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Comment by oldcynic | Hacker News Reader

Instant messaging used to be so simple. You connected via adium or pidgin, and it just worked. You could hook it up to gtalk and msn. Even ICQ and AIM. Then msn wouldn't play nice any more, then gtalk.

Now we've had a dozen renames and replacements, XMPP is long gone, and what's left is an almost unusable mess. Add to that the dozens of people I once had connected on Adium (from memory most on Google talk) are now strewn across loads of different chat apps.

These days I'm texting more again! This really isn't the future I expected.

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That's been my experience as well. Facebook/Hangouts/WhatsApp/Allo/whatever might have amazing features but I truly don't care. SMS/iMessage (since it's seamlessly integrated) has completely taken over with my group of friends because of one defining feature - everyone has it. If you have a phone number, you can receive a text from me.

A while back one member of our group got tired of the 8 person running group thread we have and suggested moving to something "better". The group unanimously shot it down because we don't want to download new apps, create new accounts, then inevitably have to migrate to the brand new flashy service in 3 months.

For context, we're all late 20s/early 30s.

Edit: Actually, I believe SMS is still superior because it works even without a data connection. We spend enough time camping, skiing, attending huge sporting events, etc. any of those other services would be a significant downgrade.

I suppose you live in a country where the telcos offer free SMS. In Spain they cost money, so almost no one uses SMS for personal messaging. All the SMSs I get are from companies.

In Germany there's a bunch of different options when signing up with a provider, eg I have one where I pay 2€ extra per month for 100 SMS which is plenty for me. For 4€ I'd get like 300 or so. Its the same pricing for free minutes for domestic calls (normal landline or mobile, no service numbers obviously).

I think it's similar here, but 300 SMS/month (i.e., 10/day) wouldn't be even close to enough for the average Spanish user. Whatsapp usage is huge here. Many people do all their routine personal communication using it, and then they have a group for the family, a group for coworkers, a group for friends, a school parents group where they all complain about their kids' homework, etc. Of course, they also send photos and videos (which I'm not sure if are covered by SMS plans or you need that exotic thing called MMS).

And even if it were enough, a Spanish user won't pay 2 or 4 € for something that they can get for free. In fact when Whatsapp had the idea of charging a symbolic amount and suspended access to some accounts due to not paying, people started switching to Telegram en masse (Telegram even went down due to that), then they gave back access and abandoned the idea of charging.

Certainly has a big plus - SMS will often get through when even voice can't. Data on the other hand! That's without getting into how badly some apps handle intermittent or no signal.

Have you tried Telegram? It's the best.

is this sarcasm? (honestly it's unclear to me)

See, there's the devil, in the details as usual: "Have you [and everybody you wanted to talk to] tried the X [, all having tried it at the same time]? It's the best [when it works, unless it's subtly and invisibly broken, void where prohibited]."

Not forgetting the rapidly escalating permutations. They say Telegram, work wants Wire, someone else Whatsapp, someone else says Messenger and on and on.

Either install 27 apps or decide enough is enough. I've had just about enough until one can aggregate like Adium used to.

I enjoy telegram, but if I need to talk to more than the two people I know that use it... well..

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