Ask HN: What do you think about the messaging hype? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What do you think about the messaging hype?

2 pointstomashertus2 comments

Hi HN,

recently, we have seen outburst of new messaging apps and it seems like everyone is going nuts about new messaging apps and platform. Slack, Messenger, Promtpapp - you name it. It all seems like messaging is becoming new channel for interaction with services of all kinds. Apparently they are trying to follow success of Chinese WeChat or Slack in the B2B arena.

I haven't really seen live discussion here lately about this phenomena. Do you guys think that this is really new era, which can follow similar pattern as opening of Apple's and Google's app stores?

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There has always been a boom market in messaging going back to ICQ (and maybe earlier). The big problem is: companies want money, so they don't want to make the mistake of IRC as being 100% free and open and decentralized.

The cycle will continue for the foreseeable future: people want to communicate, someone creates a new communication app for modern platforms (or a cheaper way of communicating than had come before), old communication apps fall out of fashion, new communication app stagnates, someone creates new communication app for more modern times, rinse, repeat.

One day we'll have a majority marketshare 3d telepresence app, a majority marketshare direct mindsharing app, a majority marketshare sensorium sharing app, etc. It's just things people want that we don't have the technical capability (or wider vision) to instantiate into reality yet.

As far as "value add" or "marketplaces" built around chat apps, just ask yourself how many AOL Channels are still profitable today. We're stuck living in the times we inhabit, so sometimes there's short term value to capture, but in the longer term, everything fades.

It's like the blogging site boom from back in the day. Lots of platforms emerged and eventually the market coalesced into a couple major players that drive a lot of the traffic now. I think the same thing will happen to this market. We're getting a lot of different ideas and approaches being thrown at the market and the winning feature set(s) will become the dominant ones either incorporated into most apps or, like the blogs of yesteryear, we'll get a couple major messaging players like we have a couple major email/blog players that dominate most of the landscape.

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