Just from my head:
IRC, XMPP, Matrix,
SMS, RCS,
Session, SimpleX, Nostr, Jami, Tox, OnionShare, DeltaChat, Sup., GNUNet Messenger, Mumble, Zulip, Briar,
Signal, Wire, Threema,
Snapchat, Telegram, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Discord, Slack, iMessage, Google Chat, Twitter, KakaoTalk, WeChat, GG, TeamSpeak.
This post is not for discusson which one of standards, networks, services or garbage is the best for anything. This is a call can we just stop making more?
Let’s invent a new chat protocol to integrate them all.
< that xkcd that literally everybody knows and remembers, but people still feel the need to comment >
No. I will make a new one just to annoy you.
We don’t need to. What we need is to making things properly and ensure interoperability between those services. Think about email, it doesn’t matter what’s your provider and email client you can email anyone else. Why can’t we chat between WhatsApp and Telegram in the same way? That’s the real question that people should be asking and forcing companies into fixing.
clients can be reinvented all the time, the main issue is that most of those are isolated bubbles instead of implementing an open protocol.
Do you want them to stop innovating entertainment too?
If they did what you asked, there would be 100 asking why we haven’t figured out news ways to do this or that. “Why are we still watching movies from CD?!?”
Answer is no. They won’t stop making more. That’s how innovation works.
All these tools serve a slightly different purpose, for a slightly different group of people. In China, not using WeChat is impossible due to the way it’s integrated everywhere. Slack is more suited for development/work channels, Discord is more suited for gaming. If there are enough people that could say “None of these satisfy us, we want a different alternative to communicate”, that’s good grounds to build it in the first place.
There are always going to be more, it’s up to users to decide which ones are useful, good for their privacy, etc.
