I keep getting lost/confused when I want to access what my brain labels as a « discussion » with some other member. Some of these discussions take place by chat, others by personal message. I go to chat, can’t find it, then realise it must have been a personal message, where are those already, oh yeah I need to go to my avatar up right to find them…
Honestly it’s confusing. The first characteristic of these interactions are that they were with one person (or a small group) in a closed space. The medium (chat or messages) is not that salient for me: sure, I completely understand the difference between them, but in practice as I’m used to going to chat for a personal/private interaction I keep « not finding » my messages. The difference between chat and messages is largely speed of interaction (which drives — or is driven by, depending on how you look at things — length of utterance), but sometimes people don’t reply to chat right away, or reply to a personal message right away.
Don’t get me wrong, I like having both. But the way they are separated, with personal messages trying to be some kind of limited audience topic (which I get that they are, technically) doesn’t feel smooth at all.
I’m not sure I have a solution, but this bugs me each time.
(FWIW who remembers when Facebook had both messages and chat — messages being the older form of direct communication? They then did away with the internal mail style messages to keep only instant messaging. Which is a pain, when people write « long emails » in IM. But I’m sure that somewhere in that decision was the issue lurking here: chat and messages have a lot of overlap and it’s complicated to make them coexist in one space in a way that allows users to be drawn to the right one when they need it. IM and email are still around and both used, which for me justifies having both modes of communication. But on the same platform, it’s tricky.)
team: