
Facebook Messenger, SMS and iMessage - showngo
http://brooksreview.net/2011/08/sms/
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Mr_Ed
People (in the UK at least) have grown so 'comfortable' with using SMS - I'll
admit to it myself, I could easily fire up the Facebook and send a message to
any one of my friends, all of whom have smartphones and would undoubtedly
receive the message within a minute of it being sent. However, for whatever
reason, I'll still just send an SMS.

Apple have realised that the only way of replacing this (and eventually
killing SMS) is to provide a messaging service which is inherently invisible
or 'passive' from a UX point of view. Yes, it is tied into iOS, but the
critical thing to consider is that users are required to put in _zero_ effort
to send an iMessage.

With this in mind, I don't see how Facebook Messenger is any different to the
likes of [insert free web messaging service here], admittedly with a lot more
users.

~~~
robgough
While I agree that integrated and invisible is the way to go, the popularity
of iMessage will be limited by how many people actually have iPhones. While I
know of a lot of people with them, it's certainly not the majority of people I
know.

Whereas with Facebook, just about everyone has an account.

The killer feature really is group messaging on-the-go with _all_ of your
friends, regardless of their phone. As it stands right now, I have a feeling
Facebook are the only ones really going for this.

