Because not everyone turns on notifications for Facebook? I don't want stupid Farmville notifications coming in all day. Plus Facebook doesn't email out on every notification anymore unless you chose to stay on that. The interaction level on Facebook via phone is far different via computer. On a desktop setting people sit there and carefully read the news feed and comment and like and setup invitations and message people.
You can block individual apps on Facebook, and it works quite nicely. I don't get ANY unwanted feeds now since I went in and streamlined it (and it took maybe 2 hours to completely sort through it all - and now it's been made even easier to generally deny certain feeds). However, I wasn't specifically mentioning notifications for Facebook, I was primarily noting it for IM programs which you can have on your phone.
On the phone people check in, post notes, photos, quickly glance. And I suppose if a message popped up you could respond. FAcebook was never built as a messaging tool. It's a social networking site designed to keep friends in touch. You can use it for email. You can use it for messaging. You can use it to replace Skype if you wanted to, and you could do a LOT with it, but that's not how people use it.
Fully involved messaging programs, such as Slick and others I mentioned previously, allow you to login with Facebook and use it as a messenger. It has homescreen notifications and sounds for alerts. This negates IM not being as "urgent" as SMS.
Maybe I'm with a different crowd, but I'm an engineer, and when we graduated from college, many of us stopped using AIM. How do you use it at the workplace? Meebo maybe? A lot of us just stay on Gmail all day. I have friends at Cisco, Apple, Google, Big 4 Accounting, etc. We used to be on AIM all the time. Plenty of us just chat on gchat now. I dunno. I see it everywhere. Not just engineering, but plenty of people just use gchat now as the go-to DESKTOP client at work. Everytime I have to respond to my gf or she responds to me on our phone, the other party definitely cuts down on the chat. I feel bad for making her type so much on mobile, so if I'm on my computer I send a few quick messages only at most. Given how gchat can get screwy if you have a desktop window open AND your mobile client open, sometimes you might not get the message. The same goes with AIM when I use IM+.
AIM notifies when you have more than 1 login simultaneously, and allows the more recently active connection to receive the messages. I see it all the time when I login on my phone and have Trillian running on my desktop at the same time.
If you want a reliable way of getting a message across, SMS will do it 99% of the time. It doesn't rely on data, and you're guaranteed to get it. You're not counting on some push notification or some server that might go down. Bottom line is if you can receive a phone call, you probably got that SMS.
I can think of several times when an SMS didn't go through, from several different people, with all types of services/providers. That is simply not true.
And honestly IM never took off on mobile that much. How many people get on AIM/MSN/gchat and consistently hold a nice long conversation on their phone. I think what honestly took off in the past year is BBM-like clients. Maybe Whatsapp isn't that big in the US but I've seen it take off. It's practically THE messenger to use in Asia. Everyone has one. I first only talked to my cousins overseas and my fobby classmates, but soon enough all my friends were on it. But I have yet to see many of my non-Asian friends jump in yet. Whatsapp, Kik, Google Messenger, etc will definitely continue to take off. I can see these replacing SMS, but only if you have a community large enough where EVERYONE is on it.
This is exactly what I've been getting at? Why hasn't it caught on? For me, it's just as easy to load my IM program on mobile and be available while I'm not at my desktop, as it is to have my phone turned on. How many apps are loaded by people every day, or kept running on their phones? I don't see what the big deal is...
Protocols like MSN, AIM, ICQ, etc will die simply because you need to sign on and look for people. Whatsapp is just an always on thing. You don't ever need to turn it on or off.
This doesn't make any sense to me. What exactly are you suggesting? That because you have to load the program and login and look for people, they're useless? Where to begin with how flawed that logic is...It sounds as if you haven't tried using a mobile IM program in about 5 years.
First of all, all my handles are logged in automatically when I load the program. Second, what people are you looking for? IM isn't a friend finder...it 'could' be, and this is one function to iSeekYou, but isn't the main reason to use it. If you need to add someone...you add them, just as simply as you create a new contact with a phone number, or save an e-mail to your list, or add a friend on Facebook. I have all of my offline contacts hidden (which I can easily turn off and send messages to offline contacts if need-be), so I only see online handles and can instantly chat with anyone that's on there. I've known several people that have their phones on 24/7 and have their IM loaded or forwarding to their mobile, for several years now.
I think you're making mountains out of mole hills and all simply because the "active community" is insufficiently grown for IM programs.
People have forgotten about it and how useful it is. This is my point. People need to start getting on it. All of your degrading points are based on the fact that no one uses it. Just because no one uses something, does
not mean it's not useful. It just means that it hasn't been commonly accepted; this is what I'd like to see changed.
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