Ask HN: Why did group chat never really take off?
In the online world, instant messaging, email, video chat, and even Facebook walls have become popular mainstream mediums of communication. But why is it that the concept of group chat never took off?<p>If you are separated from your friends for a long time, you can keep in touch with each of them with any one of the various popular mediums of communication. But there's no way to feel the live company of a group of your friends online (IRC channels are not included because they involve mainly strangers).<p>People love talking to their friends one-on-one over instant messaging or video chat, but for some reason you don't see people talking live to more than one person online. Why is this the case? Is it a problem with the medium? If so, how can the medium be improved to fix this?