5 ms·

Three ideas about text messages

33 points by samber 10y ago

devnonymous 10y ago
I personally am unconvinced that the barrier to voice messaging is the interface. I think it is deeper than that. It is psychological. People are not (yet) comfortable speaking into inanimate objects that do not respond back instantly. I imagine that most people still feel silly speaking 'into' or 'at' an object and waiting. People don't type with their voice for the same reason they ask 'can you hear me' in a video conference or say 'hello' and wait for a response at an automatic gates, door bells that need people at the other end to respond or open, at drive in counters... etc. That said, I completely agree with the WhatsApp bit. It is changing the way people interact...and it is surprising that it hasn't been as popular in the US.
- ttam 10y ago
  > I think it is deeper than that. It is psychological. People are not (yet) comfortable speaking into inanimate objects that do not respond back instantly. I imagine that most people still feel silly speaking 'into' or 'at' an object and waiting. by "People" I assume you mean "Westerners". Go to China and be amazed at the amount of "People" using the voice messaging in WeChat I wonder if it pre-dates WhatsApp's voice messaging and it might've been a source of inspiration?
  - junto 10y ago
    It is also just habit. My aging father can't use the keyboard very well, but he has dictated letters as a lawyer for will over 30 years. I used to hear him sometimes as a child, and it was extremely fluid. It is just practice.
- drivingmenuts 10y ago
  Well, we already have text messaging - it comes with the phone, so we don't need to install another app to do pretty much the same thing. If WhatsApp was a default install, people would probably use it without thinking or caring about it, if it was named in a way that sounded anything remotely like it's purpose.
fimbaz 10y ago
I don't want other people to hear what I'm texting /shrug
anotheryou 10y ago
Whatsapp is popular outside the US, because many of us pay 10cents per sms.
- pjlegato 10y ago
  Exactly. Texts are either free or extremely cheap for almost all cell phone plans sold in the US. Providers in many other countries are still attempting to engage in rent-seeking behavior by levying absurdly high fees to send texts (relative to what it costs them to send the text). It seems that US providers got over that about 10 years ago. As a result, people in those areas are simply ignoring text messaging and using WhatsApp instead.
- gtf21 10y ago
  Unsure - texts have been free in the UK for years and the majority of the people I know use WhatsApp. I started using it instead of Apple's iMessage because it's just more reliable and universal.
- SlashmanX 10y ago
  Texts are mostly free in Ireland (depending on plan etc) and WhatsApp is huge here.
gtf21 10y ago
For me, there are two major barriers to voice-to-text dictation: 1) when I'm writing a message (probably due to laziness), I don't always have the full thing formed in my head. If I were dictating to a person, abortive words and phrases would just be ignored, but when dictating to a machine I have to manually go back to erase / correct mistakes. This can be a lot of work for a long message. 2) I don't always feel comfortable speaking my messages in public; it feels a little exposing. The nice thing about text-based communication is privacy.
- eridius 10y ago
  I'm pretty sure that Siri lets you give it instructions while dictating, e.g. "delete last word", though I almost never use dictation so I'm not too familiar with this feature. Of course, if the error happened 5 words ago, it can be too much trouble to fix it with dictation.
  - gtf21 10y ago
    I've found this pretty hit-and-miss. Sometimes Siri writes out my commands because they aren't actually commands...
- uola 10y ago
  I just don't see what the huge improvement would be. It's really not that hard to type compared to have voice recognition for all kinds of languages, dialects and accents. Not to speak of "press button, speak into phone, wait for translation, proof read text, press send, wait for confirmation, wait for response, do it all again". And while whatapp is nice, it's like five, or even ten, years ago nice by asian standards. The "west" fucked up by trying to protect telecom companies revenues so the networks become fragmented. Imagine if SMS instead was a free secure data channel with pubsub features, there would be huge incentives for interoperability. All in all I think the post kind of shows the different of mindset in the west vs. emerging markets. In emerging markets people use whatever they can however they can. If you go and visit suppliers in china they often have three phones and two desktop clients open at the same time. With built-in translation and sending files, pictures and money back and forth.
Touche 10y ago
My theory on WhatsApp is that the U.S. is that the iPhone is more popular here than anywhere else and many of the early adopter types that are needed to help a social network gain momentum use iPhones and have friends who mostly use iPhones, so iMessage is what is naturally used.
khedoros 10y ago
I'm a private person, and I frequently text things that would be difficult to vocalize. I'm not likely to use speech recognition often, regardless of how good it gets. I also go back and re-edit my messages before sending, fairly often. That would be a pain with voice. I often use Signal for messaging (same encryption that Whatsapp is now using). It defeats the point of encryption if I'm just sending the audio off to Google to transcribe, anyhow. As for Whatsapp: I don't have any clear reason to install that instead of Viber, Line, or a half-dozen other messaging apps. Instead, I use Signal for some paranoid friends and SMS/MMS for everyone else. I've tried other apps, but I don't really see the point of using them regularly.
- ngrilly 10y ago
  > I often use Signal for messaging (same encryption that Whatsapp is now using). It defeats the point of encryption if I'm just sending the audio off to Google to transcribe, anyhow. Really good point. > As for Whatsapp: I don't have any clear reason to install that instead of Viber, Line, or a half-dozen other messaging apps. Instead, I use Signal for some paranoid friends and SMS/MMS for everyone else. I've tried other apps, but I don't really see the point of using them regularly. I used to think the same about WhatsApp, and just use SMS/MMS and sometimes Signal. But WhatsApp is a really big improvement over SMS/MMS (the group messaging is very useful, you got typing notifications, encrypted calls, etc.) and it's more ubiquitous than Signal.
  - uola 10y ago
    While I like Signal, it's essentially dead in the water as a mainstream platform [0]. They were too late, the network effects are too great and they didn't execute the user part very well. The technology can do a lot of good for users of whatapp, but if they would have had a different perspective they could have exceeded that by becoming a protocol for encrypted communication. I think the would even have done a lot more good even just appealing to companies and make it a solution for company communication. Not as romantic though. [0] I think Hemlis were right when they came to this conclusion. [1] While it's useful if you need encrypted communication it's a mess for normal users. Not only is there a lot of confusion what it does and how it works, there's a lot of problems with notifications, messages and upgrades. And usage is extremely uncommon outside tech circles.
tbrock 10y ago
Apple murders this space. iMessage does all of the stuff whatsapp does regarding groups, etc AND it has a killer desktop client (the mac). Not only that but my non iMesssage text messages are proxied to my mac as well. I can communicate via wifi, on a plane, and talk to my sister in Belgium or my other sister in Argentina for free. I can choose to use text, voice, or video, crystal clear, no hassle, no money, no setup. However, the killer feature is seamlessly having conversation on my phone, then continuing on my phone, then continuing on my laptop... etc
- madeofpalk 10y ago
  Theoretically, and providing who you want to talk to has an iPhone. I use iMessage almost exclusively (with one group of friends on Facebook Messenger for some historic reason), but when a friend switched to Android, and because I don't use WhatsApp, my communication with him outside of work has dropped significantly.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- dilap 10y ago
  yeah but it totally falls down if you have any friends w/o iphones! are there any imessage clients for android? apple should just make an official one, and make it good. no immediate benefit, but long term it's always valuable to own the platform, and it's (amazingly) still ripe for the taking in the u.s. side note: it's amazing how shitty the native fb messenger and google hangout apps are for iphone.
  - moftz 10y ago
    I don't see Apple ever opening up iMessage for any device other than their own. iMessage has some neat features but nothing that is totally unique from things like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, PushBullet, etc. Apple isn't making any money directly off of iMessage, its a feature of their platform. Opening it up would just increase Apple's cost for running it and remove one of the last things that makes an iPhone unique over the other major flagship phones. It's their killer app in a world where all phones look alike and all run near identical hardware specs.
limsup 10y ago
iMessage is the standard messaging app in the US... or at least in my life.
- moftz 10y ago
  If its not iMessage on someones screen, I see Facebook Messenger get a lot of use in college. I don't see people using WhatsApp that much unless they are texting international or have a dirt cheap/beater phone which makes me think they don't pay for unlimited texting.
harigov 10y ago
I don't understand why phones don't come with a bluetooth ear piece that neatly fits in. How convenient would it be for something like Siri or Cortana to notify you through voice and asking for instructions without ever lifting your phone?
kalasoo 10y ago
Honestly, all the ideas explained in this article have been richly used in China. The excitement and extensive usage of groups with nearly all of your classmates, colleagues, families, random meetups and occasional affairs. You probably will find it noisy when you have to manage tens of groups and hundreds of users in each group. Then, the app is not only for tight connections but weak connections in business and personal interests. This is what happened with WeChat 2 years ago.

33 points by samber 10y ago

I personally am unconvinced that the barrier to voice messaging is the interface. I think it is deeper than that. It is psychological. People are not (yet) comfortable speaking into inanimate objects that do not respond back instantly. I imagine that most people still feel silly speaking 'into' or 'at' an object and waiting. People don't type with their voice for the same reason they ask 'can you hear me' in a video conference or say 'hello' and wait for a response at an automatic gates, door bells that need people at the other end to respond or open, at drive in counters... etc. That said, I completely agree with the WhatsApp bit. It is changing the way people interact...and it is surprising that it hasn't been as popular in the US.

ttam 10y ago
> I think it is deeper than that. It is psychological. People are not (yet) comfortable speaking into inanimate objects that do not respond back instantly. I imagine that most people still feel silly speaking 'into' or 'at' an object and waiting. by "People" I assume you mean "Westerners". Go to China and be amazed at the amount of "People" using the voice messaging in WeChat I wonder if it pre-dates WhatsApp's voice messaging and it might've been a source of inspiration?
- junto 10y ago
  It is also just habit. My aging father can't use the keyboard very well, but he has dictated letters as a lawyer for will over 30 years. I used to hear him sometimes as a child, and it was extremely fluid. It is just practice.
drivingmenuts 10y ago
Well, we already have text messaging - it comes with the phone, so we don't need to install another app to do pretty much the same thing. If WhatsApp was a default install, people would probably use it without thinking or caring about it, if it was named in a way that sounded anything remotely like it's purpose.

fimbaz 10y ago

I don't want other people to hear what I'm texting /shrug

anotheryou 10y ago

Whatsapp is popular outside the US, because many of us pay 10cents per sms.

pjlegato 10y ago
Exactly. Texts are either free or extremely cheap for almost all cell phone plans sold in the US. Providers in many other countries are still attempting to engage in rent-seeking behavior by levying absurdly high fees to send texts (relative to what it costs them to send the text). It seems that US providers got over that about 10 years ago. As a result, people in those areas are simply ignoring text messaging and using WhatsApp instead.
gtf21 10y ago
Unsure - texts have been free in the UK for years and the majority of the people I know use WhatsApp. I started using it instead of Apple's iMessage because it's just more reliable and universal.
SlashmanX 10y ago
Texts are mostly free in Ireland (depending on plan etc) and WhatsApp is huge here.

gtf21 10y ago

For me, there are two major barriers to voice-to-text dictation: 1) when I'm writing a message (probably due to laziness), I don't always have the full thing formed in my head. If I were dictating to a person, abortive words and phrases would just be ignored, but when dictating to a machine I have to manually go back to erase / correct mistakes. This can be a lot of work for a long message. 2) I don't always feel comfortable speaking my messages in public; it feels a little exposing. The nice thing about text-based communication is privacy.

eridius 10y ago
I'm pretty sure that Siri lets you give it instructions while dictating, e.g. "delete last word", though I almost never use dictation so I'm not too familiar with this feature. Of course, if the error happened 5 words ago, it can be too much trouble to fix it with dictation.
- gtf21 10y ago
  I've found this pretty hit-and-miss. Sometimes Siri writes out my commands because they aren't actually commands...
uola 10y ago
I just don't see what the huge improvement would be. It's really not that hard to type compared to have voice recognition for all kinds of languages, dialects and accents. Not to speak of "press button, speak into phone, wait for translation, proof read text, press send, wait for confirmation, wait for response, do it all again". And while whatapp is nice, it's like five, or even ten, years ago nice by asian standards. The "west" fucked up by trying to protect telecom companies revenues so the networks become fragmented. Imagine if SMS instead was a free secure data channel with pubsub features, there would be huge incentives for interoperability. All in all I think the post kind of shows the different of mindset in the west vs. emerging markets. In emerging markets people use whatever they can however they can. If you go and visit suppliers in china they often have three phones and two desktop clients open at the same time. With built-in translation and sending files, pictures and money back and forth.

Touche 10y ago

My theory on WhatsApp is that the U.S. is that the iPhone is more popular here than anywhere else and many of the early adopter types that are needed to help a social network gain momentum use iPhones and have friends who mostly use iPhones, so iMessage is what is naturally used.

khedoros 10y ago

I'm a private person, and I frequently text things that would be difficult to vocalize. I'm not likely to use speech recognition often, regardless of how good it gets. I also go back and re-edit my messages before sending, fairly often. That would be a pain with voice. I often use Signal for messaging (same encryption that Whatsapp is now using). It defeats the point of encryption if I'm just sending the audio off to Google to transcribe, anyhow. As for Whatsapp: I don't have any clear reason to install that instead of Viber, Line, or a half-dozen other messaging apps. Instead, I use Signal for some paranoid friends and SMS/MMS for everyone else. I've tried other apps, but I don't really see the point of using them regularly.

ngrilly 10y ago
> I often use Signal for messaging (same encryption that Whatsapp is now using). It defeats the point of encryption if I'm just sending the audio off to Google to transcribe, anyhow. Really good point. > As for Whatsapp: I don't have any clear reason to install that instead of Viber, Line, or a half-dozen other messaging apps. Instead, I use Signal for some paranoid friends and SMS/MMS for everyone else. I've tried other apps, but I don't really see the point of using them regularly. I used to think the same about WhatsApp, and just use SMS/MMS and sometimes Signal. But WhatsApp is a really big improvement over SMS/MMS (the group messaging is very useful, you got typing notifications, encrypted calls, etc.) and it's more ubiquitous than Signal.
- uola 10y ago
  While I like Signal, it's essentially dead in the water as a mainstream platform [0]. They were too late, the network effects are too great and they didn't execute the user part very well. The technology can do a lot of good for users of whatapp, but if they would have had a different perspective they could have exceeded that by becoming a protocol for encrypted communication. I think the would even have done a lot more good even just appealing to companies and make it a solution for company communication. Not as romantic though. [0] I think Hemlis were right when they came to this conclusion. [1] While it's useful if you need encrypted communication it's a mess for normal users. Not only is there a lot of confusion what it does and how it works, there's a lot of problems with notifications, messages and upgrades. And usage is extremely uncommon outside tech circles.

tbrock 10y ago

Apple murders this space. iMessage does all of the stuff whatsapp does regarding groups, etc AND it has a killer desktop client (the mac). Not only that but my non iMesssage text messages are proxied to my mac as well. I can communicate via wifi, on a plane, and talk to my sister in Belgium or my other sister in Argentina for free. I can choose to use text, voice, or video, crystal clear, no hassle, no money, no setup. However, the killer feature is seamlessly having conversation on my phone, then continuing on my phone, then continuing on my laptop... etc

madeofpalk 10y ago
Theoretically, and providing who you want to talk to has an iPhone. I use iMessage almost exclusively (with one group of friends on Facebook Messenger for some historic reason), but when a friend switched to Android, and because I don't use WhatsApp, my communication with him outside of work has dropped significantly.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
dilap 10y ago
yeah but it totally falls down if you have any friends w/o iphones! are there any imessage clients for android? apple should just make an official one, and make it good. no immediate benefit, but long term it's always valuable to own the platform, and it's (amazingly) still ripe for the taking in the u.s. side note: it's amazing how shitty the native fb messenger and google hangout apps are for iphone.
- moftz 10y ago
  I don't see Apple ever opening up iMessage for any device other than their own. iMessage has some neat features but nothing that is totally unique from things like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, PushBullet, etc. Apple isn't making any money directly off of iMessage, its a feature of their platform. Opening it up would just increase Apple's cost for running it and remove one of the last things that makes an iPhone unique over the other major flagship phones. It's their killer app in a world where all phones look alike and all run near identical hardware specs.

limsup 10y ago

iMessage is the standard messaging app in the US... or at least in my life.

moftz 10y ago
If its not iMessage on someones screen, I see Facebook Messenger get a lot of use in college. I don't see people using WhatsApp that much unless they are texting international or have a dirt cheap/beater phone which makes me think they don't pay for unlimited texting.

harigov 10y ago

I don't understand why phones don't come with a bluetooth ear piece that neatly fits in. How convenient would it be for something like Siri or Cortana to notify you through voice and asking for instructions without ever lifting your phone?

kalasoo 10y ago

Honestly, all the ideas explained in this article have been richly used in China. The excitement and extensive usage of groups with nearly all of your classmates, colleagues, families, random meetups and occasional affairs. You probably will find it noisy when you have to manage tens of groups and hundreds of users in each group. Then, the app is not only for tight connections but weak connections in business and personal interests. This is what happened with WeChat 2 years ago.