Ask Slashdot: How Would You Solve the Instant Messaging Problem?

Artem Tashkinov writes: The XKCD comics has posted a wonderful and exceptionally relevant post in regard to the today's situation with various instant messaging solutions. E-mail has served us well in the past, however, it's not suitable for any real-time communications involving video and audio. XMPP was a nice idea, however, it has largely failed except for a low number of geeks who stick to it. Nowadays, some people install up to seven instant messengers to be able to keep up with various circles of people. How do you see this situation being resolved?

People desperately need a universal solution which is secure, decentralized, fault tolerant, not attached to your phone number, protects your privacy, supports video and audio chats and sending of files, works behind NATs and other firewalls and has the ability to send offline messages. I believe we need a modern version of SMTP. [How would you solve the instant messaging problem?]

Comments

Why do you believe that?

[LionKimbro]

"People desperately need a universal solution which is secure, decentralized, fault tolerant, not attached to your phone number, protects your privacy, supports video and audio chats and sending of files, works behind NATs and other firewalls and has the ability to send offline messages."

I don't see the sense in that. There's so much evidence to the contrary.

May as well say people desperately need a universal language. May I interest you in Esperanto?

Obligatory XKCD

[Imrik]

Obligatory XKCD

What problem? What PROBLEM?

[rickb928]

We have no instant messaging problem. We just have a robust constellation of competing systems, serving different communities. Why is that as problem?

- My teen has a Snapchat community, an Instagram community, as Facebook community, a Pinterest community she hides from me, a Twitter community she denies, an SMS constellation, and a variety of less visible communities gathered around video, music, photo, and mixed media paradigms. Some of the members overlap and are pasrt of several communities, some of these communities serve specific purposes, some are flash mobs instantiating and disappearing quickly. She manages her various communities by platform sometimes. These are 'where she is' at any given moment, sometimes in more than one place at a time. Oh, and she has email too. Several of them.

- I don't want a messaging platform mixing my Facebook and G+ communities. Leave them separate. Some overlap occurs, but I can manage that.

- SMS is not very useful on my desktop PC You want to do some Universal Inbox of 'Follow Me' concept for 'messaging'? Please don't.

- I get messages from entities also. When Amazon delivers an order to me, I get SMS, an email, An Amazon app notification. I got one when it was scheduled for delivery. And when it was 'shipped'. And when it was ordered. I get 12 messages for that one order. If I ordered multiple items from different fulfillers, add 9 messages for each different fulfillment channel. It pollutes my life. I turn some of them off, and they creep back in. Multiple apps send me notifications. They are 'messaging' me. Some let me turn off notificaiotns, abnd they keep right on sending them. Some 'apologize', they blame their own app, most ignore me. The cost of 'free' is real.

- I rarely use or send videos. They are horribly inefficient for simple, spoken or written communication that does not require visuals, and I loathe how-to videos that waste 70% of their duration on establishing shots, personal anecdotes, uncomfortable drivel, wasted time and noise. Give me a step-by-step please. A list.

- Email is highly underrated, still. I carry on conversations in email very well if the correspondents keep up. At work I get IMs from the loathsome Skype For Business client I'm given, and despite the 'instant' intention people regularly turn away and let a chat linger for minutes. Instant is the behavior, not the app. Email is better than you think.

- I'm guessing the real complaint is having to manage the address books, friend lists, etc. that these platforms use. I refuse to use my Facebook/Linkdin/Google Contacts to log into multiple platforms. I don't want to share my contact info in Facebook with my Linkedin community. Or with Google, G+, Pinterest, etc. I have good reasons to keep separate communities separate.

We do NOT have a problem with proliferation of messaging platforms. If you think you do, leave some of them. Everyone you deal with online is either a member of more than one of your communities, or they are as member of one you will keep.

No problem.