Instant messaging technology is widespread among millennials over the past few years. It dramatically intervened in the personal space of people in a way by nourishing their relationships with intimate ones in the virtual platform.
Years back, messaging technology was introduced as a facility for people to chat with each other at their fingertips. But, gradually it became an inevitable part of human communication, and today it is an unavoidable divide of our daily lives.
It may be the year 2018 that brought some drastic changes and trends in instant messaging platforms than in previous years. We witnessed many updates and developments in the trajectory of message trends in 2018.
Let’s dive into the ground that makes 2019 as the year of transforming messaging trends.
- Changes in social media messaging platforms
Facebook Messenger had become the most advanced APIs platform for chatbot developers in 2018. It transformed itself into an advanced messaging application that provides access for developers without charging fees, and it became the first choice for consumer experiments. In the last year, Messenger had announced that it could develop 300,000 chatbots two years after its launching of bot API in 2016.
Making another milestone, in 2018, WhatsApp launched its ‘WhatsApp for Business’ application. This API for enterprises helps businesses to send automated messages to consumers, and today it is capable of attracting higher enterprise messaging volumes.
Viber, a messaging application, on the other hand, launched its ‘Viber community service’ in 2018. This community provides a group limited to 1 billion members. Viber Community Service can be used for many purposes —ranging from hobby groups to fan clubs to professional circles and more.
- Rise of voice assistance technology
Even if Amazon Alexa has been a huge success in the voice–based conversational service platform, the company further introduced some new elements in 2018. Amazon presented several voice assistance technologies with an aim to combine audio speakers and screen-based interfaces. It also offered cloud APIs for third parties to embed Alexa in their devices in 2018.
Along with these Amazon technologies, Google Assistant was also popular in the mainstream of voice assistance services. Google Assistant showed dominance over smartphones in 2018 by providing services for 30 languages in 80 countries.
- Provision of higher security
In a digital age where hackers are eagerly waiting to break into your privacy, ensuring security in messaging platforms is a high priority. Snapchat is the leading messaging application that provides services on this account. It instantly deletes chats and photos shared between users in order to ensure security.
Encryption is another recent trend that provides strict surveillance from cyber attacks in messaging platforms. WhatsApp is one of the leading applications that currently utilizes this advanced technology. However, many other applications are also trying to bring these capabilities in their service level shortly.
- Introduction of ‘undo’ option
We all had that experience at least once in our chatting space that we wanted to immediately delete some messages that we sent to the other person. However, we were helpless in doing this undo process before a year.
Fortunately, many of the messaging applications are today providing an option for users to remove messages in between personal and group conversations. But, this option can only be done within certain time limits designated by each application.
- Static growth of SMS
SMS has always been holding the preferred position in messaging technology. Studies reveal that enterprises are sending 2 trillion SMS to consumers worldwide, and in 2018, the global rate of messaging has been grown by 10 percent. In brief, the year 2018 was also proved an exponential growth in the transformation of SMS technology similar to previous years.
