Unfortunately, We're Giving Up on Wire
For now anyway. I was making an effort to use Wire, get friends to install the app on their phones, get my business associates to use it, but it's not working out.
The problems are small ones, but significant.
The reason is not that the problems are insurmountable. It's that, considering the starting point (people using WhatsApp, Skype, etc) and then installing Wire because I told them to, they then find Wire doesn't work as conveniently, and so don't use it. They end up going back to their other apps which work better from their perspective (and mine in these important aspects).
Reasons:
1) Notification sounds are too quiet. (This can be changed in settings, but many of the people I know can barely install an app, let alone go and change settings. Therefore, they miss notifications and their messages don't get responded to because their contacts don't hear notifications.
2) Notification symbol (little red dots showing new messages). These don't really work. They are there when you get a new message, but it seems that even if you just enter the app (you don't go to the conversation where the new message is or interact with it (listen to a voice message), the red dot goes away just because you were in the app. Then you end up missing messages, forgetting you saw new notifications, and after a while you get tired of it.
3) Contacts screen too busy and doesn't have profile icons. Whereas people are used to finding their contacts easily in their contacts list because they have pictures and no background image, Wire has no pictures for contacts here and does have a confusing background image. Therefore, its harder to use.
End result:
I find myself using WhatsApp again, even though I want to use Wire. My friends didn't end up using it, I strongly suspect because it doesn't compare in terms of user friendliness with WhatsApp and Skype, despite being superior in other ways. Probably eventually I'll delete Wire because I haven't used it for so long.
The problems are small ones, but significant.
The reason is not that the problems are insurmountable. It's that, considering the starting point (people using WhatsApp, Skype, etc) and then installing Wire because I told them to, they then find Wire doesn't work as conveniently, and so don't use it. They end up going back to their other apps which work better from their perspective (and mine in these important aspects).
Reasons:
1) Notification sounds are too quiet. (This can be changed in settings, but many of the people I know can barely install an app, let alone go and change settings. Therefore, they miss notifications and their messages don't get responded to because their contacts don't hear notifications.
2) Notification symbol (little red dots showing new messages). These don't really work. They are there when you get a new message, but it seems that even if you just enter the app (you don't go to the conversation where the new message is or interact with it (listen to a voice message), the red dot goes away just because you were in the app. Then you end up missing messages, forgetting you saw new notifications, and after a while you get tired of it.
3) Contacts screen too busy and doesn't have profile icons. Whereas people are used to finding their contacts easily in their contacts list because they have pictures and no background image, Wire has no pictures for contacts here and does have a confusing background image. Therefore, its harder to use.
End result:
I find myself using WhatsApp again, even though I want to use Wire. My friends didn't end up using it, I strongly suspect because it doesn't compare in terms of user friendliness with WhatsApp and Skype, despite being superior in other ways. Probably eventually I'll delete Wire because I haven't used it for so long.
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