Current Messaging Apps are Faulty. They should be designed the Snapchat way and more
I am jokingly known amongst some of my friends as a pseudo Evangelist/PR/Marketing Executive for Snapchat, because of the way I explain how its messaging app works on a broader level rather than just features.
Here’s why.
I think Snapchat’s form of messaging is closer to a more natural/human way of communication. Whenever you have a conversation with someone in real life (not in an app), it’s always about the moment. The now. Right there and then.
Perfect replies only exist in messaging apps and not in real life. It will be super weird for me to just start laughing at a joke you told me in the elevator 2 hours ago (That’s some delayed reaction bro). Or to come up with the perfect rebuttal/meme to the joke you told me at lunch, half an hour later.
But that’s the way most messaging apps work these days. You receive a notification AND actually see the message before you open the app, giving you the ability to think of the perfect reply (sometimes hours later).
Btw, I am aware that you can block notification ‘text’ from the notification bar but this should be the standard not the option.
So to begin…
Firstly, Snapchat’s messaging platform is good because it does not offer the opportunity to form perfect replies. You can only see the message once you open it and if you don’t respond immediately, it disappears.
(Well, you can make it not disappear- more on this later.)
Once the message disappears, it becomes a blank slate again. Just like in real life. For example, when you come across a friend at an event, you don’t suddenly have an archive of every word of every conversation you’ve ever had… you just remember the important ones.
Popular messaging apps these days work as an extension of email and that is a fundamentally flawed way to chat socially. Email is somewhat good for its intended purpose but i believe messaging apps need to be differentiated from this.
Secondly, when you are online on Snapchat, only the person you are communicating to at that time knows you are online. This is particularly important because:
- You are only capable of having one conversation at a time.
- Other people who messaged you wouldn’t think you’re ignoring them.
Social messaging should always be about the current conversation and the person/people you are having the chat with at the time.
That is, the now. Right there and then.
Thirdly, it is true you can actually make a message not completely disappear on Snapchat- You can hold down on a line in your chat thread to save the message.
Believe it or not, holding down a line in a chat thread is also similar to natural communication. Whenever someone says something important to me, I commit it to memory or I write it down and filter out the rest of the conversation. Snapchat works in the same way. You can choose what you save (e.g. a number or address) and ignore the rest.
Now Snapchat still has a long way to go in providing a more natural way to communicate and I’m really hoping they nail it or someone else does but it is a step in the right direction.
One of the major issues I believe needs to be solved is what I refer to as Live Texting. Solving the matter of people changing their mind while typing.
If you communicate via IMs you’ve probably seen a message like this on your chat window:
‘Person x is typing’
You have also probably encountered an experience where Person x seems to be typing for a while- So you’re expecting a wall of text. But to your surprise, after the long ass wait, the reply ends up with about two words. So what happened?
Person X changed their mind and deleted the wall of text. I sometimes do it and I think this is bad for communication. In real life, you don’t get the chance to remove words from the air once you have uttered them, or omit some sentences you thought sounded harsh before it gets to the recipient’s ear. You either think through what you’re going to say before you say it or speak as it comes to you. Once you’ve said it, that’s it. You don’t get to delete it. You can apologise but it’s done. So if Snapchat or whoever is building a messaging app can solve this problem (giving that there will be typos, grammatical errors etc. to be corrected) I’m sold.
There are other issues I have but this is already getting too long. However, the main idea is to provide a more humanistic way for people to socially message each other. Currently, nothing beats live video for in-the-moment conversations but traditional messaging apps are far removed from that experience.
Ofcourse, there is always the option of calling your friend or Facetime. But meh, calling is overrated right?
