Flickr Overhaul Sets Up Another Foundation for Yahoo’s Revival

Yahoo’s surprise announcement may have been fleshed out in haste over the weekend as it brings Tumblr into the big purple family but Bloomberg let slip info of an announcement of a different kind on Saturday. Yahoo’s invitation for a Monday event was apparently to announce changes to Flickr in a massive proportion. And by massive we do mean big. Terabyte size and full resolution.

Back in July 2012 when Marissa Mayer was just announced as the new Yahoo CEO, a campaign was launched asking Mayer to “please make Flickr awesome again”. The Flickr team responded by asking the Internet to join Flickr and “help us make Flickr awesomer”. Almost exactly two months before the anniversary of that campaign, Mayer and Yahoo launched a brand new Flickr. A completely redesigned and refocused Flickr which gives members one terabyte of storage space each for free.

So what does a terabyte of space mean as far as photos are concerned? To make it easier, Flickr’s new homepage provides a slider to give some idea as to what that means. If you take photos at exactly 8 megapixels each, Flickr’s new storage allowance will let you upload 436,900 photos at full resolution. That means you will need to upload almost 50 photos per hour every hour of every day in one year to fill up that space. And if you managed to run out of space next year, well, nobody is stopping you to use a different Flickr account to grab another terabyte. Not yet anyway.

The changes on Flickr didn’t stop there. Thanks to the terabyte giveaway, Flickr now does away with Flickr Pro accounts, for the most part. The paid option to allow members access to their entire photo library has now been removed because it’s been rendered obsolete. However, Pro members will still be able to renew their membership if they wish even though nobody can sign up to it anymore.

The benefits of renewing Pro accounts include absolutely unlimited storage, detailed photo analytics, as well as the lack of advertising whereas those with free accounts will have a banner ad shown on their stream, no analytics, and a limit of 1 terabyte storage space. According to Yahoo, there are no plans to remove Pro renewals. An option to have paid Flickr accounts is still available, but will be covered separately.

Flickr’s other change is the website. Though there aren’t really any new features, Flickr has brought on a fresh design which includes the addition of a cover photo for each member page, a larger profile photo, fully laid out photos across the photo stream and feed for more prominent display.

Those with large screen or high resolution displays will appreciate how photos on Flickr are now laid out. All the controls are still there, just relocated to a more convenient and less intrusive space. Using black instead of white as the background for individual photos makes each of them stand out even more. For all its changes, Flickr’s website still offers all the same features, just presented differently.

The third thing that Yahoo announced with regards to Flickr is the redesigned Android app. While the iOS app has had its redesign in December last year, the Android app hadn’t seen a corresponding major overhaul. You can tell that the Android app has been redesigned entirely independent of the iOS app. While the two apps share similar features, the looks, the layout, the approach to design, they’re all different from one another, each leveraging the style and familiarity of each platform’s audience.

All these changes are not guaranteed to get the public to flock back to Flickr but they’re big steps into understanding how today’s Internet works and how consumers see online services. You can probably draw parallels to the Gmail announcement back in 2004 although there was really no email equivalent of Facebook Photos back then or even Instagram and Flickr is a stagnant brand looking for a reboot instead of a brand new service.

Yahoo’s decision to give Flickr a do-over is important. With Marissa Mayer at the helm, the Tumblr acquisition just announced, a renewed focus on mobile deployment, Yahoo’s revival is just beginning and we probably won’t see Mayer’s master plan unravel in full until next year.

Indonesian Horror Game DreadOut is Fully Funded on Indiegogo

Local horror game and id-byte 2013 finalist DreadOut has received full funding through the crowd funding site Indiegogo with 12 hours to the deadline. Digital Happiness, the Bandung-based company behind DreadOut, sought USD 25,000 to fully develop the game into completion with intention to release it in November of this year. Following a highly successful demo release at the end of March, the campaign kicked into high gear.

The company announced the funding achievement through the game’s Twitter account early morning on Sunday.

Full Funded!!!!!!

— DreadOut (@dreadoutgame) May 18, 2013

YEAH!!!! twitter.com/dreadoutgame/s…

— DreadOut (@dreadoutgame) May 18, 2013

Aside from using Indiegogo, the company also sought funding separately for local supporters who wish to contribute to the game by direct bank transfer. The company said that it will close the window for direct contribution at 9 am West Indonesia Time today so it can submit the external funding to Indiegogo accordingly before the deadline of the project which is midnight Pacific Time or 10 am Sunday, local time.

The submission of the external funding is important as it will determine the distribution of the incentives and rewards as described on the Indiegogo project page.

At press time, the game received contributions from more than 500 people around the world, more than 275 of which paid $15, the minimum amount to earn a download of the game along with a wallpaper for their computers and handheld devices as well as a mention in the credits.

Five people who paid $1000 to get the most out of the project will receive a heck of a lot of stuff including a silver necklace replica of main character Linda’s in-game jewelry, a hand painted resin statue of Linda herself, a digital comic book, a printed magazine, physical copy of the game and soundtrack, posters, pins, stickers, a replica of Linda’s bag, and more.

Back in April, Digital Happiness participated in the id-byte roadshow in Bandung which sought local startups and projects that have the potential to grow and be world class companies. At that time, the game received the most rousing reception from the audience and the judges as the team had put together perhaps the most convincing presentation and progress report among all the participants. Rightfully so, DreadOut has earned itself the right to pitch with other finalists at the id-byte conference which will happen in 11-13 June this year.

The company said that previous encounters with venture capitals and investors had left a bad taste in their mouths as they had been asked to divert from their course. Some investors had asked them to make DreadOut a game on mobile platforms while others tried to steer the game away from the horror theme.

We first wrote about the game in January 2012 when Digital Happiness pitched at the Jakarta Ventures Night, run by Singapore VC company East Ventures. At that time the company was expecting to release the game by the June of that year, but apparently the development stalled and they were only able to release a demo by March of this year. Hopefully with the funds the company is set to receive from Indiegogo, it can meet the expected release schedule this time and with any luck, it may receive further support from investors following the id-byte conference, having proved its popularity and resolve.

Digital Happiness will be presenting at casual connect in Singapore on 21-23 May at the Shangri-La Hotel and will follow that up with an appearance at the Game Developers Gathering in Jakarta on 25 May at the JWC campus of Bina Nusantara University. Details for the use of the funds and the rewards for contributors can be found on the game’s Indiegogo page.

PicMix Updates BlackBerry 10 App, Launches Gift Cards for Mix Credits

When we last wrote about PicMix, the Indonesian photo-sharing startup was about to hit ten million registered users. Sure enough, it did just a few days later. PicMix now has 10.5 million users who have uploaded more than 151 million photos to the service. The company today at BlackBerry Live in Orlando, Florida launched a new version for BlackBerry 10, as well as PicMix cards.

The BlackBerry 10 version finally earns the ability for users to join photo competitions run by PicMix and its partners, use advanced custom frames, and they also can add stickers on photos as well as in comments. This update brings feature parity to PicMix apps on classic BlackBerry and Android.

A number of visual and interface changes are also present in the new BlackBerry 10 version to allow users easier access to see official or verified accounts of celebrities, brands, models, professional photographers.

PicMix gift card is a way for consumers to purchase and top up their Mix Credits, the virtual currency used to buy in-app items such as stickers, frames, and filters. Previously Mix Credits were only available online to be purchased within the app using credit cards and airtime (phone credits) but with the new gift cards, in collaboration with payment processor and card company Indomog, PicMix users can purchase these MogPlay PicMix cards and add Mix Credits into their accounts.

After Four Months of Operations Freeware is Home to 12 Startups

Freeware, the free co-working space which had only began operating actively in January 2013, just announced that it already is home to 12 startups which are hosted at the Medco building in Ampera, South Jakarta. Freeware is operated by Grupara, the Indonesian tech startup incubator which was established in 2011.

Some of the startups hosted at Freeware are also involved with Ideosource or the now dormant Project Eden in addition to a number of bootstrapped ones.The twelve startups are Lolabox, Maskoolin, Gravira, Kelir.TV, Telunjuk, Glassfinger, TSATB, Blinc*, Kivibyte, Flamingo, Pingmaru, and Diemdiem. While we’ve covered Lolabox, Maskoolin, Gravira, Telunjuk, and Flamingo previously, the others have yet to be highlighted.

Kelir.TV is a B2B video streaming startup serving broadcast TV networks and brands. Founded by former Detik engineers, the company has received investment from Ideosource. Glassfingers is a game development company which was part of Project Eden. TSATB is a digital agency with a focus on youth market, founded and run by Benazio Rizki Putra who is an Indonesian Internet celebrity with his own set of KakaoTalk stickers.

Blinc* is building a customer loyalty program which will launch in a few months, while Kivibyte is an inbound marketing company which was co-founded by Gravira CEO Christopher M. Satriandaru. Pingmaru is a live chat system for e-commerce companies to allow their customers to interact directly with their customer support officers. Lastly, Diemdiem, which literally means hush hush, is still in stealth mode.

Aryo Ariotedjo, co-founder of Grupara and Freeware wants to draw a distinction between his incubator company and the co-working space. While many have linked the two together, he said that they are actually two separate entities. “I would say [Freeware] is a non-profit entity and trying to make our own tenants to help themselves in terms of making Freeware to continue its existence. They felt helped with this program and I am sure they will also help develop Freeware into a bigger community. We always try to make Freeware as neutral as possible”.

Companies incubated by Grupara are hosted at Freeware but the space is also open to individuals and other companies who wish to use the facilities on a casual basis. For long term or permanent use though, companies wishing to reserve spots at Freeware must apply and be approved. “The reason we created Freeware is so that we can build an day to day occurring community for entrepreneurs to build their business together with their other peers”, he said.

As a service to Freeware tenants, Grupara startups, as well as to draw more entrepreneurs to the space, Freeware hosts a weekly sharing session in which it invites industry figures to come and talk about their experiences and views on a number of matters. Past speakers have included former Yahoo Indonesia Country Director Pontus Sonnerstedt, Veritrans CEO and co-founder Ryu Kawano Suliawan, Tiket COO Natali Ardianto, co-founder and CEO for Rocket Internet Southeast Asia Stefan Jung, advertising legend Danny Wirianto, as well as AdPlus co-founder Yazid Faizin.

Tomorrow, Freeware will host Fajar Budiprasetyo, co-founder of Koprol and Ice House, while next Friday, former chief designer at Tiket.com and co-founder of Weekend Inc. Richard Fang will be at Freeware. You can register for Freeware events at Eventbrite.

[Update] we made a mistake in reading the press release and have made corrections to reflect that

Vote For Your Favorite SpaceApps Challenge Project Now

Space Apps Challenge may have ended and Panggi Akadol’s OpenTEC project won the local event but the global voting for people’s choice award is open. We submitted our top two best apps among the twenty that came through the Challenge weekend to the global competition and it’s time to support our developers!

To vote for your favorite Space Apps Challenge project, go to the Space Apps Challenge awards page and pick the project that you like most. “We are using Twitter to collect votes and have assigned a unique hashtag to each project. Individuals simply need to tweet @spaceapps with the hashtag of their favorite project to vote. This hashtag is not alterable, so please be sure that you are sharing the correct one so that we can track your support online.”

Make sure you tweet to @spaceapps using the project’s hashtag to have your votes counted. There are 133 nominated projects from the entire competition, and the winners will be announced on 22 May, US time. Voting closes on 17 May, which is in two days but we have one extra day thanks to the time zone difference. You’ll only need a couple of minutes to tweet your vote, so there’s still plenty of time.

Go vote for your projects now!

Can Telcos Take on KakaoTalk and Friends?

With Telkomsel and Indosat announcing the development of their own messaging apps based on the GSMA-approved Rich Communication Services (RCS) standard, Indonesia is about to join countries like Singapore, South Korea, and Spain in rolling out an industry upgrade to the aging SMS. In the meantime, their customers are being drawn away and their revenues siphoned out by communication services companies.

When Joyn was deployed in South Korea last December through a collaboration between three telcos, it faced an uphill battle against KakaoTalk which has upwards of 90% membership of the entire South Korean mobile market. It’s still early days but from the looks of it, Joyn may have a decent traction.

In Singapore, SingTel and StarHub are working with Vodafone plan to implement Joyn was met with skepticism from SGE’s Terrence Lee. Lee said back in February, “it is more logical to acquire a mature, profitable chat app that is already occupying a niche in Asia” because it would be far more efficient, less time consuming, and would not require consumers to adopt yet another new app.

“So, if SingTel or StarHub wants to build their own chat app, they’ll have offer something that’s truly different rather than adding to the noise by offering more of the same. One way to do it would be to create an API that links all the disparate apps together, resolving the fragmentation issue that is plaguing the market”, Lee continued.

A mobile industry consultant told us that RCS, implemented as Joyn, will have a difficult time in competing with OTT companies. He said that if these services are to be industry standard, handsets of all kinds and prices will have to have built in support and in the mean time, smartphone owners will have to download a separate Joyn app in addition to their already long list of messaging apps installed on their devices.

Daniel Horan, chief marketing officer at Axis is skeptical about Joyn. Horan told DailySocial that with limited deployment of the service and limited compatibility, it’s unlikely that it will gain widespread adoption both globally and in Indonesia. “My sense is that with the number of OTT players and the speed that they are deploying new services it will be hard for an industry body group like this to keep up.”

Findings by Informa released in April of this year showed that messages sent through OTT services have more than doubled the numbers of messages sent over SMS.

“By the end of 2013, Informa estimates that 41 billion OTT messages will be sent every day, compared with an average of 19.5 billion P2P SMS messages. There are far more P2P SMS users than there are OTT messaging users: There were about 3.5 billion P2P SMS users in 2012, according to Informa, compared with about 586.3 million users of OTT messaging. Each OTT user sent an average of 32.6 OTT messages a day, compared with just five SMS messages per day per P2P SMS user, meaning that OTT-messaging users are sending more than six times as many messages as P2P SMS users do”.

The report also says that global SMS traffic and revenue will still increase due to the inherent limitations of messaging services but they will be nowhere near the rate of those of third party apps.

We wrote in December last year that telcos generally have three options when it comes to OTT services. Fight, partner, or imitate. Fighting app companies is downright foolish and carriers will earn the wrath of consumers. Partnering means getting in bed with the “enemy” while imitating them involves more effort and carries a huge risk.

Sumantri Joko Yuwono, Indosat’s group head of product and marketing support said last week that the carrier is currently evaluating potential partners to develop its app which will not be available at least until the third quarter of this year. He also said that the app will not be exclusive to Indosat, which is interesting considering that Indonesian telcos have a history of not playing well with each other. Perhaps, in the face of this onslaught, they see a reason to unite.

The South Korean roll out of Joyn by three operators in December 2012 seems to show a positive sign as within two months a million people have downloaded and signed up to the service. However, KakaoTalk has gone beyond merely providing a messaging service as it has become a platform for games and other services as well. Recently it managed to get Evernote to run on its platform and it also has rolled out KakaoPages, KakaoHome, and KakaoStory to keep consumers within the Kakao environment.

For a global telco consortium to compete in innovation with individual companies, it may be a futile exercise. Technology companies working for their own interests can develop, test, and roll out updates and features far quicker than the consortium and if members of the consortium operate independently of the group, or form their own groups, it will diverge from the entire point of making a standard product applicable to all telcos and device vendors.

If telcos want to make this Rich Communication Service a full replacement for their SMS business and maybe even their voice call business, which means charging for the service, that train has long departed. Thanks to messaging platforms monetizing their services in alternative ways, it’s very difficult for telcos expecting customers to be willing to pay for built in messaging services.

As the business of communications is being taken away from mobile network operators, it’s up to them to decide in what ways should they be participating in the new ball game, whether they should remain as competitors in the field or as the people who build the field and set the rules of the game.

This mobile channel is brought to you by Samsung Developer Competition 2013. SDC ’13 is an app competition for Android apps that leverage Samsung’s mobile technologies. For more information please visit http://techne.dailysocial.net/sdc

Mobile Carriers Could Have Anticipated The Rise of OTT Services

Back in February the Indonesian telecommunications regulatory body (BRTI) announced plans to build and deploy its own messaging app platform to replace the aging SMS. The move was clearly an attempt to counter the onslaught of applications that substitute the core mobile communications services offered by mobile network companies. Indonesian telcos, Telkomsel and Indosat, have separately announced their plans to develop such an app.

Apps like Line, Skype, Viber, and Facebook Messenger are seen by many within the mobile industry as apps that undermine the basic services being provided by mobile telecommunications companies. While many of the telcos are actively working with messaging companies to provide specific data packages to keep their customers happy, internally they are looking for ways to steer customers back to their own services.

Today’s mobile communication lines have gone beyond phone calls and SMS. People can connect with their friends, families, and colleagues through email, video calls, audio and video messages, status updates, and voice over IP. None of these facilities are provided as standard features in mobile devices however, as they are all services built and maintained by many different companies running on top of the infrastructure owned or operated by the carriers.

The fact that these services are being used in lieu of phone calls and SMS is causing some concerns among mobile carriers. For the last couple of months, the top five free apps on Google Play Indonesia had been communication apps; KakaoTalk, WeChat, WhatsApp Messenger, Line, and Facebook. Similarly on the iPhone App Store, some of those apps have featured consistently in the top ten since March of this year.

Thanks to Samsung, Android as a whole has recently overtaken the top spot in the Indonesian smartphone market relegating BlackBerry to second place. BlackBerry’s most popular feature in Indonesia is of course, its messenger service. Having access to BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) and Facebook is the top reason for millions of Indonesians who own a BlackBerry. With the shift to Android, it stands to reason that messaging apps would be among the top apps as consumers seek alternatives to BBM.

Indonesian consumers want ways to communicate with each other freely. They don’t mind a periodic subscription fee, but they want to avoid instances of pay per use, hence the popularity of BBM which catapulted BlackBerry into becoming the most wanted smartphone for many years and the rise of WhatsApp as the most popular mobile messaging app alternative for non BlackBerry users in Indonesia. When BlackBerry users began to use BBM far more frequently than phone calls and SMS it should have raised a flag among telcos.

It seems obvious in hindsight that telcos should have been aware of this trend and moved to anticipate it one way or another but an industry figure recently told DailySocial that it’s almost impossible for telcos to move so quickly and head off the so called Over The Top services. “It would be easier for them to cooperate with OTT services and allow the major players into the ecosystem rather than fight them”, he said.

This mobile channel is brought to you by Samsung Developer Competition 2013. SDC ’13 is an app competition for Android apps that leverage Samsung’s mobile technologies. For more information please visit http://techne.dailysocial.net/sdc

Tempo Media Group’s Tempo Store a Haven for History Buffs and News Junkies

In case you haven’t noticed, Tempo Media Group has recently launched its digital store for back issues of its collections of magazines, daily newspapers, photos, books, and research papers published by the group, and any digital asset that the group has produced over the years. The store also acts as a reseller for partners of the group who wish to sell their own digital items.

The Tempo digital store hosts more than 1.2 million photos dating back to 1971, more than 1900 issues of Tempo weekly news magazine, over 600 issues of the English edition of Tempo magazine, 4200 issues of the Tempo daily newspaper, and dozens of issues of other magazine titles. The group is said to be in the process of digitizing all of its 2.6 million photos to be made available for purchase through the store with 250 photos being added to the store each day.

Magazines cost around Rp 30,000 (USD 3.5), newspapers Rp 3,000 per issue, while prices for books, infographics, and research papers vary. Low resolution photos are free but high resolution ones cost up to Rp 500,000. Free photos are naturally licensed only for personal use. The store also sells video footages starting from Rp 350,000 each.

Customers can make their purchases by creating a Tempo ID which can be used across all of Tempo’s publicly accessible digital properties. The store accepts payments through ATM, credit card, BCA KlikPay, Mandiri ClickPay, as well as Kaskus’ KasPay. Customers can also leave a deposit on the site as a prepayment for future purchases.

The interesting part is that for ATM payments, Tempo is piggybacking on Telkom’s merchant ID on various ATMs by different banks. In other words, if you choose to pay for your Tempo store purchases through an ATM from any bank, you’ll find yourself navigating through the menus for Telkom products before entering Tempo’s account number.

The Tempo store also acts as a reseller for approved partners but not as a marketplace. The store will allow the sale of certain non-Tempo Group products and will take a share of the revenue for each item sold through its store but partners will not have their own space.

As a prominent media group with massive journalistic assets, the opening of the Tempo digital store opens up a wealth of information which is invaluable for anyone inside and outside of the journalistic field. Its biggest draw cards are of course the photographs and the back issue magazines.

While it claims to be making all of its magazines dating back to 1971, currently the oldest issue available is from October 1998 which coincidentally covers the May 1998 tragedy, a horrific period in this nation’s history which became a significant political turning point. No doubt the group will add older issues into the store eventually.

Imagine being able to own copies of historical photographs, comparing photos of historical locations, building your own collection of news clippings over the years, tracking events and figures, quotes and columns, editorials and opinions, all through the lenses and coverage of one of the country’s most respected news publications. Tempo’s digital store is undoubtedly an expansive window to everything that has happened in this country.

The Messaging Conundrum

Ask any smartphone-wielding Indonesian about their messaging apps and they would most likely say a combination of two, maybe three apps, aside from SMS, the usage of which had been in serious decline over the past year. WhatsApp, BlackBerry Messenger, and Line tend to be the top three messaging apps mentioned by Indonesians. Although people do actively use other messaging apps, they are not as prominent on people’s minds.

For most people, WhatsApp and BlackBerry Messenger are still the two dominant messaging apps. While the Asian apps are seen as more playful and casual thanks to the image that their marketing campaigns had been pushing, these two apps are more businesslike and preferred in the workplace.

Microsoft’s Skype is also another one that’s widely accepted in workplaces but most people consider Skype as a video or audio conference tool instead of a text messaging app. Even though Microsoft recently rolled MSN Messenger into Skype, it still remains to be seen whether former MSN members will embrace it.

When communicating with different groups of people however, in recent times it has become a juggling act in managing several different applications and services. One group may prefer the use of one app while others are fans of another app. Certain individuals might also prefer a completely different channel of communication. All this diversity is forcing people to download and sign up to several different apps and services just to maintain communications.

There hasn’t been a prior point in history in which people are so immediately connected through so many different ways yet still face difficulties in deciding which communication channels to use. Some people are reluctant to give away their mobile phone numbers while others insist on traditional means. Some insist on emails, others may not find email practical.

Those with private phone numbers would rule out apps which rely on phone numbers such as Viber and WhatsApp. Those who are on Path, Line or KakaoTalk may keep their profiles private. Google+ can be an issue for those with multiple Gmail or Google Apps email addresses while WeChat is still not popular outside of China. Apple’s iMessage and FaceTime are limited to iOS and OS X devices and still have issues that make the experience less pleasant.

With the rise of all these messaging apps and the eventual outcome of having them as full fledged social networks or platforms, it doesn’t seem like things are becoming easier. On the other hand, the separation of communications channels can make it more practical for people to manage their contacts as they are more likely to immediately know where to look for archives of past conversations with certain people.

These past few years, dozens of companies have been built to launch purpose-built messaging services despite the fact that general messaging apps also serve similar functions. Niches are carved, functions highlighted, features added in, all in the name of doing things differently. Of course, people happily embrace any new service but there’s seemingly little loyalty to each because it’s so easy to switch between these apps and they still serve the same basic purpose.

Ultimately, is having one messaging app more manageable than having several different ones that work in slightly different ways and used by different groups of people? All signs seem to favor people preferring to have different apps, at least for the time being. So which messaging apps do you use?

This mobile channel is brought to you by Samsung Developer Competition 2013. SDC ’13 is an app competition for Android apps that leverage Samsung’s mobile technologies. For more information please visit http://techne.dailysocial.net/sdc

McCann CEO: Older Messaging Apps Don’t Create Deep Connections

WhatsApp. Line. KakaoTalk. WeChat. Skype. BlackBerry Messenger. Path. iMessage. Facebook. These are just a few of the currently popular messaging apps. It’s inevitable that people will have to use more than one of these apps to contact different groups of people, adding to the complexity of communications, thanks to the different features each company has chosen to highlight, but the newer apps are getting more love from mobile consumers.

On CampaignAsia, CEO of McCann Worldgroup Singapore, Ben Lightfoot said, “People now want platforms which help them increase the quality of their relationships, to create deeper emotional connections with those closest to them”. McCann Worldgroup is the agency that handles Line’s campaign in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong.

Lightfoot’s comment implies that the older messaging apps do not bring out such sentiments from their users. Those apps have mostly been very task oriented and less personal which does not entice people to keep using them beyond what is absolutely necessary, whereas the new generation of apps help create that bond.

Some time ago we wondered which text messaging apps will storm the market and grab the lion’s share. The names we mentioned back then were Facebook, iMessage, Google+, WhatsApp, mig33, and Skype. How different the landscape is today. Asian messaging apps are grabbing all the headlines these days and there’s been very few, if any, innovations launched on the older, more popular services. Today’s landscape is all about mobile messaging and the Asian apps are rolling with the punches.