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Comment by aNoob7000 | Hacker News Reader

Personally, I think the future is in messenger apps. Why login to Instagram or Facebook to see updates when you can have a family/friends group in Whatsapp/Telegram/Signal (pick your poison).

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Why login to anything at all? Why use whatsapp, telegram, or signal when every phone already does this and has been doing this for years? I have all of my friends and family in specific groups devoid of any specific apps.

To be fair people were saying the same thing 20 years ago when AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger and Yahoo messenger were the big thing. All messaging platforms will eventually die is my experience thus far.

SMS is slow and bad at rich media. Unless you're talking about iMessage - then you are logged in with your Apple ID - it's exactly like WhatsApp/Telegram + closed for people outside of your hardware ecosystem.

I have people in my groups that are on android. Doesn't seem to be an issue for them. Then again, if I want to have a real conversation, I just call them.

What would happen if those people on Android tried to convince you to let's say telegram?

Why rely on electronics at all when you can just send smoke signals? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In many countries, SMS isn't free (or didn't used to be). That's the reason why Whatsapp was successful in the first place, it was cheaper to use Whatsapp over data than to use SMS for texting.

A single data point: In Haiti, SMS was 1 HTG/message. With 10 HTG, you could activate a plan for the whole day that was more than enough to use WhatsApp for unlimited text and pictures (MMS was not a thing). Now, SMS is only used for carrier ads and 2FA.

because I want to know what my friends from college are up to? being in a messenger app group represents a much closer social relationship

So, voyeurism for curated updates. Personally I don't get it, and if old friends matter to me at all I'd message them to ask anyway.

The fact that you don't desire a more granular spectrum of communication with different people in your life should not prevent you from understanding why many people do want that.

> granular spectrum

That's generous.

After grad school, I completely lost interest in keeping up with people I wasn't in at least semi-regular contact with. The drip feed of info on social media is irritating to deal with. I feel like a 5 minute catchup st a 5-10 year reunion would achieve the exact same thing and be more pleasant to hear about and engage with.

There’s not really money in that, though. Messenger and Whatsapp are not pulling its weight in revenue, though not for lack of trying.

Also, it’s worth noting that HN isn’t exactly representative of the population at large.

Those systems don't scale past single digit membership numbers. You could maybe keep in touch with everyone if you all had lots of sharded, overlapping groups, but what a pain that would be!

Most people dont use instagram just to follow their friends, but strangers.

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