Users of WeChat can pay bills, purchase goods and services, send money to their contacts, and even pay in stores - all through the app. Besides the network effects, the app’s popularity can be attributed to its tight integration with nearly every kind of business transaction. By 2018, WeChat was described as the largest standalone app in the world, with more than one billion active users. WeChat is a messenger developed by the Chinese tech giant Tencent in 2011. Quite often, an instant messaging app would have a near monopoly in a given geographical market. There’s Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Skype, Telegram, Viber, Snapchat, Instagram, Slack, Signal, Line, and lots more. Instead of using the traditional telecom infrastructure, they enable conversations over the internet, so their popularity has been growing sharply with the expansion of 3G and LTE networks.Ĭhat apps not just replace the more traditional SMS and phone calls, they radically expand the ways of communication, adding video calls, conference calls, group messaging, file sharing, payment systems, status updates, chatbots, and more.īy all accounts, the messenger market is getting more and more saturated every day. Messaging apps are the de facto way most of us communicate today. IM+ keeps all your chats within one handy Mac app.
