Social Messaging Thoughts

I tend to stay away from coming up with consumer social products as I often find these projects lack focus or direction. But…I have been thinking about this “idea” for a bit now and I wanted to put it into words.

This idea does not solve a tangible problem. This idea is not revenue-generating from day one. And this idea does not have a defensible moat against large players (in fact, I think they will do this themselves).

But I think there is room for a better social messaging app that makes it fun to chat with your friends again.

I think that Instagram should unbundle direct messages and create the most “fun” way to talk to people.

They have recently been experimenting with “last active” tags to show you when your friends were most recently on Instagram. I think they will unbundle this part of the app into a standalone “direct” app.

Facebook messenger is too crowded and not optimized for teens chatting with their friends.

A few other ways I see Instagram taking this:

- What if you could meet people who are around you via messages?

- Maps

Originally published at gonen.blog.