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Comment by oomkiller | Hacker News Reader

Monolithic apps suffer from design for the least common denominator. Business team chat and calling/texting your friend are entirely different problems and deserve different solutions.

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I would suggest you check out Discord, which works well for both the team and individual use cases in one user interface. The way they accomplish this is by having "Friends" (a familiar analogy for anyone who has used chat applications from the 2000s and current social media) as well as "Servers", which are akin to teams.

Joining servers is very easy, creating servers - they are perhaps inaccurately named - is instantaneous, and each server can contain groups, voice and text channels. Adding friends is easy, and from the friends menu it's easy to message or begin a call with anyone and create ad hoc group chats and calls.

Perhaps your belief that they are entirely different problems and necessitate different solutions is based in the fact that they the market has thus far assumed that to be true.

Why would an Allo/Duo user ever want to join a server, or something analogous? They just want to call or message their friend. I think it's obvious to merge some of their consumer point to point apps, but criticizing their group chat solution because they have consumer point-to-point apps is wrong.

Do you never want to talk to more than one person? I don't see why talking to one person is one app but adding another person means we need to stop, hangup, open a new app and reconnect.

I've used discord. My family is never going to use discord or a discord-like app. For that, we need sms or MMS.

One of the problems with discord is that it becomes very bloated to use (fromm mobile). It takes 3-4 interactions to get to the friends list so I can message someone. With sms/mms/allo/fb messenger, I open the app and my friends list is just right there, staring me in the face.

Optimized for different usecases comes to mind.

Hmm, my version of Discord either points me at the friends list or restores previous state with 2 or 3 taps max to message a friend. (top left hamburger menu, tap friends, pick a friend)

Is what you describe specific to iOS version?

What is missing most is video chat.

I was speakng about android. I think there's a vast difference between 0 and 2-3 interactions. I mean in many ways, Discord is 2 apps in one, you swap between them by swapping between the servers and friends views, and I think its worth recognizing that fact.

But Google doesn't segment their chat products based on target market, they segment it based on business unit. Google is just really unafraid of competing with Google in the marketplace, apparently.

Target market: enterprise

* Video-conferencing & meeting: Hangouts Meet

* Direct messaging & team communication: Hangouts Chat

Target market: consumer

* Video & audio calling: Duo

* Text messaging: Allo

You could even put it in a 2x2, doesn't get any more clear than this.

OK, so here is consumer case: weekly video call to parents, who live separately. Duo? 1-on-1. Hangouts Meet? enterprise. Original Hangouts? Who knows how long it will be here, but hey, Google Voice suddenly got updated after 5 years of neglect. Doesn't get any more clear than this.

I'm not saying that they cover every use-case, just that now they have a very clear targeting.

If they don't support your use-case, use someone else's product.

but is this use case seems that exotic to you?

it's not a 'consumer' target then, but a '1-on-1' use case => segmenting by use cases

I think it is an uncommon use case, but I wouldn't say exotic. On the other hand, which of the latest services support it? WhatsApp doesn't, FaceTime doesn't (although they're rumored to soon). So I'd guess it isn't common enough to be launched in the initial versions.

On your second point, yes, you're segmenting by use case, I was segmenting by target customer.

no, how does supporting only one video call use case by app mean target is consumer and not that use case?

It isn't "supporting only one video" that mean the target is consumer. Allo & Duo have no enterprise features, and are publicly marketed to consumers. Hangouts is marketed & sold as part of GSuite, the enterprise productivity suite from Google.

Targeting determines features, not the other way around.

> Hangouts is marketed & sold as part of GSuite, the enterprise productivity suite from Google.

And is embedded inside consumer Gmail, and included by default on every Android phone I've seen since it replaced Google Talk or GChat or whatever it replaced. It's the default SMS app on a lot of Android devices. What's enterprise about it?

> and included by default on every Android phone I've seen since it replaced Google Talk or GChat or whatever it replaced.

Hangouts has since been replaced by Messages as Google's primary Android SMS app, and by Allo as its primary Android internet-based text chat app, and by Duo as its primary Android video-call app.

Which means 'consumer' have no idea what app to use and when (and also learning that you better not to get used to any of them)

Well that clears everything up nicely! ;-)

Except that neither Messenger or Allo are embedded in Inbox or Gmail. It's Hangouts all the way there. I actually like Messenger, but it's lacking certain features so I always end up back on Hangouts. Plus, Messenger doesn't give me transcripts of voicemails. So "integrated" is pushing it. It's there, it's nice, but it's not everywhere and as useful as Hangouts is.

Hangouts being marketed primarily as part of GSuite and not as a consumer app is a recent pivot.

target here is not a consumer, target here is particular feature. you fragmenting your target 'consumer' by video and text chats, each served by separate app. how is it not a use-case/feature segmenting? feel free not to answer though

Nope, the target is the customer (consumer & enterprise), and then you build the features required by that customer.

You don't build a video calling tool and then look for a potential segment to sell it to, you define/find a segment and then build the product with the features required to target that segment.

It's clear, all right, but I don't want FOUR apps to do what one should.

And none of the supporting arguments for this change have been persuasive to me. This is just x4 fragmentation, if you ask me.

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