4 ms·

I used WhatsApp to stay away from FB's chat app. Telegram is picking up popularity within my circles... I'll default to that

by antr 13y ago

carlozt03 13y ago
How'd you get your friends to move over to Telegram? I'm trying to get that ball moving with my circle of friends.
- antr 13y ago
  I didn't... they started showing up on my contact list. I then found out that they read about the app on the newspaper.
- malandrew 13y ago
  Better yet, how do we get people to move to something distributed so that Facebook (or Google or anyone else) cannot acquire the service. If we just move to another decentralized messaging service, that service will eventually get gobbled up as well, and we'll have to rinse and repeat.
  - morganherlocker 13y ago
    I suppose that is its own form of decentralization.
  - roc 13y ago
    Even distributed protocols aren't a silver bullet. Embrace and extend can make short work of that. As can joining standards boards and playing political games. As can simply turning off federation. Sometimes I think HTTP and SMTP are only limping along because there's a large enough enterprise base that doesn't want to see any changes at all. Maybe that presents a defense (get your competing protocol entrenched in corporate IT), but not many technologies get birthed out to the consumer space from the enterprise space the way http and smtp did.
  - qq66 13y ago
    There's no such thing as a decentralized conmunications tool. Even email requires the centralization provided by ICANN.
    - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
      You can send email without using DNS. I'm not sure I'd call IP addresses centralised, if perhaps you were thinking of ICANN's running of IANA? If you consider the internet inherently "centralised" then surely you'd still find CB radio or similar to be decentralised. Or do you also consider the allocation of wavebands to be "centralised"?
      - michaelmior 13y ago
        Depends on how far you want to push the definition of decentralized. The routing infrastructure of the Internet is still fairly centralized as is the allocation of IP addresses.
  - jfoster 13y ago
    Making a messaging service successful requires huge amounts of time and effort. If it's so decentralized that it cannot even be acquired, how could it get built? To be clear, I don't doubt that the technical side is very feasible. It's the user acquisition side that seems improbable except as a commercial venture.
  - seanalltogether 13y ago
    I think the problem is that historically, we only ever collectively solved the email server. It's unfortunate that we didn't solve the more general case of communication through a server hub. We shouldn't have email addresses, we should have connection addresses, that provide access to mail, chat, audio, video, whatever.
muyuu 13y ago
LINE ( http://line.me/en/ http://line.me/en/ ) is massive in Asia and some European markets.
iamjustin 13y ago
Thanks for the tip about Telegram. It's really slick! And it has desktop clients too! Unofficial ones, but still… definitely an improvement from WhatsApp or Hangouts.
recursive 13y ago
Is there some reason people don't like sms?
- chockablock 13y ago
  per-message billing by telcos, high costs for international messages, no identity management (only tied to phone #), not cross-platform, character limits (MMS, the workaround, is historically janky), no delivery confirmation, lack of end-to-end encryption. Shall I go on? the only thing it has going for it (and it's a big one) is ubiquity.
  - recursive 13y ago
    I see. No one I text pays per message or is in a different country. I'm not sure what you mean by "cross-platform", since every phone you can buy supports it as far as I know. The character limit is a small issue. The delivery confirmation is a bigger issue to me. I don't care about end-to-end encryption when one of those ends is a major company that has ties to state-sponsored surveillance.
usethis 13y ago
Just started using Telegram, it's awesome and so fast. Also their desktop apps are very useful.

I used WhatsApp to stay away from FB's chat app. Telegram is picking up popularity within my circles... I'll default to that

by antr 13y ago

I used WhatsApp to stay away from FB's chat app. Telegram is picking up popularity within my circles... I'll default to that

carlozt03 13y ago

How'd you get your friends to move over to Telegram? I'm trying to get that ball moving with my circle of friends.

antr 13y ago
I didn't... they started showing up on my contact list. I then found out that they read about the app on the newspaper.
malandrew 13y ago
Better yet, how do we get people to move to something distributed so that Facebook (or Google or anyone else) cannot acquire the service. If we just move to another decentralized messaging service, that service will eventually get gobbled up as well, and we'll have to rinse and repeat.
- morganherlocker 13y ago
  I suppose that is its own form of decentralization.
- roc 13y ago
  Even distributed protocols aren't a silver bullet. Embrace and extend can make short work of that. As can joining standards boards and playing political games. As can simply turning off federation. Sometimes I think HTTP and SMTP are only limping along because there's a large enough enterprise base that doesn't want to see any changes at all. Maybe that presents a defense (get your competing protocol entrenched in corporate IT), but not many technologies get birthed out to the consumer space from the enterprise space the way http and smtp did.
- qq66 13y ago
  There's no such thing as a decentralized conmunications tool. Even email requires the centralization provided by ICANN.
  - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
    You can send email without using DNS. I'm not sure I'd call IP addresses centralised, if perhaps you were thinking of ICANN's running of IANA? If you consider the internet inherently "centralised" then surely you'd still find CB radio or similar to be decentralised. Or do you also consider the allocation of wavebands to be "centralised"?
    - michaelmior 13y ago
      Depends on how far you want to push the definition of decentralized. The routing infrastructure of the Internet is still fairly centralized as is the allocation of IP addresses.
- jfoster 13y ago
  Making a messaging service successful requires huge amounts of time and effort. If it's so decentralized that it cannot even be acquired, how could it get built? To be clear, I don't doubt that the technical side is very feasible. It's the user acquisition side that seems improbable except as a commercial venture.
- seanalltogether 13y ago
  I think the problem is that historically, we only ever collectively solved the email server. It's unfortunate that we didn't solve the more general case of communication through a server hub. We shouldn't have email addresses, we should have connection addresses, that provide access to mail, chat, audio, video, whatever.

muyuu 13y ago

LINE ( http://line.me/en/ http://line.me/en/ ) is massive in Asia and some European markets.

iamjustin 13y ago

Thanks for the tip about Telegram. It's really slick! And it has desktop clients too! Unofficial ones, but still… definitely an improvement from WhatsApp or Hangouts.

recursive 13y ago

Is there some reason people don't like sms?

chockablock 13y ago
per-message billing by telcos, high costs for international messages, no identity management (only tied to phone #), not cross-platform, character limits (MMS, the workaround, is historically janky), no delivery confirmation, lack of end-to-end encryption. Shall I go on? the only thing it has going for it (and it's a big one) is ubiquity.
- recursive 13y ago
  I see. No one I text pays per message or is in a different country. I'm not sure what you mean by "cross-platform", since every phone you can buy supports it as far as I know. The character limit is a small issue. The delivery confirmation is a bigger issue to me. I don't care about end-to-end encryption when one of those ends is a major company that has ties to state-sponsored surveillance.

usethis 13y ago

Just started using Telegram, it's awesome and so fast. Also their desktop apps are very useful.