Rose-tinted shades time: Back when I was growing up…
…we didn’t have a smorgasbord of messenger platforms. We had AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger…and that’s really it. ICQ was all but dead by the time I was in high school, and only the truly hardcore hid out on IRC.
AIM was owned by, obviously, AOL; and MSN was owned by, obviously, Microsoft. This was before smartphones with always-on, high-speed wireless data; before the resurgence of Macintosh; Windows and Internet Explorer ruled the earth, in computer technology’s version of the Dark Ages. So the rules of the playground were much less complicated: make a desktop app for Windows, get a critical mass of users, and you’re in.
AOL had its namesake service, and while Microsoft stopped providing lines they believed in the MSN black box environment. Both provided their messaging tools for free to non-subscribers, hoping to pull some of them into paying and using the rest to build numbers.
As late as 2009, I was still using both services, but the market hit its biggest ever inflection point. iPhone happened, Android followed, and the race was on. First-generation social networks like MySpace were already slipping away, and today’s twin titans Facebook and Twitter saw blood in the water. SMS had surpassed every other form of text communication; phones were the future.
What has all but died is the desktop messaging client. Correct me if I’m wrong, but in popular use we have Messages on macOS, Skype, and…that’s it. Messages exists in service to iMessage on iOS. Skype was neutered after being bought by Microsoft to replace MSN, and has lost users. Everything else—Facebook Messenger chief among them—relies on browser clients.
Facebook Messenger, like the rest of Facebook, isn’t really made to let you talk to people; it’s ultimately there for Facebook to find ways to make money off of your communication. The same exists for WhatsApp, WeChat, LINE, Kakao: these Asian super-messengers are what Facebook is trying to emulate. (Even iMessage supports third-party integrations for this behavior.)
Oh, right, Google Hangouts! Google made simple text chat a second-class citizen. They want you to chat on video, or at least with audio. Text is, ultimately, a backup, or a way to schedule video calls. The web app is a void and a chore.
Somewhat ironically, after decades of “how do you do, fellow kids?” business chat software—IBM even baked AIM’s underlying protocol into Notes—the most pure example today may just be Slack. On top are shiny web clients and mobile apps with inline previews, easy file uploads, and everything else you’d expect, but underneath it’s just IRC, that old domain of the elite class of teenage shut-ins like myself.
Signal may be the best example of a modern messenger that is focused on its primary job, and adapted for today’s rocky terrain with proper encryption, but it’s also mobile only.
Unfortunately for all of these players, the desktop is still important. It’s evolving, and will continue to evolve and adapt the interaction technology of our phones and tablets, but the essence of a desktop—a screen in front of you that you’re not holding—will still live strong within our lifetimes.
So maybe there’s room for one more, a strongly encrypted messenger available everywhere, simple enough to be separated from the browser and essential enough that it’s completely separate from other social networks or even your phone number, that can grow into offering some of these additional features like sharing money without selling its users out.
Ultimately, fragmentation and not prioritizing basic text communication will crash this messenger bubble, and such a final player could find itself the emerging winner.