If (and when) Messenger rules your phone

Messenger in it’s current state seems to be a humble chatting app. But it is aspiring to become a lot more. Or I personally feel so.

It was very late on a Wednesday night, so late that it was Thursday already. My messenger was flooding with messages from my classmates (obviously) inquiring about the assignment that we had to submit the next day. Everytime my messenger pinged, it grew more frustrating for me.

I have been in a love-hate relationship with Messenger since the time I started it using as the medium to interact with people for professional purposes. Be it to communicate with people from the start-up I am working with, or the people in from the organizing team of the college fest or be it my team mates for a group project, I have always preferred Messenger. But it really gets annoying when everyone starts bugging at the same time on one platform.

But on the said night, (yeah! yeah! I am still talking about the Wednesday night) I was particularly startled by the fact that how many people it connects me to. Ranging from my mom in Delhi, to the guy living in the next room and to my friend in Colombia. I am in touch with through this particular medium! Not only that. It also shows me when they were last seen online and even let’s me access the conversations from the past.

I was wondering how powerful a tool it can be if it syncs up other apps in my smart phone. It already knows what I am talking and to whom. It can sense what is my relationship with others on basis of my conversations with them. I know, a computer interpreting your conversation might seem a bit frightening. But just imagine if Messenger could send you reminders of a meeting just on the basis of a conversation you had with someone else.

What I am saying is not as impossible as it seems, Google already does that if you haven’t noticed that yet. But the fact remains, I check Messenger more often than my Gmail. But what I am also indicating is Messenger has the capability to kill the need of the rest of the apps in my phone. Here I would like to talk a little about the WeChat phenomenon. You must’ve heard about this chatting app with Chinese origin. Some of you must’ve even have downloaded it (but reverted back to Whatsapp as all your friends were there). But WeChat in China is a whole different thing. It is The Internet. It is a search engine, you can pay your bills and even book a cab and what not through just a messaging app.

So why I am here talking about Messenger and it’s potential to rule your mobile (by being the only app on it). The primary reason being Messenger is already everywhere, unlike WeChat which is having a tough time stepping out of China. And on top of it, it is also closely linked with our Facebook account and which better platform can it get to source our activity, preferences and personal information. Moreover, Messenger has recently introduced chat bots where you can communicate with computer and command it to do various things like fetching news or play a game of chess with you through a chat interface.

So what I’ll do next is try to envision every app and how it will fit in the Messenger environment.

My day begins with the “Good Morning” text from my mom.

Sending and receiving messages is already possible in Messenger. But what if my mom was also able to browse and download the image she likes to send with the message to keep me motivated. And with extensions like GIF keyboards, I feel things like this is just one hack away.

Then my phone alarm tells me when to wake up exactly.

It will be really great to be woken up even without having to set an alarm. And I believe Messenger can certainly do that. Every now and then I tell someone if there is a class or not. What if it picks it from there and reminds me an hour before the class that I have to be really awake to attend it.

I like to listen to music while getting ready for the day

Music streaming on messenger app is not as crazy an idea as it seems a first. But think for a second, what if can set my playlist through a bot let’s say, and then it plays a particular playlist at a particular time. What if Spotify has it’s own bot! And just text your current mood, or the genre of the songs or even the particular you want listen at that time! No waiting for the app to load, no time wasted getting to the song! Now that I think of it, what if it can sense your mood through your ongoing conversations and suggest you songs! Wouldn’t that be great?

Through the day I use various apps for various purposes I’ll list a few

Amazon: Browse. Compare. Shop.

Uber: Book a Ride

Trello: To get things done

Medium: Reading

Paytm: Pay bills. Recharge.

Spaces: To store links.

One way or the other Messenger can be empowered to achieve all of the above.

But the thing is, are we ready for it?

Are we ready to share everything with Messenger, not knowing who is on the other side using this specific information to mint money? To what extent is it fine for a computerized system to get involved in our lives? Are we ready to let computers enter our minds, which will also open the gates for the owners of those systems into our minds? What evils will it lead to? What good will come from it? Moreover, should human beings be left to control and access these systems from the back end? Should we let them monetize the information that is ours? Or is it really ours? Who is the owner of all that information?

All these questions are still open for discussion and it will be really nice to get your views on them.

Cheers.

shu.pro.bho.