In retrospect, it might seem that digital messaging hasn't really changed that much in the last two and a half decades. It's easy to overlook the small changes in app privacy policies that fundamentally rewrote the rules of communication.

To better understand where we stand today and to fully appreciate the psychological ramifications of a series of seemingly small changes, we need to take a big step back and go back to 1996, the year that messaging began in its digital form.

In the early 90s, five Israeli developers realized that most users who did not use Unix They didn't have an easy way to send instant messages to each other. The message console (black screen of command lines) was reserved for advanced users, and well-designed software applications with a GUI Easy-to-use messaging clients were still scarce. They joined forces and began working on a cross-platform messaging client for Windows y Macand they gave him the name of ICQ ("I'm looking for you").

It wasn't long before the first versions of ICQ They had most of the features we take for granted in today's instant messaging applications:

Among the features of the ICQ 99a platform were conversation history, user search, contact list grouping, and the iconic "Uh-uh" sound that played with each incoming message. In a very short time, ICQ amassed millions of users at a time when global internet traffic was a fraction of what it is today.

One of the critical challenges during this period was that users weren't online all the time. During the dial-up internet era (56k), chat rooms felt like hanging out in an empty bar. The team came up with an ingenious concept to let others know when users were available to chat: the online status.

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Status: Online

Online status was the first widespread instance in digital communication where users relinquished some privacy to make a service more appealing and useful. It all began as a seemingly perfect win-win situation: By making their online status shared and visible to all their contacts, the user found themselves in a less lonely place.

After logging into the service, their friends would receive an immediate notification. As a result, most users found themselves chatting with someone within minutes.

While ICQ was taking the internet by storm, other companies quickly took notice and a number of messaging platforms began to appear.

The most popular alternative to ICQ was MSN Messenger, which contained all the features that defined ICQ's success. The press release even emphasized its online status as one of its key features.

The MSN Messenger service informs consumers when their friends, family, and colleagues are online and allows them to exchange messages and emails online with more than 40 million users.

In 2001, Messenger became the world's most used online messaging service With over 230 million unique users, the platform's rapid growth soon led to new challenges.

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How transparent do we want to be?

As MSN's user base grew, more users lamented feeling like they weren't in control. Upon logging into the service, they were immediately surrounded by people they didn't necessarily want to talk to. One question posed a real problem:

How can users control who they want to talk to?

For many, not responding wasn't a viable option, as they felt guilty about ignoring incoming text messages. Microsoft's response was to introduce a new feature that allowed users to "appear" offline. With this small change, users regained some control over how openly they wanted to share their online activity.

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Micro-privacy in everyday products

Since there is no defined concept, we can define it as:

Micro-privacy refers to small samples of information that reveal something about a user's online activity.

What characterizes micro-privacy is that a minimal amount of information can have enormous repercussions on product engagement, user behavior, and user well-being.

Simply put, design teams can create more appealing products by reducing privacy at two ends: either between the provider and its users, or between the users themselves. We spend a lot of time worrying about the former, but almost completely neglect the latter.

Let's take a closer look by examining another example that might seem strangely familiar.

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Are you still there?

Microsoft was in trouble. Its platform had gained immense popularity, but one of the issues plaguing the early version of MSN was uncontrolled internet connections. When two users were chatting, it was impossible to tell if the other person was still online, had left, or if their connection had simply expired. Sometimes, sending a message felt like sending it into the void.

With the intention of solving this situation, a team of Microsoft engineers devised a brilliant micro-interaction that would redefine the psychology of messaging as we know it forever.

To set expectations and make conversations feel more engaging, The team introduced what they called the write indicatorEvery time users started typing a message, it sent a signal to the server, which in turn informed the person on the other end that the user was typing. Around 95% of all MSN traffic wasn't the message content itself, but simply bits of data that would cause the iconic dots to appear and disappear!

From a psychological perspective, the typing cue triggered all the behavioral switches that hooked people. Every time someone starts typing, it creates anticipation followed by a variable reward. Today, this is a researched area in psychology that serves as a foundation for anyone trying to build addictive products.

The typing indicator elegantly accomplished what the team had set out to do. But it did even more than that. In addition to increased engagement, it also introduced a whole new level of emotional nuance to online communication. This seemingly small detail conveyed things that no single message ever could. Uncertainty. Imagine this scenario:

Carlos "Hi Anna! It was a pleasure meeting you. Would you like to go out for a drink tonight?"

Ana "Start writing..."

Ana "Stop writing..."

Ana "Start writing again..."

Ana ":" Clear! "

How convinced is Ana? really Perhaps you too have experienced it: the anxiety and uncertainty of prolonged writing prompts followed by a brief response, or even worse: nothing! Carlos might have been happier if he hadn't noticed Ana's handwriting pattern. But he did.

Today, handwriting indicators are ubiquitous. And while we can argue that it made messaging more useful, it also made it more addictive by playing an innocent yet powerful sleight of hand: we were handed a few exciting cards, at the cost of someone watching us from the other end.

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Where have you been?

The introduction of iPhone It marked a technological leap that affected every imaginable aspect of computing and, with it, every aspect of social interaction.

¡Brian Acton y Jan Koum They went on vacation after leaving Yahoo! When they returned and tried the iPhone for the first time, they immediately saw enormous potential in the device and its model. App StoreThey started working on a new type of messaging application, giving it a memorable name: WhatsApp, to sound like the colloquial what's happening? with which everyone is familiar.

Growth was relatively slow, and they almost decided to give up on their company. That changed when Apple introduced a new service that almost instantly catapulted their creation to the top of the App Store. After integrating the push notification system, their user base skyrocketed to 250,000 users in a very short time.

There were a couple of things that made WhatsApp Different and appealing. First, it sent messages over the internet so users no longer had to pay for each SMS. Second, it reintroduced the online status feature that had originally developed over a decade in chat rooms. And third, it introduced the typing indicator that we've all come to both love and hate. All these things combined made WhatsApp feel light years ahead of any other messaging app. SMS traditional of its time.

Today, WhatsApp has over a billion users and is the preferred way to send messages in many countries around the world.

According to statistics from several countries, WhatsApp messages sent by cheating spouses play an integral role in 40% of divorce cases citing adultery, he writes. Rachel Thompson de Mashable .

What element has a significant influence on this? The indicator last seen onlineUnlike the traditional online state of the early 2000s, last seen It added a new level of information to written messaging: the exact time someone used WhatsApp.

The result was predictable: high user engagement at the cost of reduced user-to-user privacy.

What does it mean when your spouse was last seen online at 4:30 a.m.? Why would someone be online but not answer their phone minutes after being seen online? How come your romantic partner and your best friend always seem to be online at the same time—is it a coincidence?

Coincidence or not, users decided to take action to reclaim their micro-privacy. In no time, the internet was flooded with articles and tutorials, both written and step-by-step, including video instructions. These tutorials ranged from creating a fake "last seen" status to freezing time and disabling it entirely.

This feature had such a strong psychological impact on users that some began to refer to it as Syndrome Last Seen (LSS). In her research Regarding how WhatsApp impacts young people, Dr. Anshu Bhatt points out:

This app has been found to be highly addictive, leaving a trail that becomes difficult to control..

And just as when it seemed there was no more micro-privacy we would voluntarily reveal, there was still one small area that was largely overlooked.

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Read confirmation

When WhatsApp It introduced the now-famous blue check mark, instantly facing massive review of its users. It took a few weeks and another checkmark appeared in the app's privacy settings to disable read receipts.

The delayed response to messages was usually simple and brief: «I couldn't see it"I barely saw it," or a similar response was good enough to reply to someone without any guilt or fear of retaliation. Today, mentioning that you didn't see a message is hardly sufficient, and we all need a better alibi.

It was once again a seemingly small "detail" that profoundly reshaped our user experience and expectations of one another.

The introduction of read receipts marked a critical moment in which Seeing a message was no longer understood as an oversight, but as a perceived act of ignorance. Sending a message slowly triggered a feeling of being ignored by the sender and established an obligation to respond on the part of the receiver.

A study A study at the University of Copenhagen found that over 80% of participants had developed strategies to avoid read receipts. Many participants also mentioned that they began to speculate and create their own stories about why the other person hadn't responded yet.

Overall, none of the participants liked read receipts, yet they kept the feature enabled because they wanted to know what was going on in other people's lives. Some users even went so far as to intentionally activate read receipts to explicitly conveying that they are ignoring the person on the other endUnlike other forms of micro-privacy, read receipts, such as emojis and stickers, have become an active part of the conversation.

Read receipts aren't about letting us know if our message was delivered successfully. They're about giving us a glimpse into someone else's life. And while we've come to accept them as a feature of modern messaging apps, only time will tell if they'll remain so.

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Conclusion

The history of online status, typing indicators, and read receipts is a story about the unresolved and constant tension between privacy and engagement. In this article, we look at this through the lens of messaging, but these ideas apply to *any* product that involves people interacting with each other in any way.

One of the simplest and most insightful theories to emerge from the field of organizational psychology is the simple idea of ​​assuming good intentions. If we look for negativity in the world, that's what we're going to find. I believe that Most of the products we use today are designed with good intentions.But I also believe that Designing with good intentions is no longer enough.

When privacy is at stake, things simply don't become that simple. Designers who don't critically question whether revealing user information is truly necessary or whether it could have detrimental effects on user well-being are effectively choosing not to do their job. Engagement is a one-dimensional variable that's easy to track, but it won't serve as a sustainable metric for the future we're designing for (or the future we want to live in).

So, how can we envision a future that respects people's micro-privacy?

It could be one where you know you can interact online without having to fear what your status might reveal about you. It's about reading a message without feeling guilty for not sending an immediate reply. Does it sound idealistic? It is.