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It might look like this because new line in facebook chat is "shift+enter", I believe only a few percent of facebook users know that shortcut. So if you want to create a longer message on facebook than "sup? wanna hangout?" you probably will compose a few messages and treat them as one.

>It might look like this because new line in facebook chat is "shift+enter", I believe only a few percent of facebook users know that shortcut

This convention is used in a lot of IMs on desktop that predate Facebook

Yes, and only a small percentage of users knew about it then too.

> It might look like this because new line in facebook chat is "shift+enter", I believe only a few percent of facebook users know that shortcut

Perhaps, and maybe Facebook should be criticized for making shift+enter less obvious. But it's still there and, in general, when I see an "email-like" Facebook message it has line breaks done properly.

I have to agree. Or even if people know of it, it's simply easier to press Enter than Shift + Enter.

Thinking about it I don't think I know a single person who uses shift + enter aside from myself. I went back and checked my last 20 chats...no one used it. In a way, the separate messages help organize separate thoughts a bit better.

> It might look like this because new line in facebook chat is "shift+enter"

Sadly, it depends on the exact input field used. I believe that in full-conversation, "shift+enter" means "send", but in brief mode, "shift+enter" means "newline".

Shift+enter is new line in all the contexts, though. Are you quite certain you've seen it elsewise?

There used to be a difference between what shift+enter meant on facebook. I'm glad to hear they corrected it.

This is not the case with my setup. Win7 Chrome

IIRC or previously, there was a checkbox in chat (esp. fullscreen chat) that changes the behavior of enter - newline or send message.

> sending more messages before a response signals social awkwardness and desperation.

I just fundamentally disagree. I'll often have text convos where we're both spitballing multiple messages and crossed thoughts all because each individual line is sent separately. Similarly when replying to someone who sent me a long message I will often have a send event per point.

Facebook, for example, has a "shift to send" option which pretty much encapsulates this thinking of each pseudo paragraph will be a separate message and that's fine, normal, it'll only show as one "new" message on my facebook homepage.

Equating voicemail/email to IM is just absurd since they represent longform communication mediums, not shortform ones.

But I assume you're doing this with a friend with whom you often text. It's a totally different situation when you're texting with an acquaintance, especially a new one. You have less history to base judgments off of, so you rely on heuristics to a much greater degree (the above quote being one of them).

To be clear, I don't actually think this means you're desperate.

I'm just offering an alternative (and, in my view, more consistent) explanation for the survey's results.

> This changes the perception drastically

That's the entire point. Different UI's can radically change perception!

Facebook could have merged those four messages. Some UIs do that. In Slack there is no different in sending 1 message on 4 lines or 4 messages each 1 line each. The observable result is identical.

But Facebook didn't do that. So the perception was one thing. A different UI and it'd be perceived differently. Just like the author was trying to say!

The problem is that the author didn't give the same input to all 3 UIs. On Facebook, she sent each paragraph as a new message but the "control" was presented as a single message.

Email clients also don't merge multiple messages sent in rapid succession. Does that mean they're "twisting your words?"

I'd argue the input was the same in the three cases: "Hey! Press enter What a show last night! Pretty sure my ears will be ringing for the next week. lol enter [etc.]"

The way the UI handled those "enters" made all the difference.

I don't understand this notion.

I disagree that sending more messages before a response is a "universal trait of messaging" that signals social awkwardness and desperation.

I communicate with many of my friends of FB Messenger (and SMS etc.) and write my thoughts down quite liberally, spreading them across several different "messages". Sometimes I'll literally type a paragraph by typing one sentence at a time and pressing enter after completing each one. I guess it's a "fuck it, we'll do it live" mentality to writing.

As an aside, I'd love to see some research or discussion (perhaps someone knowledgeable can point it out?) about that very phenomena - writing very short sentences in succession over messenger and the relation of that to a in-person conversation.

It’s a fair comparison … just because your own suspicions are confirmed doesn’t mean it’s not one.

To be honest, I find this criticism baffling and confusing. I would agree that I would want to dig deeper now and figure out the exact variables that explain the difference – but what we have here is an extremely compelling starting point and an extremely interesting difference.

How is it a fair comparison though? In a study, you should clearly express what variable(s) you're changing with each variation and only change those.

In this case, the author varied both the number of messages and the medium. That makes it impossible to say which is actually the cause of the effect, and I speculate that the number of messages is the better explanation.

It's like comparing the reliability of USPS and UPS by sending 4 different packages on the former and 1 on the latter. That's obviously not a valid study.

The author did not vary the number of messages. The author sent the same number of messages in both cases. Facebook's "Full Conversation" view automatically collapses multiple messages together, but the author was explicit in that they sent the messages in exactly the same fashion:

"As well, there have been a few comments on how each messaged as typed. Please note that both Facebook Chat and Facebook Full Conversation allow you to send a new message on pressing enter, which I did in both cases. The input was identical, the visual output was not."

There are many hundreds of variables that are different between the variants … you chose to focus on this one for some weird reason. Such is comm research. There is no other way, there really isn’t.

This makes sense as a starting point.

Furthermore doesn't facebook actually merge messages sent in quick succession? So you'd only get this effect if the messages were sent with some decent time between them, which might also be what people are reacting to.

You have to keep the context of the medium in mind when describing this. Voicemails and emails are one thing and are meant to carry an entire cohesive message of longer sizes.

Chat is intrinsically different and almost every single chat conversation I've had in my life has responses broken down into multiple lines. It's just the way thought is translated and how it's often easier to send a line in most apps then try to enter multiple paragraphs. It's also fairly easy for the receiving party to see that the "full" message is still pending and they'll wait until all the lines are received.

Chat also seems to have a slow-start (like TCP) personality where each party initially sets up the connection with a short "hi" first before really getting into conversation. Even though it can be asynchronous like the other types, it's mostly used in a constant synchronous fashion.

"As well, there have been a few comments on how each messaged as typed. Please note that both Facebook Chat and Facebook Full Conversation allow you to send a new message on pressing enter, which I did in both cases. The input was identical, the visual output was not." -Author update.

If you're on a phone or a tablet, there is no way to press shift-enter. So if you did the exact same sequence of keystrokes into Faceboom chat or email you'd get different results.

For Facebook Messenger on iOS , the "return" button on the keyboard only creates line breaks. To send the message you have to click the send button above the keyboard.

Huh, didn't know that. I never use Messenger.