Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge
My phone is absolutely littered with messages. I have a mess of messaging apps: Messages, WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, GroupMe, Google Chat, Discord, Slack, Messenger, and Snapchat. Then there are all the apps that aren’t necessarily for messaging but still offer it as a feature, like LinkedIn and Instagram and X. Reddit and TikTok both can act like messaging platforms; I get messages through Tumblr sometimes; Skype is still sort of around.
Chat is a core part of the modern internet experience, which is why everyone wants a piece: if you can build the app in which people talk to their friends, you’ve built the stickiest thing in tech. But in reality, all that competition means we spend our days endlessly checking inboxes and trying to…