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Comment by jlmorton | Hacker News Reader

> Messaging apps are the third phase of platforms on which digital audiences congregate. First came websites, then social networks and now messaging apps—which collectively accounted for 7.7 billion monthly active users (MAUs) at the end of 2017, up from 6.6 billion in 2016 and 5.5 billion in 2015. This is a massive segment that continues to grow at pace.

That's a pretty misleading claim. I guess I sort of understand what's being expressed here, but it feels weird to just add up every platform's monthly active users and come up with a number larger than the population of the Earth.

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Also, chat programs are older than social networks. You could even say it's the only application with direct lineage to using a phone as a phone (and let's not forget about texting).

So how can they be the third phase after regular websites and then social networks?

yeah, the best parts of the internet in the late 90s was chats and messenger apps.

remember excite chat? i loved that, but mostly used irc.

messenger wise, started using icq but people (me included) hated remembering a huge number to log in. AIM was great though, and msn messenger was great because it tied right into your email too.

My brother and I spent hours every evening on a chat service called the Palace. I don't know what happened to it but it was probably responsible for at least a full point off my grade average. :)

Somewhere ICQ is rolling in its grave.

Somewhere, some group of friends is still hanging out in an IRC channel that started in 1998

Well I still haven't seen a modern chat application which gives all the IRC features. Its like they have deliberately removed all the good features.

Yeah, and one of the most important features of IRC being "lightweight native client, integrating seamlessly with my environment". Somehow, these "modern" chat systems just can't do that.

Because that would require opening up either the client or the protocol, both of which are anathema to people trying to make money from those systems.

Being optimized for communication and being optimized for making money are mutually exclusive goals.

I’ve never used IRC before, so I’m honestly curious, what features does IRC have that Slack(/Discord) don’t or can’t have through extensions like bots and plugins?

slack is based on IRC

real time typing in icq was pretty cool. I wonder if any other system ever replicated that?

ytalk :P

I'm still doing that today with people I met in 1995 or so.

Facebook has a messaging app problem, same as Google. Between those two companies they must have a dozen shitty apps, when icq solved that problem 10-15 years ago.

I still remember my icq number: 5588776

Just saw this, and took a random stab at my number and password and to my massive surprise I got in! 50530999

My username still reflects when I played starsiege as a kid at some silly time over a dial up modem.. Wow!

If you remember your password, you can still log into it at https://web.icq.com/

totally logged into my account for the first time in like 16-17 years. can't believe the service is still up and running, and that I haven't changed my default password since then... lol

73117649 :D

Agreed for Google, but what are facebooks "dozen shitty [messaging] apps"? They own Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp and Instagram. Pretty much all relevant DM vectors apart from Snapchat and twitter.

5251730

The last release of ICQ was in 2016. Not in the grave yet. :)

The next phase will be nearby events happening now apps. I want to meet with real people in real time.

it's called Tinder

You use Tinder to casually just meet up with people of either gender?

Excuse me but... How can messaging apps have more users than humans on Earth? What part of that data am I missing?

People often use multiple different messaging apps.

And some people have multiple accounts. Lots of these apps (Twitter, Instagram, etc) have corporate users. The corporate spokesperson on twitter probably also has a personal account.

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