5 ms·

It's been a persistent source of black comedy that basic messaging across almost every platform with even some encryption, mixed media, workable audio and some

It's been a persistent source of black comedy that basic messaging across almost every platform with even some encryption, mixed media, workable audio and some experimental video chat was like a solved problem in 2008 and seemed like it would be totally in the bag and then a complete dumpster fire again by about 2016. Even people like me that hated MS and AOL had chat clients that could communicate with their networks and Google Talk/Hangouts and MSN Messenger were both great for what they were. At the time I felt like we had lost something important by moving to "push" networks versus e-mail but I'd take those days now in a heartbeat. Maybe by 2030, something like Matrix will have us back to what XMPP was doing and I'll be able to send a message to someone's shitty Teams from whatever Google's fifth chat replacement is by then. It's even worse when I'm traveling in east Asia and there are like 5 different Korean and several Chinese chat networks in addition to WhatsApp trying to be the next LINE and becoming the one-stop access point for nearly everything. I'm honestly expecting to see a 7-11 integrated messaging network at some point.

genewitch 5y ago
For cross service integration I recommend mattermost, too. It has plugins and a simple enough API you can use anything with almost anything else, even if you don't want to use mattermost clients.
mr_toad 5y ago
For whatever reason enterprise was slow to adopt messaging. I think a lot of this floundering about by Microsoft was an attempt to get wide scale enterprise adoption of a messaging protocol, and make money off of it.
jareklupinski 5y ago
We need a new Pidgin https://www.pidgin.im/ https://www.pidgin.im/ :( There were a few brief wonderful years when I had AIM, FB Messenger, GChat, and a few lesser known protocols all in different tabs in the same window. It's not like they all needed different interfaces; same data, different wire-noise...
- lelandfe 5y ago
  I'd forgotten about that era of my life! I used Adium on OS X and had customized so much about it, down to the individual sounds played when certain friends (and crushes) came online. And I was able to essentially ignore what platform I was using to talk on: AIM friends and GChat friends appeared side-by-side. What a dream.
  - Melatonic 5y ago
    Trillian here for me! That shit was AWESOME. So much customization too of the UI. I didnt realize I had trillian setup to log all my conversations to file and I found the logs recently when going through a very, very old harddrive. Middleschool me was cringey as fuck
  - SllX 5y ago
    Loved Adium. Upsides: I no longer had to care what messenger my friends used, it was all the same to me. Extensible and theme-able which was just the way I liked my software at the time. Growl integration. Downsides: I made the mistake of installing and using a FFVII-themed sound pack that invoked a Pavlovian response in me every time I heard certain sound effects from that game. Took the better part of a decade after I stopped using Adium to shake that off.

genewitch 5y ago

For cross service integration I recommend mattermost, too. It has plugins and a simple enough API you can use anything with almost anything else, even if you don't want to use mattermost clients.

mr_toad 5y ago

For whatever reason enterprise was slow to adopt messaging. I think a lot of this floundering about by Microsoft was an attempt to get wide scale enterprise adoption of a messaging protocol, and make money off of it.

jareklupinski 5y ago

We need a new Pidgin https://www.pidgin.im/ https://www.pidgin.im/ :( There were a few brief wonderful years when I had AIM, FB Messenger, GChat, and a few lesser known protocols all in different tabs in the same window. It's not like they all needed different interfaces; same data, different wire-noise...

lelandfe 5y ago
I'd forgotten about that era of my life! I used Adium on OS X and had customized so much about it, down to the individual sounds played when certain friends (and crushes) came online. And I was able to essentially ignore what platform I was using to talk on: AIM friends and GChat friends appeared side-by-side. What a dream.
- Melatonic 5y ago
  Trillian here for me! That shit was AWESOME. So much customization too of the UI. I didnt realize I had trillian setup to log all my conversations to file and I found the logs recently when going through a very, very old harddrive. Middleschool me was cringey as fuck
- SllX 5y ago
  Loved Adium. Upsides: I no longer had to care what messenger my friends used, it was all the same to me. Extensible and theme-able which was just the way I liked my software at the time. Growl integration. Downsides: I made the mistake of installing and using a FFVII-themed sound pack that invoked a Pavlovian response in me every time I heard certain sound effects from that game. Took the better part of a decade after I stopped using Adium to shake that off.