[chainsaw10]

> Why not standardize?

You can't. These apps don't federate, and not everyone uses all of them.

As I wrote this comment, I realized I use more apps than I thought.

I use SMS for some folks, Messenger for others, and Slack, Hangouts, and GroupMe for specific groups.

If I'm in a 5+ person group chat, I can't really ask everyone to move to something else. And I want to hear what's going on, so I keep the app around.

[IgorPartola]

The thing is that I know fOr a fact that in this particular group of people everyone has free SMS and/or iMessage. Moreover, they all know rah others' real names and phone numbers. Some talk on the phone, yet use Facebook for messages. These are not people who care about federation. It's just some kind of bizarre force of habit.

These are also all the people who have at least a thousand unread emails in their inboxes. I know one person who has roughly 60k unread emails dating back to 1997 when she created her AOL account. She is not a Luddite and very good at using other types of tech but somehow never mastered email.

[peterschroeder]

Haha that is hilarious, but honestly - I have around 3k unread emails too (I keep it up to date now, but these accumulated years ago!)

There is no doubt, people are going to struggle heavily to catch on to messaging. People seem to just now be getting social media (which is why it is dying) and now they have to adjst to messaging.

[peterschroeder]

Great point, I am not sure we can get to the point where we can encompass ever single scenario, but maybe. Group chats are something I have had a problem thinking through. At the moment, it is the number one thing on my list to find a solution for!