Messaging apps influence our lives big time. Most of us are dependent on them for communicating for business and personal use cases. I have keen interest in this space and I like analyzing usages pattern of people participating in messaging apps.
In this series of posts I want to share some of my thought and observation in user behavior, limitations and opportunities.
PS: words marked with bold capture some important aspect of my observation which I will write more on future posts.
Background
I am part of a very active whatsapp group where a lot of active debates on a limited set of topic. Topics are mostly religious, political but some time just gossips. This particular post is about some events happened in that group in last few weeks.
What went wrong?
Few days back during a particular debate , I realize that participants suddenly started putting each other in uncomfortable situation to win the argument. They started passing content which other side wont enjoy (and feel uncomfortable while consuming).
This pissed off many participants on each side . Some left the group, other went silent. Slowly it turned in to a hushed group. I observed that traffic in the group went down by 60–80%. Otherwise very active group was getting occasional fwds and photo shares. I felt likeI was sitting in a car which was going 80 mph and suddenly slowed down to 25 mph.
What I realize ?
On big app’s (like whatsapp) scale such a minuscule drop in a traffic is perhaps not a big cause of worry. It can be an issue which they might like to address, but its not something which can damage product’s success.
But if its a new app which is trying to get foothold in crowded messaging space.. these drops can be killing. If they want to get traction, they need to rely on engagement. More people engage on them.. more popular app become.
Why new apps should worry about this ?
But if a group chat come across scenario I explained.. they can not control it. Traffic will go down.. and founders will be worried.
Technology can bring people together and make then talk, but it can not solve the problems related with people trying to outdo each other by uncomfortable content.
Ot can it be solved by tech ?
I think yes!
I think yes. It is an area in which I have keen interest and I think technology can play very significant role. But it needs technology infrastructure build for this need. I have some thoughts on solution, but for this post I wanted to high light the problem.
Thanks for reading!
