Because there's a single thing that makes presence useful, which is the device going off or to sleep, y'know, like a desktop computer in the nineties. There aren't many people who maintain their availability by hand, as that's just a pain.
A cell phone is always on, so depending on the solution, I'm either always "online," or always "away" with some single blips of "online". Me being "online" doesn't mean I'm really paying any attention, I just took out the phone for a second while my friend was in the toilet, or anything, and now I'm gone, but will still appear as green for some time.
What's App and iMessage solves this by replacing online with read receipts, and in case of WA, "last seen online" data. Much less pretense makes it way more informative.
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Because there's a single thing that makes presence useful, which is the device going off or to sleep, y'know, like a desktop computer in the nineties. There aren't many people who maintain their availability by hand, as that's just a pain.
A cell phone is always on, so depending on the solution, I'm either always "online," or always "away" with some single blips of "online". Me being "online" doesn't mean I'm really paying any attention, I just took out the phone for a second while my friend was in the toilet, or anything, and now I'm gone, but will still appear as green for some time.
What's App and iMessage solves this by replacing online with read receipts, and in case of WA, "last seen online" data. Much less pretense makes it way more informative.