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Comment by taneem | Hacker News Reader

I think the biggest challenge to this is Facebook itself (and other messaging/social apps). How many millennials make phone calls frequently to more than 5-10 close people any more? Everyone just uses messaging or social apps to stay in touch.

I don't need this to give me social context to my wife or my parents etc. calling me. The value of this is really to people that are not that close, where Facebook can surface relevant data that I don't have at the top of my mind - but I rarely communicate with those people via phone calls any more.

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I would see the use for getting quickly restaurants/businesses hours, my solution right now is to query " <name of the business> hours" in google and hope that google provides the small information box with the hours. However this Hello is on Android, if I had an android phone I could just ask OK Google and expect the information to come even faster.

If you have iOS you can use Spotlight for that: search a business name and get the same place info you get in Maps, it’s pretty convenient (I think it’s new in iOS 8).

Two thoughts:

a. Regarding millennials: If they can younger users to use their dialer in 2015, they might stay with them for life.

b. The average age for facebook is 40.5 [1]. I'm a Gen Xer myself, and I'm 50/50 with calls vs. messaging. I order pizza, call my mechanic, etc. all via the phone.

[1] http://smallbusiness.chron.com/breakdown-facebook-users-age-...

Those numbers are from 2 years ago. I'd like to know what they are as of March 2015.

Maybe even more skewed towards older folks as younger ones spend more time on Snapchat et al.

>I order pizza, call my mechanic, etc. all via the phone

By choice, or by necessity?

For me, it's both. I don't trust J. Random Food Service handling payments (and adding fees) for local restaurants when ordering via the web. (Most are too small to set up their own service, so they use crap like "GrubHub" or whatever.) I can just call them and pay them directly - costs less they get more. Also, now those payment companies can't track me since I'm not using them. I do use one or two large chains' phone apps because they seem trust-worthy enough and appear to be handling the payments themselves.

My mechanics (well, mine and my wife's) have web pages, but when you set up one appointment on them, they auto-add routine maintenance for you. While that could be convenient, neither of us drives like a normal person (I did ~4,000 miles per year the last 4 years, my wife even less), so it's really just a pain to have to cancel an appointment every time I make one. It's also scummy of them to set one up for me without even asking if it's what I want. It's a dark pattern of adding things to your basket without asking you, essentially.

I often use Just Eat to decide my menu and then call, because it is much faster than filling out the form. Even if I am logged in already.

b. Anecdotes are not data. I'm a Gen Xer as well, and avoid both voice and SMS as much as possible - I communicate via IM and email, and use the web for things like "ordering pizza".

If the phone rings with the sound I've chosen for my mother and my SOs, it gets picked up. Otherwise it goes to voicemail. I skim Google's transcription of it and consider calling back.

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