Are mobile messaging apps a threat to FB?
SAN FRANCISCO: Create personal profiles. Build networks of friends. Share photos, videos and music. That might sound precisely like Facebook (FB), but hundreds of millions of tech-savvy young people have instead turned to a wave of smartphone-based messaging apps that are now sweeping across North America, Asia and Europe. The hot apps include Kik and Whatsapp, both products of North America startups, as well as Kakao Inc’s KakaoTalk, NHN Corp’ LINE and Tencent Holdings Ltd’s WeChat, which have blossomed in Asian markets.
Combining elements of text messaging and social networking, the apps provide a quick-fire way for smartphone users to trade everything from brief texts to flirtatious pictures to YouTube clips — bypassing both the SMS plans offered by wireless carriers and established social networks originally designed as websites. FB, with one billion users, remains by far the world’s most popular website, and its stepped-up focus on mobile has made it the most-used smartphone app as well. Still, across Silicon Valley, investors say there is a possibility that the messaging apps could threaten FB’s dominance over the next few years. The larger ones are even starting to emerge as full-blown ‘platforms’ that can support third-party applications such as games.
To be sure, many of those who are using the new messaging apps remain on FB, indicating there is little immediate sign of the giant social media company losing its lock on the market. And at a press event this week, the company will unveil news relating to Android, the world’s most popular smartphone operating system, which could include a new version of Android with deeper integration of FB messaging tools or possibly even a FB-branded phone.
“True interactions are conversation in nature,” says Rich Miner, a partner at Google Ventures who invested in San Francisco-based MessageMe, a new entrant in the messaging market. FB’s big challenge is reeling back users like Jacob Robinson, a 15-year-old high school student in Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK, who said the Kik messaging app ‘blew up’ among his friends about six months ago. It has remained the most-used app on his Android phone because it is the easiest way for him to send different kinds of multimedia for free, which he estimated he does about 200 times a day. “We also stay up in bed with our phone all night, just on YouTube searching for funny videos, then you quickly share it with your friends,” he added. “It’s easy. You can flip in and out of Kik. FB has really started to lose its edge over here,” said Robinson, who found his interactions interesting than his real-time chats.
Waterloo, Ontario-based Kik has racked up 40 million users since launching in 2010. Silicon Valley entrants in the race include Whatsapp, funded by Sequoia Capital, and MessageMe, launched earlier this month by a group of viral game makers. MessageMe has received seed-stage funding from True Ventures and First Round Capital, among others, and claimed one million downloads in its first week. Meanwhile, Asian companies are producing some of the fastest-growing apps in history. Tencent’s WeChat boasts 400 million users — for more than Twitter, by way of comparison — while LINE and KakaoTalk claim 120 million and 80 million users, respectively. Both have laid the groundwork to expand into the US market. — Reuters
