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Ask HN: Is online communication a solved problem?

• trussi 15y ago
  Are you interested in building cutting edge technology or building a business? If you're interested in building a business, then there's a huge amount of opportunity the online communications space! I could probably think of 5 cushy niches that will print $20k-60k per month with a very small team. Just look around you and identify occupations that involve communication and build a communication product around that occupation's process. It's a relatively simple and straight-forward process to building a business that lots of technical folks overlook because it's not sexy. I'll take profitable over sexy any day.
• stewie2 15y ago
  of course not! as long as there is internet censorship!
• jeffool 15y ago
  I'd still like to see open standards for IM and video/audio chat. And I think Google was ahead of itself with Wave. I'd use it as a back-end;a way to archive everything I say online in any format. Include pictures/files sent, maybe include those linked as well. And include correctable transcripts of audio in metadata for searching. See the competition now between Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. Consider how they could vary their services if they were all cataloging that much more. Maybe I'm idealistic, but I think there's still room for a "Google moment" where someone comes along and does something else so well, we're amazed that everyone hasn't always been doing it that way. Though honestly, at this taste, Google may just get there first.
• mooism2 15y ago
  There are lots of problems with online communication, but most of the big ones are sociological rather than technological problems. Tone of voice problems might have a technological component to the solution (c.f. spam). Automatic translation needs improving. Yes, it's incredible what's been achieved, but the translations are low quality.
• mike-cardwell 15y ago
  A major problem with online communication is the lack of privacy.
• dholowiski 15y ago
  I think the forms of communication are there, and they work well. What it's ripe for now is "convergence". Remember when your phone, internet, and TV were all separate things? Now it's just all IP packets coming over a big pipe (for most of us). Now, your phone, email, IM, SMS Facebook/Twitter/Google are all separate 'things'. I think we're in the early days of convergence, where all of these things are smooshing together. Think Google Voice (phone/sms) in your mailbox, or IM along with Voice/Video (Skype). And we still have too many identifiers... your skype id, your twitter id, your google + name, your home phone number your office phone number etc. etc. I really think the 'next big thing' will be the collapsing of all of these ID's and services into one agregator(probably google). I'm not saying it's a good thing, or that it will go smoothly, but it will happen.