The age of instant communication is here to stay
From the huge media coverage of Facebook’s purchase of WhatsApp we can surely say that now, after many years of Messenger, text messages, and many, many other such services, we have now entered an age when instant communication is a part of every day life for an ever-larger proportion of the world’s population.
Let’s try to put this phenomenon into perspective. If you have been a user of Microsoft’s Messenger, or even predecessors like ICQ or Yahoo! Messenger, or the zillion services derived from the open protocol Jabber, you may well wonder why something that has been around for so long is now being seen by some as a revolution.
The first thing to say here is don’t worry about it, you were just ahead of your time. Don’t try to understand it, unless you are interested in learning the fundamentals of Rogers’ diffusion of innovation curve and how innovation is adopted by society.
Looking at this from the perspective of your country isn’t much help either: WhatsApp has the biggest market share of instant messaging services in Spain, for example, and is used here by a broad demographic. So what’s all the fuss about, your average Spaniard might ask. Conversely, seen from the United States, where WhatsApp is still not that popular, and Facebook Messenger or text messages are still widely used, you might be prompted to think that WhatsApp is the next big thing. But you’d be wrong. Or take the case of Thailand, where WhatsApp’s widespread popularity has already been replaced by Line, and is now seen as so last year…
The lesson is clear: to analyze a phenomenon like this requires a global perspective. Spaniards shouldn’t assume that because WhatsApp is now a household word in Spain means that its success is guaranteed everywhere else on the planet. So what’s going on here? Simply the process that happens when instant messaging becomes a characteristic of a particular segment of the population of a specific region and then becomed a widely accepted means of communication. Instant messaging is now part of what we do, a way that we can all talk to each other.
The what’s next for WhatsApp following Facebook’s over-the-top acquisition can only be understood in this context, that we are entering a new age, and that helps us understand Mark Zuckerberg’s earlier attempt to buy Snapchat for $3 billion.
That said, we need to bear two other things in mind: the first is that we are talking about an extremely volatile segment. The growing popularity of Telegram, a far superior and more sophisticated application than WhatsApp, shows that despite the importance of the internet effect and installing an application that immediately includes everybody in your agenda, it only takes a couple of months for some new service to appear, offering a viable alternative. Furthermore, if you are also able to market the service well, and for it to become a habitual part of your smartphone use (each time somebody on your agenda opens an account with it), and to present it as the solution to many problems associated with the app you were previously using, the complexity of predicting which way the market will go grows.
Aside from Telegram’s rising popularity, KakaoTalk may well go public, Line will soon be offering voice services, and Viber has been bought by Japan’s Rakuten. This is clearly a vibrant, dynamic market.
The second question is about use. For an instant messaging service to really be considered part of our everyday lives, we have to start using it for much more than checking on what our friends are up to. This means using it for work, talking to companies, or even banking.
But can anybody in their right mind really imagine a corporation using WhatsApp for internal communication? I understand that there are some out there doing just that, but simply from a technical viewpoint this is insane, and would damage a company’s credibility, besides their security. A company that uses such an unreliable service would have to be run by highly irresponsible people. Let’s leave it at that. As for WhatsApp banking, which I have heard people in the finance sector talk about, this is based on the belief that WhatsApp will, at some point, improve its security policies, and all that is needed is more money thrown at it. Which so far hasn’t happened.
Instant messaging for professional purposes could produce some interesting innovation, and would be the litmus test for an app. Tools such as Microsoft’s Lync or Yammer are already used in the corporate world, but have so far proved unable to get the same kind of traction as in the social sphere. Skype, also owned by Microsoft, is now the most widely used service for international phone calls, but its instant text messaging service has not matched this success.
Blackberry’s BBM deserves a special mention in this category, a service that after having carved an important niche in the corporate and social markets in many different countries, has suddenly found itself out of the game due to the drop in popularity of its phones, which have not kept up with current trends. By the time it was able to offer different versions for other operating systems, the damage was done, and everything indicates that one of the best services, from a strictly technological perspective is now in freefall.
The functional characteristics of Google’s hangouts have generated a lot of interest, and it is well positioned between both camps; it is not entirely crazy to imagine some effort being made to revitalize the service, given the privileged position it occupies on Android.
At the same time, we are seeing the emergence of new services such as Cotap, founded by one of the creators of Yammer; or Slack, created by the core of Flickr founding team. Then there is Jeff Pulver’s Zula, or Spain’s IMBox.me, put together by Spotbros (who I advise), all of them competing to win major corporate clients, and offering value propositions based on simplification and efficient communications integrated into multiple platforms.
None of these tools will necessarily become the standard that everybody uses. It is possible that we will see a lengthy period of competition, with geographically segmented markets based on type of use, influenced by socio-demographic factors or other variable, and that it will be some time before there is any consolidation. This is without doubt an interesting market, and one that we are seeing take a clearer shape with each passing month. The reality we are now living through is that instant messaging is being taken up by everybody, and is definitely here to stay.
(En español, aquí)
