How will mobile IM change? questions and answers filled with uncertainty

This week, WHATSAPP reported that the number of active users per hour has exceeded 700 million, sending more than 30 billion messages a day. By comparison, the total number of global SMS messages per day is only 20 billion. Facebook bought WHATSAPP last year, but the winner-take-all effect of the mobile-end app doesn't seem to be so obvious, and apps of various functions (such as the Snapchat that have refused to be bought by Facebook30) are still popular. Benedict Evans, an investor at Andressen Horowitz, has talked about his own blog about some of the observations and reflections of the communications App.

He personally sees the smartphone itself as a social platform, and first sums up some of the features of mobile communication applications. For example, you can get the Address Book permissions and synchronization cloud, so that the replacement of equipment more convenient, direct access to photos in the phone, easy to upload various types of Web sites; Push message reminders can help users avoid landing on different platforms of trouble;

However, the most important point is that the operation on a small screen can be very limited, so the mobile end is more inclined to achieve a single function of the App. So the question is, are they going to keep this focus, or are they developing a richer product?

For communications applications such as WHATSAPP, its competitors may be different in different country regions. It may be Facebook messenger,kik,snapchats in the US, and it's hard to define whether Instagram is a competitor, as mentioned above, where there is a big difference in their ability to achieve a single function. And in China there is no doubt that the micro-letter, in Britain or India may be something else. From an individual perspective, there may be many different kinds of social networks on each cell phone, each for a different purpose.

The opposite view Snapchats, because the product itself is very personalized, people can only use this application to achieve this after the burn, the essence of its competitiveness is to subvert the original user routine behavior and psychology, through a new way of communication to create new social needs, belong to the sociological category rather than the pure technology category. The same is true of micro-letters, at first the function of sending voice changed the way people usually send information, and then developed a larger user base under the network effect. Coincidentally, Benedict is also an innovative field in predicting voice in the article.

On the other hand, it's about whether you want to add functionality. He specifically mentions Facebook's web version of the vast flow of information, as well as micro-and Line,kakao and Kik platform. In particular, micro-letters, API interface and public number subscriptions have changed the single mode of information transmission, the dialog box has become a software to achieve different functions. The platform model seems to him to be a more innovative approach, and may also be credited to mainland China's domestic market for not being "invaded" by Facebook and Google. Recently, micro-letter also launched the function of the search outside the station, can be directly based on the keyword to find public network "related articles", will be the message of the closed information platform to move towards a broader Internet space a key step.

In short, the mobile end of the form of communication applications are far from stereotypes, users are constantly adapting to the change of communication methods. Everything is changing, and the questions and answers are full of uncertainty.