What’s the deal with messenger apps these days?
Let’s be honest. Messenger apps are both the greatest thing to ever happen to communication and also the worst. Sure, they’re fast, they’re instant and if you have an internet plan, they don’t eat through your wallet. However, what follows is one of the toughest decisions you’re going to have to make. “The App I like” Vs. “The App my friends use”.” Yes, this is the biggest issue. Sometimes, no matter how much you hate an app, you’re put in a situation where you have to have it installed.
The option would be easier if it were between one or two applications, unfortunately that’s not the case. In countries such as Australia, this doesn’t really matter, as messenger apps are close to unheard of. In fact, the only one I’ve come across people using is Facebook Messenger, and people only use that when they don’t have the phone number of the person they’re texting. This could be attributed to the fact that almost everyone in the land down under has an unlimited texting plan. Here in Indonesia, or really Asia for that matter, it feels like a new app gains popularity ever other day. Some win purely based on design, while others are feature packed, but the worst part of all this is that you don’t choose the app you use the most, the people you communicate with do.
BE WARNED: Extremely biased opinions from this point onward.
WhatsApp is probably the most well known messenger app, and for good reasons too. Firstly, Whatsapp was the first cross platform messenger available, ever. Any platform you can think of, from Nokia’s Symbian to the dying, beloved, webOS, had a native WhatsApp app. This was probably the major driving force behind the reason for them being one of the most used apps globally, which sparked the interest of Facebook, who went on to acquire them for around $22billion. Over the years, WhatsApp has grown, from just texting, to adding features like picture and video attachments, voice notes, emoji and many more, while still effectively leaving the app streamlined with minimal annoyances and no ads.
WhatsApp is still one of my favorite texting apps. It’s clean and pretty good looking, it’s fast and most of all, all my friends use it. As much as I love it though, it does have it’s drawbacks. Well one drawback. It’s mobile only. This is a drawback for me as most of the time when I’m on my computer, my phone is either charging somewhere or out of the reach of my hand. So if there’s something I want to talk to someone about, I have to move and get my phone to ask them. I’m a lazy person. Although, a web version of WhatsApp has been rumored.
WhatsApp is free, but supposedly charges you around $1 a year for your first year, but I’ve been using it for about 5 years and haven’t been charged yet. I’d gladly pay for it though.
VIBER
Viber is also a pretty great app. It was one of the first messenger apps to feature voice calling, which is probably the reason why it’s user-base skyrocketed. Since then it has grown, and now offers many of the features people in Asia have grown accustomed to having, such as stickers, video calling and much more, even some unexpected features such as ViberOut, which lets you call landlines from Viber, ala Skype. However, since beingacquired by Rakuten the app has sort of gone downhill for me. Not only did they change their design to a more bubbly and childish look, but also began incorporating a lot of annoying pop up stuff and sponsored content.
For the most part, Viber is a pretty great messaging app. It also has a desktop app, which is a huge plus in my books.
BLACKBERRY MESSENGER
BBM is sort of like the TV show character you wish had died but still hasn’t and you have no idea how it’s still around cough LAUREL LANCE! cough. Alas, it stays strong. Well it had died out at first, but then they decided to launch on iOS and Android, which did have issues, but has seen growth since. In fact, it is still one of the most used messenger app in Indonesia.
BBM has changed over the years, but not much. They’ve added voice calling and stickers among other stuff, but their app remains un-intuitive and buggy. It’s slow, boring and honestly a pain in the ass.
SKYPE
Skype is like your best friend’s dad, he’s trying to be cool but it’s just not gonna work. They’ve updated the app, both the backend and frontend and fixed things up here and there but no matter what Microsoft tries to do, using the program still feels like a major throwback. As much as you can hate on Skype though, one thing is certain, the video calling experience on Skype is unmatched. That’s probably the only reason I have Skype installed, I use it to call my parents everyday from Australia, I use it to call my sister, who’s in the UK, every weekend and that’s pretty much all I use it for, and all most of the people I know do the same. Skype is first and foremost a video calling platform, and that’s all it should be.
HANGOUTS
I love hangouts. Too bad no one else does. It has a great design, it’s fast and fluid, it has all the features you’re ever gonna need, including being available on the web as well. There aren’t that many bad things I can say about Hangouts. There is however, one reason I don’t use it. None of my friends use it. This makes me sad, let’s move on.
LINE
Whenever anyone mentions line, one phrase comes to mind, ugh. The app is just trying to do too much. You can text, call, video call, share pictures, have a timeline, talk to celebrities, play games, download themes and many more. It’s trying to do too many things and it really isn’t that good at any of them. People here in Indonesia love LINE though, the only reason I have it installed is that atTechinAsia we use it to communicate when we’re not on our enterprise program.
The ugliness of the design can be bypassed by either downloading the LINE Black or LINE White theme and sometimes the stickers are funny but everything else is just an annoyance. Worst of all? Push notification ads. That’s one sign that you’re doing it wrong.
I used it once, my thoughts on it are similar to my thoughts on LINE. i.e. I don’t like it.
KAKAO TALK
See: Thoughts on WeChat and LINE.
WIRE
Wire is pretty neat. It’s a new messenger app from the co-founder of Skype and it’s doing a lot of things right. Wire’s design is second to none, and although animations and performance on Android can be iffy to say the least, a friend of mine who uses it on iOS is deeply in love with it. The design of Wire’s mac app is pretty sweet as well, sort of has a Medium feel to it.
The best thing about Wire is that it’s not trying to do too much. You can text and call, send pictures and that’s about it. SoundCloud and YouTube links play in-line, which is nifty. The app does have some small annoyances, but those are minute. The requirement to add a friend via their email address seems almost ancient after being used to automatically detecting their number in your address book, but that’s not really a big issue. Wire is one to watch. Hopefully people start using it.
FACEBOOK MESSENGER
Did I leave the best for last? Perhaps. Facebook Messenger is amazing. All your friends are probably already using it, it does everything you need it to, including calls, voice notes, etc. It has a web client (duh). It’s beautiful and it even has this cool thing where you can send pictures and videos pretty quickly, which was probably modeled after Snapchat. Best of all, now this is really biased, the sounds are amazing. The little bloops and tings that you hear when you perform certain actions, they’re just really pleasing and it shows you the attention to detail Facebook put into the app.
By the looks of it, Facebook Messenger is the perfect app. Aside from one thing. You need a decent internet connection to use it properly, and here in a third world country, stable internet is hard to find. When I’m in Australia it’s perfect, it’s my most used application. Here however, everytime I open the app I get the orange “connecting” bar then the red bar notifying me it couldn’t connect. What’s worse, if a message doesn’t go through at the first try, the app just gives up and prompts you to manually retry, as opposed to apps like WhatsApp that know internet can be shitty and just retries on its own, without a user having to go in manually. With Messenger, you’re always left with that thought at the back of your head “Did it send? I wonder if I should check.”
I know it’s a lot to ask for, but it’s 2014, I shouldn’t have to wonder if a message has been sent or not.
There are a lot more I wanted to include, such as Snapchat and Slingshot, and many more, but they don’t immediately classify as messenger apps.
I’d like to say that this has been a short list of popular messenger apps and my opinions on them, but it wasn’t at all short. My apologies, here is acomplimentary potato.