Slashdot Mirror
The Balkanization of Chatting
JThaddeus writes "Slashdot's own (or former) CmdrTaco has a posting on the Washington Post's website where he discusses how chat apps have overtaken SMS. Yeah, they are cheap. There's no telecom fee per message or for some number of messages per month. However 'The problem of course is that these systems are annoyingly incompatible with each other. My phone can buzz with chat notifications from 3 different apps at any moment. My desktop has even more scattered across browser tabs and standalone apps.' Ditto, nor do I want to hassle learning some app or trying to understand its who's-listening settings. I'll stick to email and to occasional SMS."
pidgin does it everywhere for free, and it can do SMS via AOL.
IRC is in fact still a robust system for talking to people by text. Data organized into relevant streams called channels, with mechanisms for self-policing built in. There's a lot of modernity to, say, skype, but fundamentally, IRC has all the basic mechanisms done well in an open way. But unlike these services, IRC is automatically balkanized, not only do your friends have to use the same technology, they have to use the same IRC networks.