I’ve been tempted for the last year to begin work on designing an experience like IRC, but which includes voice chat and screen sharing capabilities. That’s my dream is a melding of a nostalgic chat protocol, with modern services.
From my understanding IRC’s biggest flaw is that it requires the recipient to be online in order to receive messages, and any software that includes voice, video, screen sharing, and proper servers would by necessity have very little resemblance to it.
I suppose I mean the resemblance to IRC would be mostly in the user experience. However, I personally don’t want to add persisted server-side messaging either. The novelty for me is that it’s a “here, now” social experience.
The problem with non-persistent messaging is that for most things people use Discord for it is a non-starter. Most people who are doing more than just socializing really don’t want to spend half their time repeating things to people who were at work, asleep, or in a different time zone when the discussion came it. Any serious Discord competitor would need to focus on practically and low barriers to entery, which tend to be directly opposed to novelty.
I don’t think my solution would satisfy users who are completely married to the Discord experience. The persisted social media experience isn’t what I’m interested in, personally. I want an old school chat experience, that still works for modern day LAN parties and movie nights.
I’ve been tempted for the last year to begin work on designing an experience like IRC, but which includes voice chat and screen sharing capabilities. That’s my dream is a melding of a nostalgic chat protocol, with modern services.
So Matrix protocol?
From my understanding IRC’s biggest flaw is that it requires the recipient to be online in order to receive messages, and any software that includes voice, video, screen sharing, and proper servers would by necessity have very little resemblance to it.
I suppose I mean the resemblance to IRC would be mostly in the user experience. However, I personally don’t want to add persisted server-side messaging either. The novelty for me is that it’s a “here, now” social experience.
The problem with non-persistent messaging is that for most things people use Discord for it is a non-starter. Most people who are doing more than just socializing really don’t want to spend half their time repeating things to people who were at work, asleep, or in a different time zone when the discussion came it. Any serious Discord competitor would need to focus on practically and low barriers to entery, which tend to be directly opposed to novelty.
Or “How Signal is closer in functionality to WhatsApp by the day, because it turns out people like the functionality of WhatsApp.”
I don’t think my solution would satisfy users who are completely married to the Discord experience. The persisted social media experience isn’t what I’m interested in, personally. I want an old school chat experience, that still works for modern day LAN parties and movie nights.