Messaging, and where a conversation comes from
Direct and group messages, what happens to a message sent while you are offline, and why a mentorship thread contains things a normal chat does not - action items, session summaries and meeting invites.
What you will learn
- How to start a conversation, and the three ways one begins
- What you can send, and what happens after you send it
- Whether the other person knows you have read it
- Why a mentorship thread looks different from a normal one
Three ways a conversation starts#
You rarely open the messenger and go looking for someone. Most conversations here begin somewhere else and end up in the same inbox.
- You message someone directly from their profile - the ordinary case
- You start a group and add people to it
- You book a mentor, and a thread for that engagement appears on its own with both of you already in it
What you can send#
Text, and files of most kinds. Anything you attach stays with the message rather than expiring.
- Text
- Images
- Documents and other files
- Audio
- Video
Good to know
There are no reactions and no forwarding. If you want to pass a message on, quote it in a reply or copy it across - and if you want to agree with something, reply to it.
After you send it#
Four things happen to a message, and you can see three of them.
- It arrives immediately for anyone who is online - nobody refreshes anything
- You can see whether it has been read, and when
- You can reply to a specific message rather than to the conversation, so a thread with several things going on stays followable
- You can edit a message, and you can delete one - both leave a mark, so an edited message is visibly edited rather than quietly changed
Tip
You can see when the other person is typing. You cannot see whether they are online, and they cannot see whether you are - there is no presence indicator, deliberately or otherwise.
Messages sent while you were away#
Nothing is lost by closing the tab. A message sent while you are offline is waiting when you come back, and unread counts are kept per conversation so you can see where the new things are without opening each one.
Why a mentorship thread is different#
A conversation attached to a mentorship booking can carry things an ordinary chat cannot, because the thread knows what it is for.
| What appears | What it is |
|---|---|
| Meeting invite | A session, in the thread, rather than a link pasted into it. |
| Action item | Something agreed in a session, recorded where both of you will see it again. |
| Session summary | What the session covered, kept with the conversation rather than in someone's notes. |
Tip
This is the reason to keep mentorship conversations in the thread rather than moving to WhatsApp. Six weeks later the thread still knows what you agreed; a chat app does not.
