Threema
The messengers are now developing as an open platform. With the help of content, you can communicate with the audience and sell stuff and services . And although everything is limited to chat-bots and channels, it is not necessary to draw sharp conclusions. Remember what happened 8 or 10 years ago in the era of the boom of social networks — skeptics who did not believe in the concept of "applications and games within the social network", at first, was enough, too.
The appearance of "publishing" means it's another direction that shows that the messenger is turning into a platform. Instant Articles technologies by Facebook, AMP by Google and Telegraph by Telegram are just some of them.
The principle of operation is mere: an adapted html-page opens in a messenger, and it opens up endless possibilities for building interactivity. With these pages , you can draw full markup and interfaces, which in addition, can be used with the chat-bot. Imagine the same surveys that you would be able to build with a convenient form rather than with a list of commands.
Of course, there are constraints . Even the current capabilities are not perfect — many are in the beta-test level.
Current decisions do not have a major selection of promotional possibilities. The promotion of the chat-bot in messengers today lies entirely on the shoulders of its author or customer. Messengers do not have enough promotional possibilities that give the App Store and Google Play. Today, if you want to advance in Telegram, you need to negotiate with other channels or advertise yourself outside the messenger. It takes a lot of time and effort — and gives an unpredictable result in the end.
Many messengers do not have their own analytic services. That's why developers and marketers have to use services and plugins from other companies , such as TGstat. This is not a bad solution , but ideally, messengers should launch their own systems.
Today, the creation of a new messenger is a big risk, but at the same time, it is a reasonable investment: tons of users have needs that the current system does not satisfy 100%. Let’s have a look at the existing messengers with multi-functionality:
More and more, founders of companies, answering the question of what product they consider to be an exemplary one during the creation of their own, they take Asia, and specifically the Chinese messenger, WeChat, as a model. "One app to manage everything" - so dubbed the Asian messenger with an audience of 889 millions active users.
Wechat messenger gained great popularity due to the fact that it was able to combine many different services on one platform. The app has an huge user database — it has actually become an operating system for communication, shopping and mobile entertainment.
The centralization of WeChat data makes it the cornerstone of the state's social credit system, which is expected to emerge nationwide in 2020. In 2014, the "planning Plan for the construction of a social credit system" was published, the objective of which is to create a system. The system encourages good behavior and punishes those who do not contribute to the building of a harmonious society or, as the document envisages, a system that "will allow reliable roaming everywhere under the heavens, while making it difficult for the discredited to take another step." For example, users with court orders or those who do not repay loans cannot book train tickets for high-speed trains and planes.
It is extremely difficult to count the number of hacked accounts in WeChat per year ( WeChat didn’t comment this article. But the scale of the problem of online fraud in China is widespread. In a survey conducted by China's Internet Society, a non-governmental organization consisting of 1,200 members, including KOL in the country, 84 percent of respondents said they were affected by data theft. In 2016, the death of Xu Yu, an 18-year-old girl whose family was cheated out of their savings for university admission, sparked a dispute over data privacy. The Court ruled that her death from a heart attack was a direct result of fraud. The man was sentenced to life imprisonment for paying a hacker to steal her personal data .
KakaoTalk
South Korean Internet corporation, Kakao Corp, wants to integrate cryptocurrency options into the KakaoTalk messenger. This was reported by the local news agency, Fnnews, on March 18, 2019. According to the Agency, the integration will take place after the launch of blockchain-platform, Klaytn, project subsidiaries Kakao Ground X.
Guide Kakao decided to add support for cryptocurrencies as a messenger after Samsung developers integrated repository for digital assets in the Galaxy S10 device. Users of the KakaoTalk messenger will be able to manage the crypto-wallet on their own, but there is an opportunity to completely disable its functionality. The mass distribution of tokens among the 80% of the population can have a positive impact on the general condition of the stock market .
Line
Line is an application for smartphones and PCs, a means of instant messaging of Korean origin. Now, it is managed by the Japanese company , Line Corporation. Basic features are available for free, and most stickers and in-game items can be purchased separately.
One of the differences between Line and other similar messengers is a built-in social network that supports blogs and comments. People can subscribe to the official accounts of corporations or media.
Within the extensive functionality of the messenger, there are such options as:
Line Games. Players can connect with friends, send and receive gifts.
Line Taxi: the option allows you to order a car via the messenger interface. Line Taxi is part of the main line application, so a separate installation of the service is not required. Payments for the trip pass in the integrated Line Pay.
Line Pay. The function allows you to make non-cash payments with the help of a line wallet added to your account. According to the plan of the Japanese government, by 2020, the country will abandon the turnover of cash. It is expected that Line Pay will play a major role in this process, contributing to the state's economic development goals.
Telegram
Telegram messenger plans to create a cryptocurrency wallet in the world and compete with Visa and Mastercard payment systems . Around the new blockchain service, Telegram promises to build an entire ecosystem of channel owners, developers, payment providers and traders who will use a special cryptocurrency gram in their operations. It, however, will be available for players from the outside.
The developers are sure that, due to the close integration with Telegram apps, the TON crypto wallet will become the most popular in the world. They rely on their own experience in creating user-friendly interfaces that will make the new service intuitive for users, as well as on the rapid growth of the Telegram audience. And although there is already enough information about TON in the network, the exact date of the launch of the Durov cryptocurrency is still unknown.
Earlier, Telegram also add the geochat function. It is noted that chats with a reference to the terrain will be available to users of Android, iOS and desktop platforms after updating the app. In addition to combining users in the chat, the location will be added and match the interests. Anyone can initiate a conversation. He or she will just need to come up with the theme of geochat, determine its location and the allowable radius of geolocation for other interlocutors — from 100 m to 6 km. The history of messages in such conversations will be available to all users who have joined the chat, regardless of the date of sending messages. Threema
Discord
Discord is a messenger with a significant number of additional features. The program was created to communicate a large number of gamers in multiplayer games. The principle of operation is based on IP telephony (VoIP). The app greatly simplifies the process of communication among gamers and allows users to improve their success in team play. As part of the additional features , users have available options such as broadcasting music in the channels of correspondence, broadcasting the desktop screen of the device for interlocutors, integration with a lot of popular services and apps, the ability to communicate with multiple channels at the same time and much more.
Vinci
In 2019, the Hong Kong company, Vinci, announced the upcoming release of the eponymous messenger. The developers announced the imminent release of a multi-functional cross-platform application that combines multimedia functionality with privacy and integrated tools for communication, e-Commerce and business management. CEO of Vinci, Gary Ng, positions the messenger as a modern solution for businesses and individual users, which has the functionality of the aggregator of multimedia applications. The app is designed to free users from unnecessary downloads and optimize the digital space. The project developers are convinced that the future of communication IT-solutions is the basis for the integration of already familiar and familiar to users apps, and the developing of a single closed ecosystem usually leads to the vulnerability of user data and violation of their personal boundaries.
The messenger offers a great functionality. Acting as a communication aggregator, the developers of Vinci report the possibility to use different messengers and use only one application. Thanks to this solution, users will not need to download several different messengers to one device, because it will be enough to install only Vinci for communication. Thanks to this option, the user's address book will be more functional.
Threema
Threema is a solution of Swiss developers designed for communication between users. The software is characterized by high security and the ability to keep secret the personal data of users. The messenger is distributed exclusively for a fee and is an independent product, which ensured its high popularity among users.
Threema has some special features , such as the ability to identify a contact by scanning its personal QR code or anonymous instant messaging. In particular, instead of using a server to synchronize messages, Threema establishes a direct encrypted connection between the browser and the mobile device using the SaltyRTC Protocol. Thus, messages can be synchronized without the need for the server to process them. If the browser and mobile device are connected to the same network, the data will not leave it . In addition to the standard functionality, the messenger has a cross-platform option. Threema Gateway provides a service of integration of the messenger into the user environment. With this feature , the user can use their own server for communication and communication for an additional fee.
Facebook Messenger
Facebook has officially announced the developing of a cryptocurrency called Libra (Libra), as well as an online wallet, Calibra, for its use. They are expected to be valid in 2020.
The Calibra wallet, as promised by the corporation , can be used both with a separate app and directly from Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. The project is positioned as an attempt to give access to basic financial services to those who are currently deprived of it.
According to Wired, this fact is criticized by a some of experts, who believe that a truly equal global payment system can be based only on an open blockchain platform. "The reaction in the crypto environment was that it was an anti-utopian nightmare. I do not fully understand what these other companies are for except to create the appearance that Facebook does not do it alone," said Professor Angela Walch from the St. Mary's University .
e-Chat
e-Chat is a decentralized messenger with a built-in multi-currency crypto-wallet. In addition to the standard features of the messenger, such as text messages, audio and video files, e-Chat has additional functionality, such as the ability to create and use chat-bots for various tasks, transfers of Fiat funds and cryptocurrencies, masking in video calls and online broadcasts, using neural networks and other functions.
The consumption of Internet services is increasingly going into mobile apps. For example, smartphone users spend only 10% of the time on browsers, the rest of it they spend in applications . This allows the developers of online services to accumulate more and more data about users, so they can offer customers the best quality of service. Google clearly felt this trend in the United States, where over the last year, the share of commodity search queries (one of the best ways for monetization) passing through Amazon, with its huge content base, increased from 44% to 55%, while the share of such queries falling on search services decreased from 34% to 28%. Also, it affects the demeanor of users and WeChat, which has become, in China, essentially a etalon for any smartphone. Entire businesses run on WeChat, and the app itself already connects millions of companies to virtually every mobile user in China, giving direct access to services, many of which people used to find through search engines. Experts have long said that with the development of AI systems in the nearest future, the importance of contextual search can significantly decrease. This is the main long-term opportunity for a new generation of apps seeking to become leaders among online companies in the world.
