There is no incentive to allow communication between apps - and every reason for the platforms to attempt to ensnare you and your friends ever more securely inside their virtual greenhouse.īut the problem with messaging platforms goes deeper than the lack of interoperability.
| Image: Anne Marie Peterson | CC BY-SA 2.0 Walled gardens may be beautiful, but they can be difficult to escape. And Apple wants you to be dependent on Apple products and services by offering mirroring and interconnectivity between devices, such as having access to your iMessages on your phone, Apple Watch, and MacBook. Messenger comes bundled with Facebook for instance - a vast network, which, alongside being a popular social media platform, also acquires intensely personal data that can be used or auctioned to sell advertising space. Walled gardens exist to keep us inside.Ĭommunication providers usually offer extra services to encourage us to sign-up and stay.
The reason behind this is that the app you install on your phone is not just an app - it’s a gateway to a walled garden, where, like delicate flowers, we’re kept deliberately isolated from users in other gardens (or apps). To keep in touch with everyone I know using instant messaging apps, I would need to have almost all of them installed on my phone, and I would be constantly forwarding chats from one app to another. There are around a dozen messaging apps in common use today - each boasting similar features and differing degrees of privacy and security.Īs demonstrated by my joyful Christmas Day communications, this is not an ideal situation. In short, instant messaging is a fragmented ecosystem, and it’s not getting better anytime soon. My mother and my sister use Telegram, while my brother and father use Facebook Messenger.įor my mother-in-law to send me a ‘ Merry Christmas’ greeting, she needed to bounce it through my wife’s sister, who then passed it on to my wife, who then told me (because we were in the same physical space). Sure there’s the normal SMS/text message, but half of our family uses WhatsApp, while the other half uses Signal. Certain people communicate only using certain platforms.
Granted, it was a little tricky at times. The images of turkeys, cranberry sauce, trees, and happy, smiling faces shared between my friends and family kept us connected over the holiday season, even while hundreds of miles apart. Having just endured another isolated Christmas dinner ( thanks, Covid), I have never been more grateful for instant messaging apps.
It’s a way of keeping in touch with friends, family, work colleagues, and casual drinking buddies - without the formality of email, and with an easily accessible record of what was said.Īnd because communication takes place over the internet, it is, for all intents and purposes, free - unlike SMS (Short Message Service) and MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service), which often involve expensive fees for sending and receiving messages. Instant secure communication is a basic expectation in the 21st century.