5 ms·
There's been such an enormous amount of churn in the IM client market for an industry that hasn't seen significant innovation since the days of dial-up.
by tootie 6y ago
There's been such an enormous amount of churn in the IM client market for an industry that hasn't seen significant innovation since the days of dial-up.
- flatiron 6y agoI think discord/slack/teams seem to have shaken up the IM market recently.
- tootie 6y agoOf course, and we'll new dominant players in 5 years. My point is just that none of these do anything radically different from IRC. Channel-based as the primary mode (as opposed to direct) is a bit of paradigm shift in terms of UX, but it's just a veneer on group chats that have existed forever. And obviously, they've all been adapted to web/smartphones as opposed to terminal. But in terms of what kind of communication they enable, it's absolutely nothing new. I could do this kind of thing on Quantum Link on my Commodore.
- anthony_barker 6y agoi like Matrix Element as they are trying to redo IRC with encryption.
- symlinkk 6y agoWow, you could send videos, pictures, and markdown on your Commodore?
- handoflixue 6y agoThey did make modems for the Commodore, yes... The big obstacle to sending video back in those days was one of bandwidth and storage space - it's not difficult to add to the protocols. IRC is a pretty well-known client for easily sending files - it's purely a design decision not to display them in-line like Discord and Slack.
- canofbars 6y ago>My point is just that none of these do anything radically different from IRC. This is such an IRC user take. On the same level as not understanding what the point of dropbox is when FTP exists. The failure of FOSS to understand what users actually want is the reason proprietary platforms took off. Matrix is the first attempt to create something similar to what users use and want. I thought about writing a list of all the things I use on discord which IRC doesn't support but it would be a waste of time because its almost everything discord does. Even basic sending and receiving messages is close to impossible with irc on mobile unless you use a 3rd party service to translate the protocol in to something mobile friendly.
- proverbialbunny 6y agoI'd consider stickies a decent jump. My past self never would have predicted the world has moved to a form of hieroglyphics of fuzzy animals to talk to each other.
- arbitrage 6y agoit's semantics without slavish adherence to syntax. it's really not that much of a stretch to see that the imbuing of ambiguity is a net positive to some people in some circumstances, and is a natural evolution of formalized language systems in a non-optimally constrained environment.
- canofbars 6y agoStickers are such an underrated feature, especially platforms that allow user generated sticker packs. Its the number one feature on Telegram imo and the primary reason a lot of people I know use it over discord.
- realityking 6y agoThe big revolution in IM clients/protocol was the move to mobile. All the old protocols require a constant connection to the server to receive new messages. They were not designed with push notifications in mind. I remember some early IM clients for the iPhone that you had to keep open to be alerted to a new message. Not fun.