ease are all part of a product and can be independently innovated on.

Re: Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

#89

Post by DanTheManPR »

ulisesrmzroche wrote: post #84
donatj wrote: post #20

When I hit my early 30s a few years ago all my friends moved away and had kids. Getting them together even in a virtual form to do anything in a synchronous way has become basically impossible - it leaves me longing for the days of AIM and IRC when it was very easy to make friends online. I haven’t had a decent conversation with a stranger in years.

Ever been to a bar?

Serious question: how do you meet people at a bar? It has never been clear to me how that actually works.

Re: Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

#90

Post by dmitriid »

Insanity wrote: post #60
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.

All generalizations are bad. :D You say "HN has a ..." but I use Discord for fun and have no problem with it. There's no one type of person on HN. :)

> You say "HN has a ..." but I use Discord for fun and have no problem with it.

See comments to every mention of Slack, or other modern chat software. you will see a lot of people saying that IRC/XMPP was better and suggesting open protocols and IRCCloud :)

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