Every app is a messaging app

Every application will be used for messaging. What do spreadsheets, email drafts, and system notifications have in common? Inventive people use them in creative ways to send and receive messages. People love to talk to each other, and it’s incredibly hard to stop them. Here are a few examples.

Real-time chat, through document editing

Messaging via Excel? In the music video for “Dilemma” (2002), Kelly Rowland and Nelly were mocked for this “text message” in the spreadsheet app on a Nokia 9210 Communicator:

But over two decades later, it’s the norm! Today, collaborative editing is available in Google Sheets, Google Docs, and other office-productivity apps. Schoolteachers struggle to stop students from chatting during class; the students send their messages on the same real-time collaboration features that make it easy to work on a group project together.

About those messages: writing in a Google Doc enables you to see words as they’re being typed, without the need to hit “Send”. It’s reminiscent of early chat systems like the Unix program `talk`. David Auerbach (creator of the chat indicator ‘<someone> is typing’) writes:

The interface [for `talk`] was not like that of chat programs today, where you type a message in the bottom, then hit Enter to send it over the wire to your friend. Instead, talk split the screen in half and transmitted everything you typed letter by letter. If you typed something and then deleted it, your friend would see the whole gaffe. Your text and your friend’s text were never combined into sequence.

It felt more like an actual conversation, except it was even more efficient, since you both could talk at the same time and anticipate each other’s responses. Throughout college, my future wife and I—we attended different schools—used talk to keep in touch with one another. She would get halfway through a sentence and I could start responding without her having to finish the thought.

David Auerbach via Slate: I Built That “So-and-So Is Typing” Feature in Chat

Doesn’t that sound a bit like chatting in Google Docs? Not every keystroke gets sent to your collaborators (for efficiency) but that “Send”-less experience is the same.

More unconventional messaging hacks

Arguably, communicating with others is the core purpose of real-time collaborative editors, so let’s look at some more interesting examples. Features for a single user can also be used in inventive ways.

In 2012, CIA Director David Petraeus resigned after his extramarital affair with Paula Broadwell was publicized. One of the tactics they used to try to hide their communication was writing messages in email drafts on a shared account, sometimes known as “foldering”:

Petraeus and Broadwell apparently used a trick, known to terrorists and teen-agers alike, to conceal their email traffic, one of the law enforcement officials said.

Rather than transmitting emails to the other's inbox, they composed at least some messages and instead of transmitting them, left them in a draft folder or in an electronic "dropbox," the official said. Then the other person could log onto the same account and read the draft emails there. This avoids creating an email trail that is easier to trace.

[...] A January 2005 PBS special on al-Qaeda identified the tactic as one of several "terrorist tricks," alongside logging in from public Internet cafes. The trick is also used in a 2008 spy film "Traitor."

Max Fisher via the Washington Post: Here’s the e-mail trick Petraeus and Broadwell used to communicate

If you squint at this for a moment, you’ll realize that any interface where a user can write a message and read it back is an interface for communication. That’s true whether it was originally intended for multiple users or not.

An innocuous ability to edit your user profile turns into a way to enable free wi-fi on the plane. An online game where you just click on checkboxes turns into an invitation to join a secret community for programmers. And, the ability to write little books in the video game Minecraft turns into a library to make banned content available in countries where the internet is censored. With a little effort from both ends, two people can communicate through all kinds of unexpected channels.

Another creative way that people send messages doesn’t require any special protocol at all. Instead, they piggyback on existing system messages to get your attention.

Notification injection

I’m not sure of a standard name for this kind of communication, so I am calling it “notification injection”. This follows in the footsteps of a classic telephone trick: “You are receiving a collect call from HIMOMCANYOUPICKMEUP, do you accept the charges?” The sender re-uses some non-standard field (like the caller name) to send you a message using the system’s own notifications. It’s easy to do - no coordination with the receiver needed.

For example, you might get a friend request like “MAKEMONEYFAST BIT.LY/41XCTLB has sent you a friend request!”. Or after you’ve blocked someone, they’re suddenly back in your inbox through some other service: “[someone] has shared a document: u suck” or “[someone] has sent you $0.01: will you please call me back??” 

These are among the worst kinds of messages: low-effort spam, scams, or outright abuse from people you’re trying to avoid. To keep up, platforms need to introduce anti-abuse features that might be surprising at first glance - like blocking users in Google Drive.

Are you accidentally writing a messaging app?

Wherever there is a desire to communicate, people will invent on top of the platform’s existing features. And as history shows, it is very, very difficult to stop them. 

Are you accidentally writing a messaging app? If the application can store and display user input, the odds are yes. It’s worth asking yourself: what will happen when someone inevitably uses the app to send messages to your users?