When it comes to sharing content, “dark social”-like emails or messaging apps-accounts for a whopping 84% of on-site shares. This represents a significant change in what “social media” is. In April of last year, Ash Read of Buffer shared their insights on how messaging apps are changing social media:Īs we progress through 2016 and beyond, we’ll start to notice most social activity is no longer going to happen in public, instead transitioning to private groups and messaging apps. Messaging apps are becoming a prime destination to share content, be it interesting articles, funny gifs, or cute stickers. People aren’t using messaging apps just to make plans with friends or talk about their day. WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger alone have over 1 billion users each, per month! The answer is a resounding “yes.” Take a look at this 2017 data set from Statista that chronicles the monthly active users, in millions, of the most popular messaging apps. But before you can begin marketing on these platforms, you need to fully understand how and why they’re being used. What began as a simple alternative for one-on-one communication has now become a go-to platform for sharing content, getting social, and interacting with both friends and brands. But times have changed, and messaging apps have evolved. Carriers set a cap on messages sent and received per month, and would charge customers for each text that exceeded the limit.Īt their inception, messaging apps were created to be a solution for this problem WhatsApp, WeChat, Facebook Messenger, and others came into popularity as many people-especially those outside the U.S.-opted out of expensive SMS plans. Remember the first text message you ever sent? Besides the 160 character limit, uncertain deliverability, and difficulty in keeping track of conversations, SMS used to be pricey.

New text messaging apps