Messaging apps to eclipse Facebook's dominance in future?

Over the years, Facebook has grown massively popular among youth and has enjoyed the status of world's largest social networking site. However, new trends suggest Facebook's popularity is now being overshadowed by the instant messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Line, WeChat and Kik. The change in trend has been particularly noticed in the Asian markets.

According to a Reuters report, investors and industry insiders acknowledge the possibility that the messaging apps could eclipseFacebook's dominance over the next few years. Moreover, some messaging apps are now evolving as full-blown platforms that can support third-party apps as well games.

Also, these chatting apps provide the elements of text messaging as well as social networking. Moreover, they allow users to quickly share with their friends, without worrying about SMS plans offered by wireless carriers.

But users of these new messaging apps are still on Facebook, which hints that the impact on the social networking giant may not be immediate.

“True interactions are conversational in nature,” says Rich Miner, a partner at Google Ventures who invested in San Francisco-based MessageMe, a new entrant in the messaging market. “More people text and make phone calls than get on to social networks. If one company dominates the replacement of that traffic, then by definition that’s very big.”

The report also underlines that while social networking sites are working to incorporate message features, the new messaging apps are growing as a full-fledge social networking platforms that come with a variety of features and more opportunities for third party developers.

“The tried and true approach for a social network is first you build a network, then you build apps on your own, then you open it up to third party developers,” says Charles Hudson, a partner at early stage venture capital firm SoftTech VC.