by Carla Pfahl
Quick Summary
Cliff Kuang of Fast Company & Inc has an interesting article about the staying power of chat in the mobile environment:
Cliff Kuang of Fast Company & Inc has an interesting article about the staying power of chat in the mobile environment: Why Chat May Be King Of The New Mobile Landscape. With more people using mobile devices (and, specifically, growing up with them), communication has become increasingly dependent on social apps such as Facebook, iMessage, Instagram, and Snapchat. Using chat software has become a normal and accessible way to communicate.
The rise of chat extends across the globe. In China, a phone’s operating system isn’t nearly as important as its chat apps. Through WeChat, which has 700 million monthly users, people are able not only to talk to friends about going to a concert, they can also purchase tickets, reserve a dinner table, split the check, and hail a cab... Part of the reason chat evolved as it did in China is that the vast majority of Chinese didn’t grow up using desktop computers—and didn’t grow accustomed to interacting online through browsers and drop-down menus.
As the younger generations grow up more reliant on mobile devices than desktop computers we'll see more common uses for chat apps in the U.S. as well.
