Mobile phones have a huge impact on everyone’s social life, no one could ever have imagined that a family in the same house would send messages to communicate instead of talking face to face. The good thing is that family can also stay in touch in real time even when they not in the same location. Right from the start it was evident that instant communication was one of the essential uses for internet and this was where several instant messaging apps started and user loyalty is what made some more popular with more evolving features.
Instant messenger started out as a basic communication option and later group messaging was added, then status updates and awareness was introduced and although voice conferencing was added it was texting that stayed the most preferred. The most popular messenger ever was created in 1998 by Yahoo, and then Microsoft caught up on the popularity of instant messaging and by 1997 the most popular internet provider American online took the top spot with AOL messenger.
Skype started in 2003 and became one of the most used ways of communication plus added voice-based communication to its services and later video features and file attachments. Currently, there are several messenger apps, the most popular includes Facebook messenger, Line, Viber, Tencent-WeChat, Apple-Face Time, magic Jack and Skype.
WeChat offers a wide variety of functions, which includes chat groups, games as well as micro-blogging, nearby awareness, video conferencing, wallet features, location awareness, text messaging, file transfer, diverse emoticons and voice conferencing.
Viber is hugely popular and users can directly call without even opening the app and enjoy high-quality calls, which is in equal to WhatsApp. Viber also offers a whiteboard options that enables the user to send immediate scrawls extra to location awareness and this adds fun to messaging.
Line is similar to both WeChat and Viper and its popularity is due to over 250 kinds of emoticon expressions which give its members a new level of fun and interesting ways to convey their moods. With so many messenger apps to choose from it is hard to decide which one to use yet at the end, it is also important to be on the same one as your family and special friends.