Cross Platform messaging
There was a time when the telcos were happy that people were using their high priced messaging services, and did not want to let the revenue go. International messaging was crazy expensive, and unreliable.
There was a time when ICQ, AIM, YM were the place to go, if you were on a computer, and BBM if you were on a phone. Then came XMPP, and tried to get everyone to talk to each other. Somewhere along the journey, things changed. And none of these platforms could keep up to the innovation, because they did not see it coming, just like Nokia and BlackBerry, then leaders, did not understand the future impact of the iPhone.
More people were using their phones to access the internet. More families were staying geographically apart, and need a cheaper way of communicating. People were fed up with the experience of the International calling cards. And no messaging.
Enter the likes of WhatsApp and WeChat. The online chat platform would never be the same. They allowed discovering where your contacts where, without needing to know their email addresses. Just a phone number was enough. This discovery mechanism was a gamechanger.
The older IMs could never adapt, or maybe they just missed the trend. Will we see a industry standard on messaging ?
