FEW APPRECIATE FREE instant messaging apps more than those who lived through the era when a single text message cost nine cents. Let’s not even get started on the cost of an SMS that was sent overseas.

The cost of messaging used to place a cap on the amount of communication we’d make with one another via text. Those who were in the trenches will recall the 300 “web texts” (each limited to 160 characters) that service providers offered, if you were willing to sit yourself down at a PC to write and dispatch them.

It was a simpler time. We thought before we texted, working within the constraints of a meagre character-count while trying to communicate and convey everything. Homework, gossip, grievances, updates on your whereabouts, debriefs from nights out. All of it had to fit into 160 characters, including spaces.

SometimesPeopleEvenSkippedTheSpacesWhenThingsWereDire.

We had no choice but to be mindful of our output back then.

Internet-enabled real-time communication has been around for quite a while. Perhaps it’s just nostalgia, but I do feel that things peaked in the MSN era when instant messaging existed solely within the confines of a PC. Things quickly went downhill when our phones rendered us perpetually accessible.

Sure, it was novel to begin with. No longer did we find ourselves stuck somewhere without phone credit, desperately sending a free “call me” text to a friend or relative, like a digital smoke signal. The dissolution of limits to SMS texting allowed for more context and........

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