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Amazon May Unveil Its Own Messaging App (engadget.com)
The messaging app field is as hot as ever with Apple, Facebook and Google (among others) slugging it out... and Amazon appears to want in on the action. From a report: AFTVnews claims to have customer survey info revealing that Amazon is working on Anytime, a messaging app for Android, iOS and the desktop that promises a few twists on the usual formula. It has mainstays like message encryption, video, voice and (of course) stickers, but it reportedly has a few hooks that would make it easy to sign up and participate in group chats. You would only need a name to reach out to someone, for one thing -- no WhatsApp-style dependence on phone numbers here. You only have to use Twitter-style @ mentions to bring people into conversations or share photos, and you can color-code chats to identify the most important ones. Naturally, there are app-like functions (such as group music listening and food ordering) and promises of chatting with businesses for shopping or customer service.
just what we need, another messaging app
Good idea. If only someone had it before...
their collaboration app was.
If there's an executable in the AppData directory I consider their app a failure already.
If there's no Linux version - especially considering how much Amazon themselves relies on Linux it's an even bigger failure than I originally thought.
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Still missing a tvOS one.
Hopefully people i know will adopt it enough that i can finally ditch Messages and the iPhone.
I have heard of the use of contraceptive darts to control the deer population. Perhaps something similar can be done to black females? Considering that there are about 355 million Americans, blacks are about 13% of them, yet black males commit just over 50% of all American murders, this is clearly a matter of public safety.
If someone wants to use a messaging app, I'm sure by now they've decided on one they like. Unless this is linked into the reviews or questions on Amazon store I'm not sure the point.
If it IS linked into the Amazon store, I'm never asking/answering a question again and I'm not reviewing anything again.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
will we be hearing that Amazon is going to be selling our names and chat contents to third parties for advertising purposes?
Yes, because IRC is so very hard to use.
Obligatory XKCD : https://xkcd.com/1810/
For casuals, it really is. Anyone on IRC knows their way around a computer.
It's not. Just build a 'Messenger like' client and anyone will be able to use it easily.
Will $CURRENT_YEAR be the year of the Linux Desktop?
AIM
MSN
ICQ
Yahoo
all messengers you don't need a phone number for. Arguably better by default because you DON'T need one.
In chronological order of when I started using it, I now need to use, at least occasionally,
Personal Email Account
IRC
AOL/AIM
Spam Email Account
ICQ
Work Email Account
Cellular/SMS
BBM/PIN Messages
New Personal Email Account (the original one became Spam 2)
Facebook
Twitter
Google (Talk/Hangouts/Voice)
iMessage
WhatsApp
Snapchat
And....as soon as some idiot I know starts using it as their preferred form of communcation, drumroll please.....Amazon Messaging!
I'm honestly fine with Email, SMS/iMessage and Voice Calls. Because those systems are non-proprietary and basically universal. Of course trying to explain to someone under 30 the benefits of using a global standard system instead of some "you're the product" OTT messaging offends them, so rather than triggering them I just install the latest app-du-jour and watch my battery life start draining even faster.
Ain't the future grand?
WeChat embeds an impressive gamut of e-commerce within its messaging platform. Amazon may evolve some aspects tailoring for other markets where WeChat largely absent. Can imagine there is room for Amazon with its vast resources to have a decent chance to trial with perhaps some errors along the way but eventually refine a useful tool .
Just like their crappy phone...
Too many proprietary apps out there.
I'd rather use the FOSS Tor Messenger Beta
Amazon probably has to do this because they need lots and lots of data for their future AI plans.
My favorite chat app is the one that lets me send real time voice, bidirectionally to everyone in the world -- it's called a telephone. You kids should try it once you are off my lawn. Seriously: How are messaging apps at all this important?
it's called XMPP
IRC doesn't suit the same purpose
Looks like you didn't get my sarcasm.
I just can't believe people are still using, and even worse, designing protocols based on phone numbers as an identifier.
Offenders include iMessage, SMS, Whatsapp and many more crappy protocols designed to reach a SIM card instead of a person.
We are still getting fucking iframe banners with a static position at the top that covers 33% of our display.
Slashdot is fucking broke, you annoy us with shit like this and you wonder why you are losing readers. Fucking imbeciles.
#DeleteFacebook
Anything that takes down Facebook and Twitter is welcome.
iMessage is NOT based on phone numbers but on Apple accounts. Otherwise how would people on Macs and iPods/iPads use it?
#DeleteFacebook
Amazon: Try and stop us!
Amazon's consumer facing software is awful. I assume they outsource it to the cheapest Indian body shop they can find.
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What's so bad? It makes it backward-compatible with just about any mobile phone made in the last 20 years.
It's being used with limited functionality on these devices.
Apple wants you to have an iPhone, and your phone number is your main identifier on iMessage, the one people are supposed to use when contacting you, even if the message also gets delivered to your Mac.
Anyways, even without that huge flaw, iMessage still shouldn't be used as it's single-vendor. Who wants a single-vendor messaging protocol? Nobody only has friends with Apple devices.
but incompatible with any internet-connected device made since... forever.
The good way to be backward compatible with dumb phones is to provide SMS gateways, such as SMS to email. No reason why we couldn't make SMS to XMPP gateways. But those with Internet access on their phone (most people these days) shouldn't be stuck using SMS, and shouldn't have to suffer phone numbers as identifiers.
Prediction: it will go down in flames.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
I rather like Telegram's use of phone numbers to help add people to your contacts list.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It's time for the EU to mandate an open standard for messaging apps so you can choose the one you like and not the one most of your friends use.
-- Cheers!
It could be used as an optional, secondary way of adding someone to your list (just like searching by name and city). But it should never be the primary ID. That's just plain stupid. People can have more than one phone, many people can share a phone number, phone numbers are country based, sometimes you can't even keep it when switching provider within the same country. They are also hard to remember. But the main reason is that most internet connected devices don't have a phone number. Telegram sucks so much that you can't use it on a PC unless you also have a cell phone. They do have a desktop web client, but here is what happens when you try to login, you get the following error message:
sign up with Android / iPhone first
which is a truly ugly, artificial limitation
My parents share an email address, so I'd argue that email addresses aren't a great way to identify people either. (or that my parents have a weird policy)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
At least with email your parents could create a second one for free if they wanted to. To get a phone number, you must usually pay.