Facebook is intent on creating a new platform that will compete with Android and iOS for dominance

The Economist recently wrote that news applications such as micro-letters, WHATSAPP and Snapchat have grown rapidly, and that traditional software is under intense competitive pressure. Facebook-represented developers are intent on creating a new service platform that will compete with Android and iOS for dominance.

The article reads as follows:

"If found, I suggest grabbing him by the neck, shaking it to his mouth and foaming, pulling out his guts and letting him swallow it himself." "People in Silicon Valley don't often cite English novelist Pelham · The article by Sir Woodhouse. But Benedict Evans, a Silicon Valley venture company Andreessen Horowitz, said the message service would "poison" mobile software and corporate software.

At present, the most notable example is the F8 Congress of Facebook. Facebook announced that messaging Messenger will be transformed into a "platform" for carrying and consolidating various third-party applications. Facebook Messenger is just an app that supports iOS and Android, but it will be a competitor to the mobile App Store. In short, it will become an application that eats away at the App Store.

The rise of message application

Some people think that message application is just another way for young people to share the news, but the prospect of the application of the message is bound to surprise them. Message applications maintain a high rate of growth, which proves that they will become a lasting phenomenon.

Market research firm Flurry statistics show that last year the total number of users increased by more than 100%. The top ten message Application Total user volume already exceeds 3 billion. The most popular message application WhatsApp user volume has reached 700 million.

With the increase of the user's volume, the Special edition message application has come out successively. Snapchat is famous for its burning function, Secret, whisper and Yik Yak let users communicate anonymously. Telegram is a concern because of its powerful encryption capabilities. Without the Internet, FireChat users ' mobile phones can communicate directly.

Users spend a lot of time in messaging applications, although some of the message applications are not yet clear about the profit model, but investors still give them a fairly high valuation. Last year, WhatsApp handled more than 7 trillion messages, equivalent to sending 1,000 messages per person on Earth.

According to Forrester, a research firm, British users spend almost as much time on WhatsApp as Facebook social applications. In China, the average monthly use of micro-trust users is about 1,100 minutes (about 18 hours).

Enterprise Field

Although the data are small, similar changes are taking place in the business world. The messaging service slack has been successful, but many companies have failed in Slack's corporate social networking area. As a year old, slack now has 500,000 users. Slack said that each weekday user's use time is 135 minutes, sends the total amount of information to 300 million each month. Last October, Slack's valuation was over $1 billion trillion.

Slack the mass of information into manageable "channels", each dedicated to one project or team. Users can create and subscribe to channels, exchange information, publish links and upload files. In addition to reducing e-mail processing time, these channels can help new employees quickly understand new projects, and they no longer need to use empty inboxes to understand their work.

There are a number of enterprise messaging services similar to Slack, Quip, Hipchat and other start-ups that offer similar services. Large companies are also unwilling to be outdone. Recently, Cisco launched an enterprise messaging service spark. Spark's interface and experience are somewhat similar to slack, but Spark provides voice and video communication capabilities. IBM is also closely following this trend, launched the network e-mail service verse. Verse users can send instant messages or use IBM AI Watson to classify and respond to information, thereby reducing the burden of communication.

Revenue mode

Whether it's consumer messaging or corporate messaging, they ultimately need to be profitable in order to cater to investors. In order to achieve the goal, they can choose several ways. One way is to sell a large number of ancillary products at low prices. For example, some Asian messaging services sell emoticons.

Another approach is to split the E-commerce and mobile payments from their own networks. Micro-credit users can directly take a taxi and book tickets; Snapchat let CNN, National Geographic and other news media on its platform to publish articles, Snapchat received some of the advertising revenue; like Facebook Messenger, line and Snapchat recently added payment services.

Although most messaging services are free, WhatsApp charges a small annual fee (99 cents). In fact, once users and their contacts are accustomed to a certain message service, it is not difficult to ask them to pay a small annual fee. If multiplied by a large user base, and then deducted a little operating costs, the annual fee income is also considerable.

As for enterprise messaging services, corporate users are more likely to charge such recurring fees because they are accustomed to paying annual fees and maintenance fees for e-mail systems. Enterprise users, regardless of size, have a variety of online services, such as customer support and software vulnerability tracking, which are annoying to business users. As a result, business users are willing to pay for new services as long as the new service is able to handle the information more effectively.

Each slack user is required to pay a monthly fee of USD 7. Slack can transfer a lot of information to the channel, let the service become the processing center of all information flow, so slack deeply welcome by enterprise.

Platform contention

But a better vision might depend on companies like Facebook-making messaging a platform for other companies to develop content and apps on the platform, and developers to generate revenue through a variety of sources. Micro-letters have almost become a platform. Facebook is now intent on going further and making Messenger the access point for other services and applications. For example, clicking on the embedded link in the message flow allows the user to open other applications directly.

Ribbonfarm founder Venkates Lau (Venkatesh Rao), a consultancy, says such a platform battle is a natural evolution in the software industry. Similar competitions have taken place, most notably the "browser wars" of the Middle Ages in the late 90. At that time, Netscape browser intended to replace Microsoft as a platform for supremacy. Today, Android and iOS are the mobile platform overlords, and they are bound to retaliate.