Hacker News Reader

Comment by dpkirchner | Hacker News Reader

Consider the opposite direction: what if you want to message someone? What if you haven't messaged them in a while? Imagine you have seven messaging apps installed, some of the names you've forgotten ("Discord", is that obviously a messaging app?). Imagine you know that they're reachable somewhere just not exactly where.

View on HN

I honestly have never had this issue. It's really about focus and effort. If the person is important enough, I will most likely remember how to contact them. I also mostly use email for all important communications so that remains searchable. The other chat apps are all for casual friends and acquaintances that if lost, well so be it.

None of my older relatives use email. They can text however (or iMessage, since it is transparent). Not everyone cares so little for friends and acquaintances.

> Not everyone cares so little for friends and acquaintances.

You misunderstand. I have had to use various apps to communicate with people I dont need to talk to again, e.g. hotel and airbnb hosts in different countries which use these services. Like the time I had to install whatsapp in Spain to get into a boutique hotel. Sometimes you are meeting someone, e.g. a potential client who only uses signal so I install signal for our meeting and promptly uninstall it after we are done communicating. I have also had to install signal when coordinating with others for a hackathon and dumped it afterwards as we all had email addresses.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com