There's a reason why Miiverse was substituted with social networks:
- They get more exposure with people using third party one.
- Responsibility and maintenance falls on those networks.

You are still welcomed to join the VGC Twitter group: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=228237

Unlike Splatoon 2, those games I listed let you chat with random people, not just those on your friends list. 

I know a more likely scenario: it will not improve. Switch online is literally doing everything worse than the Wii U online service. Where is Miiverse? Friend messaging? Normal voice chat? N64 games? Hell even Wii had N64 games! Nintendo had 1,5 years to come up with a decent online service. Even if Switch online was free it would still be a laughable service.

But since everybody is going to buy it anyway to play Smash, Nintendo will think they did a good job and keep it as it is now.

Source?

Offloading the voice chat functionality to our mobile devices frees up additional processing power on the Switch to allow for slightly better performance in our games.

Personally, I almost never use voice chat, but I think Nintendo made a smart move with this one.

reading those forums, I feel like I'm the only one thinking that 20$/year is pocket change. (actually less than that if I use my gold coins)

In my house, we eat cut up hotdogs for lunch and we buy our clothes at J Mart. Twenty dollars could buy a whole lot of ramen. Not just regular ramen, either. I'm talking fancy top ramen!

I just want to be able to send messages to my friends... why is that so hard Nintendo?

Historical evidence and logical conclusion.

1. VC on two separate consoles (wiiu reduced but still covered NES/SNES heavily)
2. Classic Consoles (NES/SNES)

The current solution uses the same software as from the Classic Consoles.

Yeah I think the lack of messaging is the main problem with it. Though as others have said messaging is a system level activity, so its not even part of the online setup. The fact that I can see my brother online on his Switch and have no way to message him from my Switch is just stupid. I don't want to be having to grab my phone and use that to message someone or voice chat during online play. The Switch should have messaging built in by now, at the very least you should be able to send a friend who is online as message request to play a game, and get a response. And obviously the using a phone for a voice chat app is very stupid. I get that it helps save battery power as someone pointed out, but you're only going to be playing online when you are on wifi, which means you are probably somewhere that has outlets, so you can probably plug the system in while playing, so there is no way that is the reason why they didn't put voice chat straight in the system.

I'm not worried about them not adding more games and systems to the VC subscription service. The VC has never come with all systems available. Hell as someone said they might even charge more to be able to play other system's games. I could see the $20 service end up being the basic Nintendo Online membership that comes with online play, cloud saves, and Nintendo games, but then a premium Online membership that comes with all the other systems VC games that we are used to and that costs like $40). That way if people mostly just want to play Switch games online they get it for the super low price compared to the competitors of just $20/year, but if you want a full on Netflix-like version of the VC then you still pay less than competitors but gotta pay more than $20. I think that'd be pretty smart of Nintendo, it'd still be a much better deal for people who buy a bunch of VC games than the old version of VC, and Nintendo gets a more predictable revenue stream that is much more likely to get people to pay money when they get a whole library of Nintendo classics instead of having to pick and choose specific ones at high prices.