While 2018 has been a big year for Facebook Messenger, the platform is still struggling to gain dominance among messaging apps. While Facebook’s $13 billion acquisition of WhatsApp may have hurt it in some areas, especially in mobile messaging, it also gave people another option for instant messaging. As a result, messaging apps such as WeChat, LINE, and Telegram have all seen massive growth this year. But the big winner was Telegram. The Russian-based startup acquired by Google in 2014 had only just started growing its user base when it was hit with a ban from certain countries in 2018. That put it on the brink of failure until Russian President Vladimir Putin lifted the ban last month — and Telegram won millions of new customers in the process.
How Messenger Can Become the Most Popular Messaging App
With more than 1.4 billion active users each month, Facebook Messenger is the go-to app for most people. But that doesn’t mean that other messaging apps can’t grow in popularity. There are actually many popular messaging apps that didn’t get a chance to gain the same amount of user growth that Facebook has enjoyed, and some of them may become big enough to challenge Facebook’s dominance in the future. However, Facebook still holds a commanding lead in messaging right now, as it has almost 2 billion monthly active users. That means that there’s a lot of room for other messaging apps to grow, but they’ll need to do so by appealing to a broader range of users than just the Facebook-owning masses.
What’s Stopping Other Apps from Taking off
Facebook’s ownership of WhatsApp may have given it an advantage in the short term, but it has also left it with fewer options moving forward. That’s largely because people still use a lot of different messaging apps, and those with access to Facebook’s platform will likely enjoy an advantage over those without. That’s why other apps, such as WeChat and Line, are still very much in the race to be Facebook’s next big acquisition. Even though these apps have smaller user bases, they have been growing at a pace that is more than offset by Facebook’s shrinking audience. That means they’re not far off from challenging Facebook’s dominance in the messaging app market.
What’s Driving Growth for Telegram
After Facebook’s acquisition, there was no clear path for Telegram to become the next big thing in social media — or any other app for that matter. But the startup’s rapid growth since then has shown that the world was wrong about that. Dear global community, We have achieved our primary mission. We have helped to build a great company and made an impact on the society. We are grateful to you all for your trust, confidence and support. We are proud of what we have achieved. We are always striving to achieve more.