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Mobile messaging is a fragmented sector. Every few months or so, a messaging app for the phone launches. Unlike SMS, mobile messaging makes use of the Internet for connectivity and offers a multi-media environment with photos, sounds and even animated graphics and virtual stickers.

“K, CU” isn’t enough, we now have to include a graphical smiley, Emoji (an expanded smiley set), or even an animated avatar that reflects our moods. One-on-one texting is old school; group messaging is in.

It’s not surprising that mobile messaging, according to research company Informa, already exceeded texting in 2012. Informa, according to a BBC report, reported 19 billion messages sent per day through messaging apps in 2012, higher than the 17.6 billion text messages process daily.

Messaging apps

Viber, iMessage, Kik, WhatsApp, WeChat, Line, Skype, Path (a photo app with messaging support), GroupMe and Facebook Messenger are some of the more known messaging apps available today.

You can now add Google Hangouts to that group.

Hangouts is Google’s unified messaging application that allows you to chat on your phone, tablet or computer and move among these devices seamlessly. With Hangouts, you can start a conversation on the computer and pick it up on the phone while on the go.

UNIFIED MESSAGING. Hangouts is Google’s unified messaging application that allows you to chat on your phone, tablet or computer and move among these devices seamlessly.

Google has long been rumored to be working on a messaging system and app. Last week, it finally announced the serviced that had been codenamed Babel, after the Babel fish translating creature in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Hangouts unifies GoogleTalk and the Google+ Messenger app.

I installed the app as soon as it was made available after Google I/O and immediately bombarded contacts with messages to try it out. I like the app. It’s quick to load and centralizes messaging I already do in the Google ecosystem.

Google Hangouts signup

I find it a good service that I finally signed up my main email for Google+ to be able to use it. Google requires you to sign up for a Google+ account to use it.

Its biggest feature, however, is still on its way – integration with text messaging. This is much like how iPhones and iPads handle messaging with iMessage, which is to send the message via the Internet when the recipient is online but through the regular GSM network as a text message when the receiver is offline.

When it finally does that, I think Hangouts will edge out all the other messaging apps.

Right now, however, Viber offers the best messaging and calling experience. It is available on iOS, Android and certain BlackBerry devices. Two weeks ago, Viber offered a desktop client for Windows and Mac that allowed users to send text messages and make calls. I tried the desktop client and the experience was really good, comparable to calling through Skype – with the added benefit that more people in my contacts are on Viber than they are on Skype.

But with the 900 million install base of Android, a Google product, I think Hangouts has the potential to become the biggest messaging app and service on the Internet. Only Facebook potentially stands in the way.

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The post With Hangouts, Google muscles into messaging sector appeared first on Leon Kilat : The Tech Experiments.

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The headline screamed “install me now!” It was for yet another mobile messaging application and this time, one that promised, according to TechCrunch, “A Richer, Faster Messaging App That Quickly Grabs Doodles, Videos & Images.”

The article about MessageMe got me at: “It’s light, It’s fast and it isn’t just limited to texting or photos.”

I promptly opened the website and was invited to “experience the free messenger that everyone’s talking about.”

The app was quick to install and set up. After activating my account, it immediately scoured through my social networks to look for contacts already in the system. Of my 797 phone contacts, MessageMe was able to find only one who already signed up. One out of 797, imagine that. And that person signed up, I suspect, because he wrote about the service for a tech website. After a few days of checking whether other friends would sign up and seeing none, I uninstalled the app.

Mobile Internet messaging is currently among the most fragmented sectors in technology. There are probably as many messaging apps as there are groups of friends in your contacts database. It is the Balkanization of our social networks.

Multi-network IM apps

Among the first mobile Internet messaging applications I tried was Fring on the SonyEricsson P1i close to five years ago. The app offered multi-network instant messaging and voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) capabilities to Symbian and Windows Mobile devices. I used it extensively to chat on the go with GoogleTalk and Yahoo contacts.

When I moved to Android and later, iOS, I used various multi-network apps until I eventually settled into imo.im.

Apps like Fring and imo.im unify the Internet messaging experience. The new crop of mobile messaging apps break it apart.

WhatsApp Messenger is a cross-platform mobile messaging app available for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Phone and Nokia. (Photo taken from the WhatsApp website)

Among my contacts, Viber is the most popular. It is a cross-platform messaging and calling service that had 175 million users as of February. It is the app I use to get in touch with old friends.

Then there’s WhatsApp, which, according to the Financial Times in 2011, “has done to SMS on mobile phones what Skype did to international calling on landlines.” I managed to chat with six people in the app but I basically used it in the past year to get in touch with one business contact, who has since stopped using it. WhatsApp indicates when a person last used the app so you’ll know whether you’re better off sending an email or text message.

Group messaging

Kik, on the other hand, offers a more responsive messaging experience, especially on lower-powered devices. I use it to send messages to my kids and two other people I collaborate with.

Another messaging app that generated quite a buzz is Line, which was reported to have 100 million users in January. Apart from calling and messaging, it allowed people to use virtual stickers. Even the photo-sharing social network Path got into the messaging act in its latest version.

There’s also ChatON by Samsung but I used it only for a couple of days when all I could find in the system was a newsroom colleague within earshot. Why chat when you can just talk?

The messaging experience in iMessage, on the other hand, is really good and seamless but it’s limited only to iOS devices. One hopes for a similar feature in Android or better yet, a cross-platform equivalent.

For group messaging, I tried GroupMe and managed to coordinate a couple of projects using it. Eventually, my contacts stopped using it and the app is unused and in danger of being uninstalled.

Facebook messaging

Earlier this year, however, I decided to just stop asking people to use whatever mobile app I fancied. SMS is so cheap and reliable there’s no urgent impetus to move to messaging applications.

I decided, instead, to take advantage of existing networks imo.im for IM chats and Facebook Messenger. Most people are on Facebook, anyway. With the fragmentation of the messaging space, Facebook might just become the default mobile communication app. It’s agreement with carriers all over the world for free or discounted airtime to use the app will help the social network cement that dominance.

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The post Messenger, Viber, WhatsApp, Kik me, maybe appeared first on Leon Kilat : The Tech Experiments.