Consider the following: AOL instant messenger, ICQ, Paltalk, Tivejo, MSN Messenger, Microsoft Messenger, MSN Messenger, Skype, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, 11 different messaging apps from Google, Zoom, Go2Meeting, WebEx, Microsoft Lynq, Skype for Business, Slack, iMessage, CuSeeMe, Discord, …
A user looking superficially at those applications might notice very little difference or progress between them, the one thing they have in common is they are not compatible with each other, many of them are tied into a proprietary ecosystem (AOL, Facebook, …) and a major difference is they are tied into different proprietary ecosystem.
Such an app always follows a scenario like “You should install Skype and contact me, unlike Paltalk it really works these days”. You try it and you’re like “Wow! This really works!” but after a few years it becomes less reliable and buggier than it was when it started. Some new application comes along and is in a honeymoon period where it knows it has to actually work in order to add new users while the old broken app can coast because they figure nobody can disrupt their two-sided market. History shows that the old app really will deteriorate to the point where the incumbent advantage is lost and a new app will be better…. For a while.
What amazes me is that everybody from users to the app makers are stuck in this cycle and seem to have very little insight into it.
It’s a reason why you need a service that is separate from the client and have to have competition for both. Unfortunately users seem to violently opposed to this and open messaging platforms like XMPP have only caught on with military and law enforcement users.
The “fediverse” is a light of hope in this respect, what you learn when you get involved is it is not just Mastodon but there are many different systems that are inter operating. I wish the EU would take the problem seriously and just legislate interoperation between messaging apps, I mean, you can call an Android user from an iPhone, a Verizon customer can send a text to an AT&T customer, it is long past the time when you should be able to send a Slack user a message from Facebook messenger.
