Before anyone starts thinking this stuff is super-innovative and new, let me tell you what's really going on here: Facebook wants to make Messenger into a platform in the same way the big Asian chat apps are. Things like Weixin/WeChat or LINE. I mean, just look at the most recent additions to Messenger:
- Stickers. These grew in popularity starting in Asian apps. [0]
- Using Messenger for payments [1] and to send money to each other [2] have been in WeChat since at least last year.
- Offering "official accounts" for businesses to "chat" with customers. [3] Yep, that's there too.
- And of course, sharing of messages with rich-media content from other apps. [4] To give an example, with WeChat you can pop open QQMusic (a music streaming app) and share a song with your friend that they can play and stream without leaving WeChat.
All of these features were pioneered in Asia. They're either trying to bring the innovations westward in the hopes that they can build a similar platform, or they're defending against the possibility that foreign apps like this will expand and take over their marketshare.
I wouldn't be surprised if this kind of thing was the reason they split Messenger from the main Facebook app in the first place.
While I agree that all of these ideas have been thought of prior to the Asian chat apps, it's largely the similarity in execution that FB Messenger is taking compared to WeChat/ Line/KakaoTalk that the parent is talking about.
One important thing that the Asian messengers have executed better than the others is monetization of IM, something which has eluded Western messengers for a long time. To this day, FB still doesn't charge $$ for its stickers. Meanwhile, Line reported earnings of $600M+ and WeChat $900M+ from stickers/games/ads last year [1]. I think that's what has FB's attention.
Yahoo tried monetization for their desktop products (IIRC they had some sort of animated stickers that cost money) but the payment story just wasn't there back then.
YIM really did try to monetize, they just failed.
I also remember MSN messenger trying to monetize VOIP ala Skype but failing. NAT has just been introduced and traversal techniques where half baked, so getting VOIP to work at all was mostly failure. Indeed the primary reason I used YIM was because its voice chat worked.
Unfortunately there doesn't appear to be a good history of what the various IM platforms offered over time, so finding references is hard. :(
BTW: Meebo rocked! I am still annoyed that I have no proper multi-protocol IM program. I've lost contact with people I had been in touch with for over a decade. :( Meebo was the first time I realized that Web Apps could be a Good Thing.
Unfortunately with Meebo's closure I also learned the down side of Web Apps.
Y! Messenger monetized branded themes. National advertisers would pay for the experiences, users got to pick from branded backgrounds and emoticons. Chris Szeto, then Y! Messenger head, pioneered this revenue model. It was quite lucrative but then WebIM became a thing (a la Meebo) and the market shifted away from Desktop downloads. FF a few more years and we see Mobile eat WebIMs lunch. The cycle continues...
Thanks for the kind words about Meebo! I miss it a lot as well, particularly the people. P)
Here just to say I am also a former meebo user who liked the experience. I used it till it was no more.
That time was a sort of golden age for text chat. We could have all services unified and easy to use from one single place. Now it is all messed up.
Line reported earnings of $600M+ and WeChat $900M+ from stickers/games/ads last year
And yet people still think $19B for WhatsApp was ridiculously overpriced. WhatsApp had roughly double the number of monthly active users compared to WeChat back when they last released comparable numbers[1].
>All of these features were pioneered in Asia. They're either trying to bring the innovations westward in the hopes that they can build a similar platform, or they're defending against the possibility that foreign apps like this will expand and take over their marketshare.
There's likely a third aspect: Fb (& Snapchat, et al) framing/reframing their services to be more familiar/comfortable for East Asian users as the business case makes competing in those markets increasingly appealing/unavoidable.
As others have noted, the truth is probably some combination of all of the above (and then some).
I doubt anyone has any idea how these concepts will play outside Asia. Snapchat has been crowing for some time now about their intentions to become Tencent West, but their success to date hinges entirely on the core offering. Is anyone—aside from strippers[0]—using Snapcash, for instance?
There's definitely something fascinating about this sort of nested bundling (social recommendations within a ridesharing service within a maps app, etc.) but I don't know if there are strong indications that American/Western users want that. It seems to me that the logic is "500 million Chinese can't be wrong!"—maybe? But the West hasn't even seen one messaging platform to rule them all since AIM, lately there have been far more web/mobile unbundling success stories, and I'm not sure what would turn that tide.
Messaging apps are all about social connections. Any kind of monetization has to build upon that.
Even if FB/Snapchat tries to make themselves more agreeable towards Asian markets, they still need to face the question from customer like this: if I have something (Line/Wechat/Kaokao Talk) that works great for me and my friends, what is the reason for me to use their western counterparts (FB/Snapchat)? Only because they are trying to make themselves similar to the local competitors ? That is not convincing enough.
Good. I've been waiting for a non-SMS and non-iMessage way of communicating. Americans shouldn't be tied to cell phone plans or the Apple vertical monopoly in order to communicate.
In Japan, for example, we are starting to see individuals not even purchase a smartphone but just an ipad, ipod, or some sort of wireless device along with a portable wifi hotspot. This enables them to use whatever device they want to communicate. It is certainly far from ubiquitous but the fact that it is possible to get by on a data plan is exactly how the wireless net should work.
Now a facebook, LINE, WeChat, WhatsApp, Viber regional monopoly isn't the ideal end-game either. But it looks like it will take that first step before some sort of standard beyond plain SMS emerges.
Fast Company posted an excellent, in-depth piece on Line a month ago, and that's what immediately came to mind in light of this announcement: "How Japan's Line App Became A Culture-Changing, Revenue-Generating Phenomenon" http://www.fastcompany.com/3041578/most-innovative-companies...
Innovative or not, that's not is going to determine the success of this. There has to be the ability to generate mass market adoption with innovation which Facebook is really good at.
The last success Facebook had seen was with their flagship product - Facebook website, rest they bought it (whatsapp, instagram). You know how it went with apps from facebook labs. I hope you remember how big of a disaster was Facebook phone.
Although, I laud their efforts of keep trying and trying.
I don't think it's an either/or scenario for Facebook. Ultimately such experiences benefit the user regardless of where/when the initial innovation occurred. We've seen it over and over again. You don't need to be first or even last to the game. You just need to be the best at implementing it and your users will follow.
- Stickers. These grew in popularity starting in Asian apps. [0]
- Using Messenger for payments [1] and to send money to each other [2] have been in WeChat since at least last year.
- Offering "official accounts" for businesses to "chat" with customers. [3] Yep, that's there too.
- And of course, sharing of messages with rich-media content from other apps. [4] To give an example, with WeChat you can pop open QQMusic (a music streaming app) and share a song with your friend that they can play and stream without leaving WeChat.
All of these features were pioneered in Asia. They're either trying to bring the innovations westward in the hopes that they can build a similar platform, or they're defending against the possibility that foreign apps like this will expand and take over their marketshare.
I wouldn't be surprised if this kind of thing was the reason they split Messenger from the main Facebook app in the first place.
[0] http://www.wechat.com/en/features.html#emoticons
[1] https://www.techinasia.com/wechat-adds-payment-support-for-b...
[2] https://www.techinasia.com/wechat-allows-money-transfers-bet...
[3] http://smallbiztrends.com/2014/03/how-to-use-wechat-for-busi...
[4] http://dev.wechat.com/wechatapi/messages-moments