

After WhatsApp: An Insider’s View on What’s Next in Messaging - nikunjk
http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/22/after-whatsapp-an-insiders-view-on-whats-next-in-messaging/?ncid=twittersocialshare

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mef
The author's thrust seems to be that eventually, mobile users will want more
than "just messaging" from their messaging app: they'll want a "platform" on
which they can play games with their contacts and shop for things.

This might be true, but the history of telephone, SMS, email, and desktop
messaging suggests otherwise. People don't seem to want a multi-faceted
"platform", they simply want to communicate with other people.

~~~
minikomi
This is, essentially, the position of LINE in japan. Started as a funky
messaging app with stickers, became a host for many pay to play games &
fortune telling etc.

~~~
mef
A good point, and LINE also reports around 50% of their revenue coming from
in-game purchases, hinting at what the author sees in Kik's future. It will be
interesting to see if Kik can replicate LINE's Japan successes in North
America.

~~~
snogglethorpe
The thing about LINE (and kakaotalk, etc), though, is that they do a pretty
good job of keeping the focus sharply on the essential messaging/voip
functionality, while still making it very easy to do the "other stuff." You
can install LINE and very quickly start chatting with existing friends from
your phone address-book, and if you don't want to play games or whatever,
their existence doesn't get in your way.

In this sense, LINE etc _aren 't_ so much like FB or other "giant ball of mud"
social apps, and present a much bigger threat to whatsapp.

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cft
The purpose of this piece is very simple: dang, WhatsApp was just bought for
19bn, someone please buy Kik, we are also a mobile instant messenger! Problem
is, it does not work that way: you cannot argue that if Kik has 10% of
WhatsApp's number of users it should be bought for 1.9bn: social
networking/messaging is sort of winner takes it all game.

~~~
kevando
I agree this is mostly a PR article, but it does remind me that I often think
only in terms of the USA. When the world adds 1bn new smart phone users, it's
going to be an INCREDIBLE improvement to their life and before the first thing
they'll do is figure out how to message their friends. Messaging will be THE
first thing all new smart phone users do. If it's not SMS, what is it?

~~~
bmajz
Yeah, I think this is at the base of US-centric folks' surprise at the
WhatsApp deal. The difficulties in messaging simply aren't apparent when you
get it free on almost every plan. Additionally, there is the extremely useful
case of international messaging which is more apparent in places where you
have smaller countries with lots of movement between them e.g. Europe or the
Middle East. Just not a big a need in the US and thus hard to see value

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rakoo
Seriously, not even considering XMPP, the foundation of it all, with the
immense advantage of interoperability is sad. There are coutless softwares,
pretty much everyone already has an account, and yet ...

Would we even consider an email where we have to be on the same network to
communicate ? No.

Would we even consider an IM where we have to be on the same network to
communicate ? Where we can't even use our computers ? Hell yeah !

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d0vs
People care about products, not protocols.

~~~
01Michael10
I want an IM messaging product where I can communicate with almost anyone...

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hayksaakian
SMS solves that problem for people who have that specific problem.

~~~
01Michael10
Wrong, you should have read the article to understand the advantages and
disadvantages of SMS and messaging.

Disadvantages of SMS is that it is tied to a phone number (no privacy) and is
expensive in most of the world. These are not issues with messaging but it
does suffer from not having a standard protocol that everyone can use like
SMS.

SMS is stuck where it is at now but it's certainly possible for messaging to
be much more then it is now.

~~~
unsignedint
There are another aspects that SMS is bad at:

\- Crossing a border with SMS is rather expensive. Only recently that T-mobile
finally dropping 35 cents charge for international SMSes, not sure about
others...

\- UTF-8 implementation sucked until recently. I think it is still
unpredictable if it cross carrier.

\- Group SMS is non-existant, although MMS can handles it. (and if you have
someone uses sonething like Google Voice, forget group messaging... although
it is probably Google Voice who would deserve some blames.) But there is no
way to get receipients' capabilities.

~~~
pjmlp
What?!

In Europe we have pre-paid packages with flat rate SMS.

~~~
unsignedint
It's similar, if it's domestic SMS. (In fact, a lot of plans no longer offer
"flat rate SMS" rather they are built into now ubiquitous "unlimited" plans.

Other than some carriers offering extra international SMS options, it's
certainly not is a standard.

I am not very sure about how it really works in Europe, but I have feeling
that EU countries have more comprehensive arrangements for
calling/texting/roaming across their borders, or at least I wouldn't be too
surprising even if so.

~~~
pjmlp
Yes, in Germany we do have "EU flatrate", a set of "favorite countries" or a
big package like 500 SMS for foreign numbers.

The option depends per operator.

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asharpe
Identity (online and offline) is ultimately what this entire market (and
product space) is about. 100 years ago, all you had was a street address. Then
came telegrams (but often the last mile was still your street address. For the
last 50 years, you added a telephone number. Then Fax/Telex. What the last 20
years (or so) has seen is the complete disruption of these channels. Email is
an entirely new medium giving you a unique new address and mobile phones
allowed you to personalise a phone number (rather than call someone's home and
hope not to speak to partner/child/parent). And then came Facebook (and to a
lesser extent Twitter). All of a sudden, you don't need to tell someone you
want to have a relationship with (in the broadest sense of the word) you
address, phone number, etc. Just your Facebook profile. This is a seismic
shift in our communication.

In each of these cases, you have a unique identity that people can reach you
on. As the author points out, to whom and how much you want to publicise that
identity is based on the reach and likelihood for abuse. However, it's a new
identity. Why WhatsApp and kik (and others) have value is they are the
registry of these new identities.

These identities are used not only to interact or communicate, they are
increasingly becoming the hub of all online interactions: taxi fares, online
commerce, sharing other forms of media. EBay started us down this journey
where as a seller you can provide as much or as little information as you
like.

Ultimately, to own the registry is to own the identities and access to them.
This is very powerful and why you need to keep inventing and re-inventing the
platform to retain and acquire new identities. That there were a billion
WhatsApp users out there that may never need to login to Facebook again is a
massive strategic threat to Facebook - hence the valuation and hence why
messaging or identity is tremendously valuable.

~~~
bmajz
Spot on. Facebook has become quite valuable as a semi-reliable identity source
and WhatsApp definitely enhances that service by consolidating and extending
it.

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w1ntermute
> As the CEO of the only smartphone messenger more popular than WhatsApp in
> the U.S.

This is quite misleading when smartphone messengers aren't popular in the US.

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kayoone
I am not sure. Basically many people move away from platforms (like facebook)
to more specific apps for simple tasks like messaging (WhatsApp) or
photosharing(Instagram/snapchat). This suggests that the whole circle will now
start over again ? I hope not ;)

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weixiyen
I honestly think that if a messenger app wins, it will be more valuable than
Facebook, and its not even close.

Facebook at its core is really only about 2 things:

1) Identity

2) Photos

But if a messenger wins, it will actually take over 1) Identity, and can
potentially take over 2) Photos.

This is because Messenger Apps has way more reach in terms of devices.

If most people in the world use one service, or most people in the country use
a service, this service can now become a platform for all sorts of things, but
most importantly, in terms of monetization, it can be a platform for
purchasing goods and services.

Never in the history of this planet has there been anything like the Mobile
Phone. Something everyone in the world could potentially have, and there is a
chance that there can be a single service that almost everyone in the world
uses.

The author seems to be in his own personal bubble though.

He lists Line, Kakao, WeChat, Kik as the only potential messengers that can
become the biggest messaging platform. I don't believe this is true. It's
possible for new entrants and even Facebook to win.

It may also be that messaging stays fragmented in its current state without a
unifying messenger for the entire world, with each messenger being ubiquitous
to a country or region.

~~~
corry
I wouldn't say he's in his own bubble. Each of those companies has a good head
start of 100's of millions of DAILY ACTIVE users + apps that actually are
great at what they do.

Could Facebook still enter? Sure, but they've bought a few other messaging
apps and done basically nothing with them.

Could a fresher startup come in? Sure, you can never discount that. But the
listed messaging apps are (a) not a zero sum game / mutually exclusive, and
(b) already have a huge head start.

~~~
bad_user
Facebook's Messenger for Android is pretty good and when I write messages with
it, people reply. This is why I think the Whatsapp acquisition makes no sense,
unless it was a defensive move.

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pjmlp
I also did not understand it.

First of all, if it wasn't for the aquisition I wouldn't even be aware
Whatsapp exists, as none of my friends uses it.

Second, a messaging application used to be a standard exercise to be done
during network programming classes in my CS degree, so no big technical
challenge to solve.

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medell
His point about country usage patterns even applies to the US and Canada.

I remember in Canada when most of my friends were on ICQ (and the ubiquitious
"uh oh!") and then the slow switch to MSN. Yet the majority of my American
friends used AOL Instant Messenger.

For the younger folk that have never heard the default ICQ notification sound:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iCPIUGnHQ8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iCPIUGnHQ8)

~~~
01Michael10
ICQ - Now that is old school and I remember the notification sound so well. I
had to go look them up and they still exist! LOL They are also on almost every
mobile platform -->
[http://www.icq.com/download/mobile/en](http://www.icq.com/download/mobile/en)

They even have over 150,000 reviews on Google Play. Most of the reviews are
non-English or people where English is not their native language so that
explains why I have never heard of anyone using ICQ on their phone.

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corry
Great article, Ted. It's a pattern we've all seen before - whoever nails the
core utility / experience (Google->search, FB->friending) gets to build a
massive platform around it.

And messaging is clearly at the core (if not THE core) of the smartphone.

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davemel37
I honestly knew very little about this space, but now that I understand the
difference. The winner is clear. Focus is the secret to branding and what's
app is the only one with a clear singular focus...

Categories don't converge. They diverge. That's just how evolution works.

Plus, the human mind associates convergence as compromise. The likely outcome
of this battle will be that people will assume what's app focus means they are
better at messaging and everyone else's apps short of bringing a new level of
convenience we are willing to compromise for, will be perceived as second
class. After all,how can someone doing two things be better at something than
someone who specilizes in it exclusively?

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chacham15
> After all,how can someone doing two things be better at something than
> someone who specilizes in it exclusively?

There are many reasons why this is possible. For example: why are RISC CPUs
dominating CISC CPUs? While this comparison is slightly unfair because you
want to compare a general purpose CPU to an ASIC, it illustrates a case where
trying to have an instruction focus on doing one thing well is worse than
having multiple instructions try and do it.

~~~
davemel37
I'm talking about how human perception works. We assume a specialist knows
more than a generalist. Same goes for branding, we assume a specialized
product works better than an all in one product.

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gbog
I can share my experience as a wechat user: yes it is a platform, yes people
want and need much more than sms. In fact it is very easy to imagine a wechat
phone that will fulfill the needs of users. And it is extremely dangerous:
this platform is a prison! This can kill internet.

