Communication is hard. Simple, but not easy. In this digital age, you can talk with anyone, anywhere, anytime. Instantly text, or chat, or message a friend across the country? No problem. All you must do is choose the right app. What could go wrong?
Texting via SMS is antiquated and should be obsolete, yet it continues to thrive in the US. Yeah, so texting – rudimentary, outdated, super-popular!
With the internet in your pocket, you can now act more modern, using the data-rich web to communicate. If you’re on Apple’s iPhone, it’s simple. Use iMessage. No probs, right? Well, except for those pesky green bubbles with their inferior communication skills. More on that later.
iMessage is not the only chat app available. Many others abound. So if I want to, say, avoid broken group texts between iMessage and Android Messages, I’ve got to use a third-party web-based chat app that skips SMS texting altogether.
Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are popular choices to name just two. For argument’s sake, let’s say those are the only two. It should be simple to pick one – but it’s not. The fact is, you must use the same chat app(s) that the people you communicate with do. It’s all fragmented. Many people, many chat apps.
To make it easy, you could just pick a chat app based on only the one or two people you message the most. But easy, it is not. In my case, my wife and my Dad are my best texters. My wife and I use iMessage on our iPhones – blue text bubbles! My Dad uses an Android phone, so his texts to me are green. No big deal, really. Sometimes my Dad and I use Facebook Messenger. But what will happen when I switch my phone to an Android? I’ll become a green bubble to my wife – but again so what?
Since my family is all on Facebook, then what if we all just used Facebook Messenger together? Then it would not matter what phone anyone uses. Well, that won’t work for me because my wife – to this day – refuses to install Facebook Messenger on her phone. She is adamantly opposed to the move Facebook made years ago when it pulled Messenger from the main Facebook app and “forced” everyone to install a separate app. She aint havin’ it! Okay. I can work with that.
So scratch Facebook Messenger. Instead, what if my family switches to WhatsApp? That could be great, but it’s unlikely to ever happen. Why? Simply because people don’t like change, even if it’s for the better. Change is…wait for it…hard. No matter what messenger client I may like, getting everyone on board is the challenge.
I would like to look into Google’s solutions…but oh my, that’s a convoluted mess on its own! To its credit, Google has tried – and is still trying – to clean up the mess in their messaging services. They’re now pushing RCS, the new and improved replacement of SMS/MMS texting. But who knows how that will go. At least they’re attempting to adopt iMessage-like features into Google Messages. Might as well cheer them on.
On one hand, it’s a bummer that choosing and using one do-it-all message app isn’t a reality. But on the other hand, I guess it’s cool that there are options. You can talk to anyone, anywhere, anytime. Just make sure you have the right app(s).