How many different instant messaging/chat services (i.e. WhatsApp, Slack, Hangouts, etc) do you use?
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- By the end of 2026, how useful do you think agentic/multi-agent AI systems will actually be in your daily work or personal projects? Posted on March 11th, 2026 | 30 comments
Inspired by (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Inspired by (Score:4)
And I only use IM at work.
How about actually letting the brain relax from time to time? Too much interaction and you will be like the ball in a pinball game stuck between the "mushrooms" never coming to rest until the lights are out completely.
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You can use IM and let your brain relax. You are in no obligation to answer every message instantly. It's your call.
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why are you surprised? a sizable portion of the population remembers life before intertubes, and how we managed just fine. And still do.
Probably because this tends to be a techie readership and most tech companies use some kind of IM service.
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Since when wasn't email perfectly acceptable? You'd get around to it when YOU wanted to, and the person on the other side understood that.
you can act the same way with instant messenger. You used to be able to setup away messages and the culture included AFK the idea that sometimes you send a message and the other person isn't there to respond or can't. just like email... only instant.
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IM or iMessage (Score:1)
Only use my basic iPhone IM or iMessage.
Unless you count the background protocols we built into the civilian Internet for hiding military intelligence messages in the "non-existent" bit-shifted parts of the packets, but those don't exist, just like the 3rd version of GPS isn't being used right now. And, yes, 0.1 cm (1 mm) accuracy rocks.
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Even more relevant xkcd (Score:2)
In all seriousness, the protocols (with a goal to converge on standard protocols) should be managed in totally separate organizations than the client applications.
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I do still use Pidgin and Skype for Business at work.
None (Score:1)
Unless IRC counts
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Unless IRC counts
In Cubicle Hell, we don't don't need instant messaging . . . we just yell over the divider walls.
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You're lucky to have walls. Some don't even have walls. :(
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Indeed. They recently went to an open plan here...
sucks.
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I worked at a place with an open office. We still preferred messaging to talking, even for work stuff. It's nice to have a record of what was said when.
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Well, you could record the audio discussions. ;)
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It doesn't. Why? Because there isn't an IRC app for android in the Google play store.
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What a consignment of geriatric shoe manufacturers.
There's well over 200 if you search for IRC. Now if you're saying there's no good ones ... I might be slightly more inclined to agree.
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Five digit user ID checks out :)
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I said '1' because of IRC. I can't imagine that it *wouldn't* be considered an instant messaging platform.
Unless when you say 'instant messaging' you only mean things on a smartphone. In which case my answer should probably be '2', since my phone has SMS, and e-mails to me are pretty much instant. Technically I *could* use IRC on my phone, and I have done it, but it's not ideal.
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30 year nuisance (Score:4, Interesting)
Yep, you guessed it. I don't have social media either.
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1) Talking to friends, because I hate phone calls
2) At work for asking people things that are not so urgent that I need a phone call, but for something where interactive conversation will speed the process along.
I don't expect people to answer immediately, and I don't answer immediately either.
Even all my works accounts I mostly ignore until I want to take a break from whatever I'm doing.
If it's urgent they have my phone number.
Some people get angry if you ignore their
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I simply am not "chatty". Yep, you guessed it. I don't have social media either.
I can be quite chatty in 'real' social situations, and on telephone calls as well. But I've never even used IRC, never mind any of the more up-to-date versions. I've never seen the point. Something like Hangouts might be of interest, if I could pay for it with money and NOT with my privacy.
I don't do social media either. I'd like to be on Facebook; my partner is, and looking over her shoulder I can see how it can be both engaging and useful. But I simply won't voluntarily throw away what little privacy I m
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Amen
Impossible! Re:30 year nuisance (Score:2)
Yep, you guessed it. I don't have social media either.
I have been told repeatedly by a large number of people that I am the only person on earth who is not on facebook. Surely by the power of numbers they are right and you are wrong, hence you must be on facebook. Sorry to break it to you. You might want to make sure your account is under control before you travel next time.
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Media is content
Media isn't anything because "media" is plural.
Ignoring that, you're still wrong. A medium is a means of delivering content. The content itself is not the medium (cf. the software on a CD vs the CD itself)
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Ony one (Score:2)
Only Jabber / XMPP, at work. Unless you consider (as per XKCD) SMS instant messaging.
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Only Jabber / XMPP, at work. Unless you consider (as per XKCD) SMS instant messaging.
SMS is the mother of instant messaging, the service all other instant message services started by trying to replace. Of course it counts. Not sure about emails and bathroom walls which XKCD also counts though :D
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That's not a low UID. The parent's slashdot account was created well after SMS had become a communications staple. Probably somewhere around 2004-2007 I'd guess. The iPhone was out in 2007. A low UID would be 5 digits and probably would date back to 1999 or 99.
My UID isn't particularly low and I think I created my account back in about 2000, after simply being a reader since the beginning in 1998ish.
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My account was created in 1999...so you are probably off by a year.
Re:Ony one (Score:4, Informative)
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I was doing instant messaging before SMS was even introduced. Instant messaging goes back to talk/ytalk from 1975. SMS (as part of GSM) wasn't introduced before 1992.
True, I was thinking instant messaging apps on the phone.
My bad :D
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SMS is only "instant messaging" if you have your phone set to continuously ping for new messages. Many people turn their SMS apps off at night, at work, etc. You can turn off auto-retrieve and, more importantly, roaming auto-retrieve.
Just as you can turn off notifications. Should be mandatory at the supper table. Or at the least, whoever picks up their phone first does the dishes (or pays the bill at a restaurant).
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Instant messaging is architecturally backward... (Score:2)
... from nice asynchonous methods like email. For immediate response (on those rare occasions when you truly need it) SMS text (or internal network IM) works pretty well as an alerting mechanism for transferring the conversation to detailed info transfer (email w. attachments if needed) or very interactive discussion 1:1 phone or conference phone.
Frequent casual texting inhibits concentration on tasks and may be more fun but is certainly less productive.
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No, SMS doesn't work pretty well at all. Why would you want me to pick up my phone to reply to you when I am on my PC? What if I change the SIM card in my phone, I no longer receive your SMS. And finally, why would you pay (especially true international SMS) to send a few characters when you already pay for your Internet access (and probably also an Internet access on your phone).
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In which country are you unable to carry a mobile phone number across to a new provider?
Unless you live in North Korea, people are allowed to change country. That means getting a new phone number.
I feel Randal's pain... (Score:4, Interesting)
I really feel the pain of that XKCD:
I have a group of friends who refuse to use anything other than What's App
I have one person who I'd lose touch with if I didn't use Telegram
I have people who only respond to Facebook Messenger
Japanese Friends good luck getting them to respond on anything other than Line
Former workmates seem to like Hangouts
My Parents will only use Skype
My Fiance is on iMessage
Gamer friends on Discord
My old work team used Slack so I still have that installed, but don't really use it.
In game "Chat" Using PSN chat app
In game "Chat" using Steam
The list goes on... There are genuinely islands of people I'd lose touch with if I dropped any of those, so they clutter my phone...
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This is what Jabber/XMPP was supposed to fix. It was supposed to be like email. You could use whatever chat service you wanted but via xmpp you could talk to anyone else across a standard IM protocol. Instead proprietary protocols created the islands of IM we have today.
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Of course. I'm sure that all of those IM providers listed above hate the idea of some other chat provider tunneling into their walled garden and potentially stealing their subscriber base and advertising impressions. It will be a cold day in hell before many of them open their chat API's to other vendors.
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Of course. I'm sure that all of those IM providers listed above hate the idea of some other chat provider tunneling into their walled garden and potentially stealing their subscriber base and advertising impressions. It will be a cold day in hell before many of them open their chat API's to other vendors.
Which is why they are all going to die.
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I wish it would be soon.
Re: I feel Randal's pain... (Score:1)
Man, this reminds me; I used to use adium, which was a fantastic solution to unifying a million different messaging services, many of which xmpp based. Unified messaging apps like that are pretty much dead, which is a real shame.
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I really feel the pain of that XKCD: I have a group of friends who refuse to use anything other than What's App I have one person who I'd lose touch with if I didn't use Telegram I have people who only respond to Facebook Messenger Japanese Friends good luck getting them to respond on anything other than Line Former workmates seem to like Hangouts My Parents will only use Skype My Fiance is on iMessage Gamer friends on Discord My old work team used Slack so I still have that installed, but don't really use it. In game "Chat" Using PSN chat app In game "Chat" using Steam
The list goes on... There are genuinely islands of people I'd lose touch with if I dropped any of those, so they clutter my phone...
Have you done a cost/benefit analysis for the benefit you get from maintaining all these social relationships? If you want to be a minimalist, that's how you get there...
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There is a fix: Everybody should just use IRC.
I actually pipe FB messages to my IRC now to keep in touch with the technologically challenged. However, I don't actually have to use fecebook this way.
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My Fiance is on iMessage
[...]
There are genuinely islands of people I'd lose touch with if I dropped any of those, so they clutter my phone...
So you say you are forced by your fiance to get an iPhone (otherwise, no iMessage)? Are you still sure you want to marry?
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My Fiance is on iMessage [...] There are genuinely islands of people I'd lose touch with if I dropped any of those, so they clutter my phone...
So you say you are forced by your fiance to get an iPhone (otherwise, no iMessage)? Are you still sure you want to marry?
Maybe they LIKE the idea of someone who is easily manipulated?
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My Fiance is on iMessage [...] There are genuinely islands of people I'd lose touch with if I dropped any of those, so they clutter my phone...
So you say you are forced by your fiance to get an iPhone (otherwise, no iMessage)? Are you still sure you want to marry?
Or what would happen if you were not only technically aware but had a strong dislike of a company with as ghastly business practices as Apple?
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Do you use all of them actively? I don't.
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Drop all chat clients
Use email or sms
You forgot phone calls (everyone seems to have forgotten that one).
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Ha, I know people who hate e-mails. I don't like using the phone just to SMS. Texting via AIM and e-mails don't always work. :( I hate talking and hearing due to my disabilities. :(
How many does the phone count as? (Score:2)
Three, being Facebook, email, and texting. Big wonder that general phone functionability doesn't make it on there. I know that's the only instant messaging service my parents use.
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I don't use FB on my phone lol
No one cares what you do. You're not even smart enough to create an account and log in. No wonder you can't use your phone.
I voted "one" (Score:2)
... and that's only if you count iMessage/SMS.
10-15 years ago, I kept many "instant" accounts active pretty much all the time. SMS, IRC, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft (whatever their client was at that time), a couple different Jabber accounts... but eventually I came to realize it wasn't helping my workflow (if I needed to consult/coordinate with colleagues, we'd generally walk to one another's offices anyway), and it was destroying any ability to focus on projects. It took a while - and quite a few arguments,
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I used to have accounts on all the major ones and used Trillian for years to consolidate it, however once everyone got on Facebook they seemed to standardize to it's built in messenger and since then I haven't used any other IM services.
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iMesssage/SMS is two..
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my boss wanted to be able to reach everyone at the drop of a ha>
It's interesting how good old "calling" doesn't seem to do the job any more. Especially in case of your boss needing to know something from you.
If I want an answer now, I call. If someone wants an answer form me now, they have to call. IM may remain ignored (hearing the beep doesn't make me instantly grab for my phone, it may be hours or even a day later that I actually read/respond to the message). IM is asynchronous, which like e-mail I love about it. Most people don't seem to realise that it also means i
Does this include SMS? (Score:1)
I do have a phone (Score:2)
I have no "instant message" clients on my pc, but I do keep a cell-phone in my pocket tl allow a select group of people reach me, even when I'm making gears at work. It's a widely adopted standard, already in use by over half of humanity. Isn't that good enough?
For everything not so time-critical, there's email.
Remember when... (Score:1)
Most... (Score:2)
I've been working remotely for 10+ years. Most people i worked with use IM as a form of communication, and all of them use different ones.
I have ICQ, Gtalk and some jabbers in Pidgin running 24/7.
Skype as well, seems to be preferred nowdays.
And IRC on freenode programming channels that interest me.
LINE on my phone for personal stuff ( hey man, you want to have a beer tonight ?)
Couldn't imagine living without messaging... and actually using phone to call people. That would suck hard.
Btw, what's up with this
one client with multiple protocols (Score:1)
They need to work together! (Score:2)
Too many dang services: AIM, ICQ (dead?), Y! (dying), IRC, GTalk, iMessage, (S/M)MS, etc. I wished I could use ONE computer software to communicate to all! :(
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Yes, but it doesn't do many. Look at Yahoo!, Skype, etc. :(
Very encouraging result (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm old, pretty much retired, sweated over a hot computer for about 40 years and hardly ever used it. The one exception is work, where something has to get debugged, step by step and it needs parameter values etc. Then it's quite useful, at that stage, I used whatever the company or organisation used in-house.
As for socially, I sit on the train and tube (subway) in London and watch people using WhatsApp or 'whatever' and think, why don't you talk?. I do sometimes and, of course, since old people are quite mad but safe, people talk to me too. I don't really use a mobile phone, except to solve coordination problems when meeting people, and, with the revelations of the past few weeks, I feel somewhat vindicated.
I'm not anti-tech BTW, my house is full of computers, from Raspberry Pis up to ten year old doorstops.
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but the people in my hobby's chat group are all over the world, with chat we can even reply to each other's questions while their half the world is asleep. who'd want to have a 20-50 way phone call anyway?
Unbelievable (Score:2)
I envy the Americans. For instance in Russia most people run
Also Telegram (4) is becoming very popular.
And also you use Slack (5) at work.
That makes it five. And some cling onto ICQ or Mail.ru messenger which makes it 6. And did I mention SMS? Yes, everyone still uses SMS but I don't count it.
Only the Text Message app on my phone (Score:2)
If it wasn't for my phone, I wouldn't have any such things to pester me.
At one point in the past, I had ICQ, but it turned into more than a little bit of a pain, so I simply dropped it and never went back.
God help the millennials these days if they can't get a job that allows them to Facebook, SnapChat or Twitter every few minutes.
Oh well. The side-effect of being a Dinosaur, I guess...
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Wow. How much was he surprised before calling security and having you hauled off the place with your shit in a box?
One day he asked another employee why he shouldn't just fire me when I told him off big time for a really, really stupid decision. The answer he got was simple - "1, she's right, and 2. nobody else can do the job."
Too many! (Score:2)
Too many (Score:2)
IRC
Gab
Discord
Twitter
Slack
Skype
FB Messaging
SMS
Three or Four (Score:2)
Phone and iPad with iMessage and Facebook Messenger.
Work with Spark although we're moving towards Skype.
[John]
Gave up long ago (Score:1)
It's all an annoying sham. There could, there SHOULD be a w
Missing Cowboy Neal Option (Score:2)
Poll is obviously flawed
Three (Score:2)
USA (and some Europe) friends: Facebook
South America & Asia: WhatsApp
Work: Slack
I used to use Google chat (gmail chat? google messenger?) But over time everything's moved to FB/WhatsApp. I think WhatsApp is the superior chat app these days, especially on a cell phone. Although I like that Signal (what WhatsApp builds on top of) doesn't require SMS to verify your account.
Slack and SMS (Score:2)
I used to work at a place where everybody ran the Pidgin client (https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpidgin.im%2F). That actually worked very well at unifying our predominant IM services at the time, which were Google Talk, AIM, IRC, and Yahoo.
Humorously (or sadly, depending on your perspective), the Pidgin site states that "Pidgin 2.12.0 removed protocols that were not being m
RetroShare is not a SERVICE. (Score:2)
While RetroShare is indeed a messaging application it is NOT a service in legal meaning of this word. So legally I don't use any messaging service (except SMS, of course) and am not going to use one simply because the service means the for-profit organization that provides the service whom I should trust without any proof that it's trustworthy.
home+work (Score:2)
weechat for IRC, bitlbee to fake jabber to IRC for personal usage
skype (being phase out) and slack (replacing skype) for work
i also have sms on the phone, but rarely use then
I used gtalk/hangout, but since google closed the jabber to ti, i rarely use it too
For video i use appear.in
For games i use mumble
SMS & BBM (Score:2)
I have found that SMS/MMS isn't very reliable, especially with a group of people. I have found BBM to be faster and more reliable.
Three just at the company I'm consulting for. (Score:2)
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same here, I'm a consultant, in a previous company they used pidgin with bonjour, then slack then MS team. At the company I am consulting for now they use skype, lync and hipchat
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This is me too.
I'm not even sure why anyone would want more than one.
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It's NOT a medium of communication just because the themes are severely limited to the ham and emergency ONLY. And it's because I had a HAM license only to be able to do experiments requiring the radio transmission, not as sports or communication. Modern rules neither allow me to keep the license without owning the transmitter nor require me to have license in order to do my experiments.
Ex UA0SDS Ex RA0SBP
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not valid unless you actually had dates with girl, otherwise you're just a chat wannabee/lurker