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Comment by matheusmoreira | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why businesses don't use text messaging services exclusively. It's asynchronous and convenient, everything is recorded in writing, privacy and encryption are now standard features, we can have helpful automation that isn't a pain to interface with... It should be possible to do everything over text message.

> I will literally miss extremely important business opportunities because I put off calling someone for too long.

They will also miss important opportunities because they refuse to adapt.

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> I don't understand why businesses don't use text messaging services exclusively.

You miss so much context when communicating in text.

Being able to hear the tone of someone's voice and quickly course correct when they are headed the wrong direction is invaluable for many things.

That said, I agree that for many situations text is very convenient. I am very happy every time I need to contact customer support and find they have a chat service available.

In my opinion, text is a great way to start almost all interactions. Being able to upgrade from that to voice is super helpful in many cases. Screenshare is also great for a lot of things.

And yet, it's probably the top medium for flirting and establishing romantic relationships...

I would almost speculate that's precisely because of the limited bandwidth that text provides.

When starting a relationship, one of the most important things at first is to "not come on too strong". The other party misses out on all your social cues and tells, which probably makes the exchange feel less vulnerable.

Further, since you know hardly anything about the other person at the start of a relationship, text lets you conveniently project your own emotions onto the other person without their tone getting in the way.

> The other party misses out on all your social cues and tells, which probably makes the exchange feel less vulnerable.

This is precisely why Tinder never worked out for me. Not seeing someone truly react to what your saying, just the filtered reply to it. Every conversation felt stale and awkward.

Because asynchronous communication takes a long time and often misses important emotional information transmitted via voice.

I am not a slow writer, but for many things I prefer to have a phone call as I find it significantly easier and quicker to clear up any potential misunderstandings.

I get that there are people that prefer text over voice and I do try to accomodate depending on preference, but if I have to have a proper conversation that may get a bit technical its simply quicker to call.

When conversing business matters, I don’t need to convey emotional information. The biggest advantage asynchronous text communication gives is I don’t have to waste time on hold. The next is that I have a record of who said what.

Bingo. The only instance where I prefer phone calls over text-based communication methods is when I just want to talk about nothing with family members who live far away and who I haven't talked to in a long time, just so I could hear their voice. For anything functional, I prefer text-based methods all the way for a multitude of reasons. Having full logs of the conversation to reference later on is a huge boon when it comes to avoiding misunderstandings and getting things done.

Easy. It’s a low fidelity, moderately effective means of communication that is in writing.

Talking and making a deal or agreement to be formalized in a long form is clear to all parties.

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