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For reasons that have never been entirely clear to me, chat has been reinvented more times than perhaps any other common Internet utility, and every time it is,

For reasons that have never been entirely clear to me, chat has been reinvented more times than perhaps any other common Internet utility, and every time it is, there are no shortage of investors lined up for it. I think the cycle is largely driven by fashion, as youth get online and demand chat apps that are distinct (if not different in any meaningful functional way) from the existing ones.

abraae 11y ago
Perhaps because "chat" is the oldest human activity there is, so the idea that chat will ever be "done" is a chimera.
- vannevar 11y ago
  If the medium is the message, then yes. A chat on ICQ is different from a chat on WhatsApp, because the app itself is part of the tribal identity. Like slang for existing words. So even if the functionality stays identical (and I would argue that it has, there's only so much you can do with a chat app), the cultural context of the app is different.
tambourine_man 11y ago
Yes, I have thought about that as well many times. AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, Gtalk, WhatsApp, WeChat, iMessage… Perhaps because the hard part of creating an online chat is the network effect and scaling, everyone thinks they can have shot. With so many being thrown at the wall, eventually a lot of them stick.
moonshinefe 11y ago
I have the same thought. Heck, voice and video chat, file sharing, even primitive forms of 'integrations' (in the form of IRC bots and the like) have been around for many years at this point. I remember the Yahoo messengers and the MSN messengers of yore having a majority of the features that I see in the modern chat clients. It really perplexes me that these new chat services are apparently worth so much money. Yes, you took some trends and put everything into a convenient package. Is that alone worth billions of dollars? The actual technical innovation is minimal.

abraae 11y ago

Perhaps because "chat" is the oldest human activity there is, so the idea that chat will ever be "done" is a chimera.

vannevar 11y ago
If the medium is the message, then yes. A chat on ICQ is different from a chat on WhatsApp, because the app itself is part of the tribal identity. Like slang for existing words. So even if the functionality stays identical (and I would argue that it has, there's only so much you can do with a chat app), the cultural context of the app is different.

tambourine_man 11y ago

Yes, I have thought about that as well many times. AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, Gtalk, WhatsApp, WeChat, iMessage… Perhaps because the hard part of creating an online chat is the network effect and scaling, everyone thinks they can have shot. With so many being thrown at the wall, eventually a lot of them stick.

moonshinefe 11y ago

I have the same thought. Heck, voice and video chat, file sharing, even primitive forms of 'integrations' (in the form of IRC bots and the like) have been around for many years at this point. I remember the Yahoo messengers and the MSN messengers of yore having a majority of the features that I see in the modern chat clients. It really perplexes me that these new chat services are apparently worth so much money. Yes, you took some trends and put everything into a convenient package. Is that alone worth billions of dollars? The actual technical innovation is minimal.