A new wave of mobile applications for social networking through instant messages is threatening Facebook’s domination as hundreds of millions of young people in the U.S., Asia and Europe are moving towards alternative communication solutions, according to Thomson Reuters.
Kik, Whatsapp, KakaoTalk, LINE and WeChat are the main applications that began to attract millions of users worldwide. Such applications combine two basic ingredients: text messaging and social networks. Users of smartphones can exchange between each other text messages, photos and YouTube videos with these applications, avoiding costs of network operators with text messages and accessing social networking sites.
Facebook, which has 1 billion users, remains the most popular website in the world and its focus on mobile platforms drove it among the most used applications on the smartphones. However, investors and industry experts say there is a likeliness that the applications initially started as chat solutions to threaten the domination of Facebook in the coming years. Some of these applications are beginning to launch full-fledged platforms that support third party applications such as games.
“More people text and make phone calls than get on to social networks. If one company dominates the replacement of that traffic, then by definition that’s very big,” said Rich Miner from Google Ventures who invested in MessageMe, a messenger application recently launched.
Kik app reached 40 million users since it launched in 2010. Silicon Valley competitors who have entered the race are Whatsapp, funded by Sequoia Capital, with over 100 million Android users according to TechCrunch estimates and MessageMe, an application launched in early March by a group of viral game producers. MessageMe claimed 1 million downloads in its first week.
Asian companies produce some of the most viral applications in history. WeChat, developed by Tencent, has 400 million users, surpassing Twitter, while KakaoTalk has 80 million users and LINE has 120 million users.
The explosive growth of messaging applications reflects the visible change occurring in Internet use in recent years. The access of sites on desktop computers stagnated, while smartphone users and application downloads increased exponentially.
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