It also seems to be the future. Phone numbers are how people receive phone calls, and more and more people are opting out of that in favor of instant messaging and video chat. More and more people have stopped answering their phones. Including our parents, who got sick of the scams and the robocalls. In my region, despite phone number portability, the numbers are fairly ephemeral with people switching to new ones all the time for all sorts of reasons. And nobody cares, because it is the IM system that is important.

Skype almost managed to replace the legacy phone network, but fell out of favor. If there was interoperability between clients like Signal, Whatsapp, Line, Wechat, it would take over a multi-billion dollar industry. Instead, my bank is trying to use some proprietary video conference system to schedule meetings with me.