
Ask HN: What IM services do you use? - beyondcompute
Which applications Hacker News readers use for communication with their friends&#x2F;family? For chatting with co-workers&#x2F;team members? Which is your favorite mobile IM app?
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munimkazia
Google Talk for work (and occasionally for personal use when I want to chat
with old friends. FB chat also comes in handy here)

Whatsapp for regular day to day communication for personal use.

Very rarely, Skype. This is mostly for taking video calls from
coworkers/freelance clients who haven't started using Hangouts video yet.

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ZenPro
For family

>> Text Message (iMessage), What's App, FB Messenger

For friends

>> What's App (generally) and Text Message (not iMessage)

For work

>> Text Message and primarily Skype [Our CEO read an article which stated
Zuckerberg favours Skype at work due to less distraction

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deft
BBM, IRC and rarely Google Talk. I love BBM, it has a bunch of bugs
(especially on non-BlackBerry devices) but it's fun and addictive.

~~~
beyondcompute
That's interesting!

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logn
[https://jitsi.org](https://jitsi.org)

XMPP support. Video, audio, IM. It works great, including on linux.

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needacig
Adium connected to Google Talk and AIM. It's possible to connect other chat
services but I don't.

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X4
Konversation, WeeChat : IRC - Smarter Friends

WhatsApp: XMPP (fork) - Other Friends and Nearby Friends

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czbond
Skype for work/fun Hipchat for projects Google Chat/FB for friends

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ASquare
WhatsApp Skype Google Hangouts

All used interchangeably for work/personal use

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startuptabs
Flip! The skype founders or founder created it.

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howdoipython
I use Gchat + Skype for work

Gchat for all my personal use

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toomuchtodo
Gchat/Telegram for personal

Hipchat for work

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drakmail
HipChat, Slack, Skype.

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claudiug
skype for work

google handout for daily spring

hipchat for developers

google talk and fb for friends

some times Y!Messenger

~~~
beyondcompute
Which one you end up using more while you are on the go?

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unphasable
Skype and iMessage

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Shalle
Skype and IRC

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luxpir
Joining the party late, but haven't seen my perspective offered yet...

I'm a little disheartened at the state of IM clients and usage. Since Google's
dodgy Hangouts and open XMPP slaying I've struggled to find a decent
alternative to Gtalk. I liked the old client, the lightweight desktop one.
Pidgin was a solid enough replacement, and apparently version 3 due soon ought
to bring audio/video. That's all well and good, but to reach a minimum level
of real privacy it would make sense to leave the Google ecosystem.

Well. I opened a Dukgo account last year and had a few contacts added to that,
hoping to grow the list over time, but few Gmail contacts (most of my
contacts) actually receive or can accept the XMPP invites anymore (those
who've moved wholesale over to Hangouts?) and any that are added have the
conversations logged at their end anyway. The 'Google owns most people's
email' problem applies to chat, too, unfortunately. Add to that the barrier of
setting up a new IM client or XMPP account, most folks are just not interested
in leaving the convenience of Google-world.

At the moment I've got Finch set up on the Raspberry Pi (running on tmux), to
be connected to whenever/from wherever. It's working quite well, but is
obviously short on 'features'. Nice to not have to disconnect/reconnect
constantly though, and pick up messages at my convenience. I do the same with
IRSSI to a lesser extent. I'm not connecting to the Google contact list with
it.

I did try out Jitsi, but found it to be nearly as much of a resource hog as
Skype, a client I've been trying to extricate myself from, but have been
forced to re-install for certain clients/contacts. As I mentioned above, the
new Pidgin will be interesting.

It's really hard for me to understand how many people are happy to support
Facebook/Skype/Google's walled-garden approach in this day and age. Now that
the momentum behind the privacy debate is waning, I'm worried (perhaps
annoyed, more accurately) that there's even less incentive for people to
support an open and private IM client, be it XMPP/OTR or P2P-based.

So I'm left with a tiny contact list, mainly consisting of Google-based
contacts anyway and wondering if it's time to give up on going private. To
accept that people just aren't interested, and are happy to cede as much
control as popular-company-of-the-day wants to take? The cost of not accepting
that fact is a certain level of social cut-off. I do wonder if life is too
short to worry myself about things like this. But life does go on after I'm
gone, and I'd rather the future was open, or at least had open alternatives
that people actually wanted to use.

Actual answer: Finch on RPi via SSH, back to email/phone for those who
couldn't be added to the Dukgo contact list.

