We all heard the rumours that Whatsapp soon will start to use its app as an advertising platform for businesses. Furthermore, we have all been confronted by the lack of privacy which comes with the use of social media. Suggestions have been made that due the encryption of our messages in the Whatsapp software our privacy might be gone. The encryption of the messages sent via Whatsapp are vulnerable to session hijacking. With a large sum of the total communication (37%) done with the messaging system Whatsapp this issue, among others, might decrease the usage of this software (Katescomment, 2016). (Sanchez, 2013)
What should happen would a replacement for the current communicating software arise? Tomorrow, the 20th of September, Google will introduce a messaging app, Allo.
About Allo
The messaging app can be described as pretty similar to Whatsapp; the software is free and available for android, Iphone and Windows phone. The main difference is that the new software will feature a Google assistant. The assistant is a new conversational interface to get information from google whilst using the messaging app to make the conversation more engaging.
Although the chat app is fairly new and limited operational knowledge is known within the social media market, the expectations are high. The main barricade to a successful adaption of the new software is the messaging platforms which have already achieved a billion-user scale. The dissatisfaction the users of Whatsapp currently have might be a window of opportunity for a new communicating app such as Allo. (Bohn, 2016)
So the question arisen in the article is will Allo compete with Whatsapp or will the community of more than half a million users be enough to keep costumers from other chat apps with more features like Allo. Could the improved communication software Allo replace the current market competitor.
https://www.katescomment.com/can-we-trust-whatsapps-privacy/http://www.seguridadofensiva.com/2013/11/presenting-defeating-whatsapps-lack-of-privacy-at-blackhat-sao-paulo.htmlhttp://www.theverge.com/2016/5/18/11699122/google-allo-messaging-app-announced-io-2016
To me it seems like Google wants to take its share in every part of your life. In the last couple of weeks Google has introduced some new products and applications which can all connect and talk with each other. This would mean that by using one or more of those products/applications, Google would soon now almost everything about you. Besides that, Allo seems to fail end-to-end encryptions, which should secure the app from hackers and Feds according to privacy advocates (Hackett, 2016). So my guess is that people would still use Whatsapp as their prime messenger application.
With its new application Allo, Google seems to combine the benefits of other big instant messaging applications, such as Whatsapp, Telegram and WeChat. The application is easy to use (such as Whatsapp), enables secret messaging (such as Telegram), and is very intelligent (such as WeChat). Google seems to have found a perfect application.
According to Google, collecting data is essential to make Allo more intelligent (nos.com, 2016). The fact that Allo only gets this intelligent by collecting data from its users is a big downside. After having used Allo for a while, I must say that the application is quite intelligent, indeed. The assistant even makes jokes sometimes. However, as a Whatsapp user, for now I don’t feel the need to use Allo. The Google assistant often gives suggestions based on reviews on Google, which only makes me think that advertisers could start using Allo as a method to let the assistant show the advertisements as possible suggestions when a certain question is being asked by the user.
Dear Tosca, thank you for your interesting post!
The main question I think is: are users willing to pay the switching costs of using Allo instead of Whatsapp? In order to answer this question, it is important for Google to examine how high these switching costs are (Lee, 2001). Google released an application that provides users needs on multiple levels. The ability of using one app instead of a range of different apps, is a big advantage Google creates. This advantage might lead to lower switching costs for customers, because for them these benefits outweigh the costs of acquire this application. On the other hand, as you mention above, Whatsapp has a large market share and therefore a large number of users. The goal for Google is to attract this entire group. It will be very hard to convince every single customer to switch to another app, because many people are used to Whatsapp and do not have any reason to search for another app that fulfils their needs. However, you also mention the plans of Whatsapp to use the app as an advertising platform for businesses. This feature might convince customers of thinking about using another app for their day to day communication. One of the main topics people worry about these days is their privacy. Google should try to develop an application in which privacy isn’t an issue and customers feel safe and free to do whatever they want without other people knowing it. If Google really wants to make this application a great success, it has to come with a great marketing plan to target the large group of Whatsapp users and convince them about the benefits of Allo.
Lee, J., Lee, J., Feick, L. (2001), ‘The Impact of Switching Costs on the Customer Satisfaction-loyalty link: Mobile Phone Service in France’, Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 15, Iss. 1, pp. 35-48
Hi Tosca!
Thanks for your blog post. WhatsApp has made users dissatisfied with a number of matters in the past being the application not sending messages, the encryption, the linking to Facebook, … When WhatsApp first started dysfunctioning a while back (I think maybe two years ago?), word went around to start using Telegram, a similar messenger application. Although Telegram was faster and more secure than WhatsApp, the hype quickly faded and many returned to using WhatsApp once the application was less buggy. In my opinion, I believe that the large number of individuals using the application is what convinces users to join and stay part of the WhatsApp community. Additionally, it’s more practical to use only one application to talk to the majority of your contacts, than to have to alter between four messenger applications. Unless a large portion of users decide to quit WhatsApp and switch to a ‘better’ messenger service, I do not see Allo replacing WhatsApp in the near future.