Tag: messaging

Global Watch: How The Hike Messaging App Wins India

Posted on by Lab Team

Editor’s Note: This marks the first entry of our new publishing series “Global Watch”, where we look at the emerging markets around the world and highlight stories that feature new, disruptive media and technology.

Hike is a messaging app that is gaining popularity among the young people in India. The reason? The app tailors its features to the unique reality of India’s emerging market.

For one, it prioritizes the privacy of its users. It is culturally common for young folks in India to live with their parents until marriage, and the special Hidden Mode of Hike makes it harder for nosy parents and siblings to snoop around their private messages. In addition, Hike supports sending messages between smartphones and “dumb” phones, giving it another big advantage in India, where the majority of mobile users still use phones with limited Internet capability.

With $86 million investment from telecomm companies like Bharti and SoftBank, Hike is not thinking about monetization yet. Less than two years old, Hike’s free app currently has more than 35 million users. And it still has plenty of room to grow, as the Indian market has more than 1 billion mobile subscribers and no single dominant messaging app.

Yo For Free Moto Smartwatches

Posted on by Lab Team

Motorola has teamed up with Yo to launch a giveaway campaign on the minimalist messaging app. Yesterday 20 new Moto 360 smartwatches were given away gratis to the first 20 users who “Yo’ed” Moto’s account and clicked on the hyperlink embedded in the returned Yo. This is not the first time a major brand has experimented with Yo, but it did move beyond mere notifications and properly utilized some of Yo’s new features. As the user size of Yo keeps growing, more brands can be expected to follow their audience and try out this new platform.

Snapchat To Add News And Ads

Posted on by Lab Team

According to The Wall Street Journal, Snapchat is planning to broaden its offerings with video clips, news articles, and ads. It is reportedly in talks with advertisers and media companies about a service called “Snapchat Discovery” that would support such content.

Such support is certainly nothing new for messaging apps: Kik, for example, has been partnering with advertisers to run campaigns on its multimedia platform for a while now. Before Snapchat can capitalize on its estimated 50 million active users, however, some reliable measurements are needed. 

Why Publishers Are Trying Out “Yo”

Posted on by Lab Team

Publishers like WSJ and Buzzfeed are dipping their toes into the notorious “Yo” app to tap into its sizable audience. With its newly added functions of embedded links and hashtags, Yo has become more marketer-friendly, and publishers are among the first to take advantage of it. The one-word-only messaging app attracted a considerable amount of users with its simple, gimmicky concept early on, and marketers always follow where the audience goes.

How Shotclock Stands Out With Gamified Messaging

Posted on by Lab Team

In light of the surprising success of Yo, could a new messaging app with gamified features stand out from the crowd? That’s the question Shotclock is out to answer. At first glance, it might seem like a Snapchat copycat, with its self-destructing messages and one-tap-to-send interface. But its unique clocking system adds a twist: the time the ephemeral messages exist is proportionally linked to the “likes” and “shares” they get. Essentially a quantified popularity contest, Shotclock allows the messages with best content to last the longest and therefore gain maximal exposure.

Pinterest Finally Adds an Important Social Feature

Posted on by Lab Team

At long last, moms on Pinterest can swap their secret family recipes via private messages! Building upon its “send-a-pin” feature, Pinterest has finally added a long-overdue messaging function. This is not the first time a social media platform has tried to appropriate the one-on-one conversational feature of messaging apps, as Facebook keeps pushing its messenger app and Instagram starts testing Bolt, and it certainly won’t be the last. Any feature beneficial to building a community among connected users should be of high priority for every social media platform.

Weinstein Co. Turns To Kik To Reach Gen Z Audience

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In an attempt to reach the fickle and ever-elusive Generation Z, Weinstein Company is teaming up with messaging app Kik to launch an ad campaign for its upcoming young adult movie “The Giver”. Kik users are now encouraged to share a “Giver card”, embedded with promo content of the movie, with each other in conversations within the app. This marks the first time the messaging platform running a movie promotion, although it is certainly no stranger to brand campaigns, having worked with IPG lab last year to run an integrated campaign for U.K boyband One Direction. With a major Hollywood studio moving in, Kik and other messaging apps are indeed shaping up to be the next frontier of youth marketing.

Stars and Brands Leaving Vine For Snapchat

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In Forbes’s detailed profile on Snapchat celebrity Shaun McBride, one important phenomenon almost slips through: with Vine “sort of plateauing” after a year and a half, video creators and brands are now looking to a matured Snapchat for new opportunities. No longer just an ephemeral picture sharing app, Snapchat has caught considerable attention from marketers with its new Snapchat Stories feature that allows the messages, be it video or pictures, to stay on for 24 hours. Several big stars on Vine have reportedly been branching out to Snapchat, looking to catch on the next trend to stay relevant. Overall, it is clear to see that the intimate, personal appeal of messaging apps gives them a crucial edge over the old-fashioned social media platforms. And staying ahead of trend seems to be the moral of the story here.

Kik Partners Up With Glympse To Enable Location-Sharing

Posted on by Lab Team

Messaging app Kik users can now easily share their whereabouts with each other thanks to a new partnership with Glympse, a start-up specializes in temporary location sharing technology. The new feature has been fully integrated into Kik so users don’t need to leave the app to share their locations. Given that “where are you?” is undoubtedly one of the most texted questions, this feature could certainly come in handy for Kik users. As messaging app continues to expand its functionality, we expect to see more partnerships like this popping up in the near future.

Emoji-Only Messaging App Set To Launch

Posted on by Lab Team

Yep, you read that right. Someone is making a messaging platform where its users are only allowed to communicate through those playful little icons known as emojis. The network, aptly named Emoj.li, has not officially launched, but it is currently accepting username reservations. The usernames, of course, have to be emoji-only as well, properly reflecting the diehard emoji-purist ideals of its creators.

Following the surprising success of the Yo app, where you could only send your contact a simple “Yo” and nothing else, Emoj.li comes off as a whimsical, almost parody-like creation, riding right on the recent tide of testing the limits of messaging apps. How far this trend, undoubtedly spearheaded by Gen Z, could push forward our cognition of mobile communication remains to be seen. Who knows, maybe brands will pay good money to be integrated into the emoji library if this platform ever blows up—just imagine the potential bidding war between Pepsi and Coca-Cola over the soft-drink icon. For now, however, we could only respond with an enigmatic winky-smiley face.