I've always heard about how high snapchat is valued and I never understood why. This article makes me rethink my misunderstanding of snapchats valuation.
The standard messaging app will be the one that allows cellular and wi-fi multi-partner MMS with read receipts across Android and iOS ecosystems. All it would take is for Google and Apple to have a beer, hammer out a standard and crush all competition without so much as hiring a coder. Some perspective on Snapchat: They claim 100m active users. Twitter claims 300m active users. Translated: 90% of internet-connected people have never used Twitter. An "active user" by the way is anyone who hasn't deleted their account. I count as seven users, by the way, and I think I've tweeted a dozen times. So snapchat? Yeahnotsomuch.
I really wish Google's Voice/Hangouts systems were more fleshed out and full featured. Where Voice takes care of SMS but not MMS, Hangouts manages messaging with too many features. If Google, Microsoft, and Apple could simply include a default inter-operative messaging protocol that wasn't SMS or MMS, we would finally be moving forward on the messaging front. Unfortunately, I don't see this happening any time soon. I'll keep my fingers crossed, though.
Expect Google Voice/Hangouts to become a full-fledged, fully functional aspect of Google Fi. Google seems to be more interested in direct revenue these days, rather than B2B... and now that they're a wireless provider with their own hardware, that's the kind of magic they can do. Apple makes iMessage work through a bunch of ad-hoc haxies on a half-dozen protocols. That's how they roll. It makes it really hard to interface with. Google, on the other hand, is going to want their ecosystem to behave for eleventy dozen vendors. They'll come up with a hard protocol. The question is whether they'll get enough marketshare that Apple users will be annoyed by their iMessages not working outside of the Apple ecosystem. There are grumblings now but we're a ways from a tipping point.
I thought the whole thing was a bit overly optimistic when he said this: "I asked the 8 of my friends who use Snapchat most how they use Snapchat Chat (this includes my younger cousins and friends who range in age from 17–29). They all said they don’t use it. I don’t either. But by making Chat a primary feature of the app, everyone will." I don't use it. No one I asked has used it. But just by moving the chat button to the camera, everyone will use it. That's not very strong market research.
I know next to nobody who uses Whatsapp outside of my European friends. Meanwhile, large amounts of my friends back here in America use Snapchat regularly, and my friends over in China use WeChat and QQ above everything else. I have trouble believing that there's any standard messaging app for the world at the moment. I do agree, though, Snapchat is not lightweight and occasionally crashes on launch on my Galaxy S5.
Where are the people you know in the Pacific Rim areas? Because, for example, in Japan, I've been under the impression that Line dominated the messaging app market. I think WhatsApp has failed to control the entire market because there's other apps with different kinds of functionality that different regions prefer.
Here in the Netherlands, which has the highest percentage of WhatsApp users in the world, it got really popular when Internet bundles became much cheaper than sending relatively expensive texts (15-20 cents per text). Which was around 2009 - it's snowballed from there. I literally don't know anyone with a smartphone who I can't Whatsapp.
I've explained my views on Snapchat before (synopsis: It's a great way to communicate casually, without fear of permanence.) I don't think it will ever become "the standard messaging app." Kik fills the role outlined in the article already, minus the status update (story) shoe-horned in. It also has the benefit of already being a lot of people's standard messaging app. The real difference is in permanence, where Snapchat fills the role of disposable messages, Kik fills in with semi-permanence. Kik also takes on the idea of being a platform, where many apps are designed as an extension of Kik, to fill in the need for meeting strangers, playing games, etc. The downfall, in my opinion, of Snapchat is, and will continue to be, Snapcash. It's basically a way to become an adult cam-site, without blatantly admitting it. This increases spamming and scamming, from both people and bots, reducing user enjoyment. Snapchat has it's specific niche (disposable media messaging,) but almost all added features seem supplemental, and simply seem like it's trying to keep up with other forms of social media. If Snapchat is going to stay around, it needs to emphasize privacy, usability, and the original ideas it was based on. Otherwise, other apps are going to win out.
Dudes should have cashed out when they had the chance. I still think they made the wrong decision, Snapchat is a one trick pony that is bound to be surpassed by other apps.
To me, the article seemed to make more of a point for SnapChat becoming one of the standard social media apps, rather than a messaging app. There will always need to be an accompaniment for messages that need to last. Also, like the article said, SnapChat Chat isn't used that much. Honestly, I use it, but only for schetchy things I don't want on my sms. The article seems like a lot of speculation based on up coming updates, but even those I doubt would make it the standard messaging app. As part of what is likely it's prime demographic (middle-class teenaged American), I see it used a lot among my peers as a side app to standard sms or Kik, and changes coming seem to be too little, too late to make it a great messaging app.