In the beginning
Messaging has exploded in recent years, but it didn’t happen overnight. Explore how messaging has become the communication lifeblood of internet businesses.
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1996 - 2009:
With ICQ, messaging crosses into the mainstream. We also see the rise of unique, chat-first communication quirks.
2011 - 2016:
While the first era of messaging focuses on simplistic desktop clients, the launch of iOS in 2007 and Android in 2008 leads to a flurry of messaging apps.
2018
Messaging has exploded in recent years, but it didn’t happen overnight.
Explore how messaging has become the communication lifeblood of internet businesses.
Samuel Morse sends the first telegraph – “What hath God wrought?” from the Book of Numbers – from Washington DC to Vail, Maryland. What used to take weeks by train and horse suddenly takes minutes, triggering our thirst for faster, better communication channels that ultimately led to the telephone, radio, fax, pager, etc.
The precursor to email, text, messaging and other asynchronous communication is giant time-sharing machines, like MIT’s Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS). Connected by wire, up to 30 users can “chat” with each other. Not that they need to – they’re all sitting in the same room!
The first text message is sent by a Vodafone engineer and received by his colleague on an Orbitel 901 phone (which conveniently has 2 backpack straps for, y’know, convenience). It simply reads: MERRY CHRISTMAS.
Launched in Israel, ICQ is the first centralized, stand-alone instant messenger. It’s billed as the first technology to allow both chatroom-like and one-to-one interactions. AOL snaps it up two years later for a princely sum of $400 million, as things heat up in the messaging space…
With ICQ, messaging crosses into the mainstream. We also see the rise of unique, chat-first communication quirks.
At the turn of the millennium, AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) is the most popular chat application in the world, with 18 million simultaneous users. Microsoft's MSN Messenger team hacks AIM daily for weeks until AOL exploits its own security flaw and blocks Microsoft for good. As the two battle on, bigger threats for both are brewing.
Google Talk, aka GChat, launches as a super simple chat program for Gmail users. Its key innovation is automatically archiving text-based chats. If that sounds defiantly no-frills, it is, and its hardcore user base is crushed when Google replaces it with Hangouts years later.
WhatsApp launches, instantly becoming a global success as it offered free mobile messaging and group chat. By 2013, with just 30 engineers it has disrupted the global telco industry’s SMS format, overtaking it in number of messages sent every day.
While the first era of messaging focuses on simplistic desktop clients, the launch of iOS in 2007 and Android in 2008 leads to a flurry of messaging apps.
Blackberry might’ve been the first to offer free ecosystem messaging, but Apple iMessage shows the world how powerful and expressive messaging can be. It enhances the feeling of presence with interactions like the 3-dot typing indicator. By 2017 Apple is sending 6.3 trillion iMessages a day!
Intercom (that’s us!) launches the first business messenger and introduces the concept of in-app messages, which lets businesses chat with customers while they're logged into their apps.
In China, WeChat popularizes conversational commerce years before it becomes a buzzword in the West. For example you can find and book movie tickets or hail and pay for taxis in their messenger. Some restaurants have even replaced hosts and waiters with WeChat. 🤔
Silicon Valley darling, Slack, enters the scene for workplace messaging. Within 8 months it vaults from 500 thousand to 1.7 million daily active users and scores a $1 billion valuation.
In less than a lifetime, messaging has gone from niche chatrooms to chatbots performing simple tasks for us. Imagine all the possibilities for businesses…