New and digital media stories

What's next after WhatsApp: a guide to the future of messaging apps

Facebook’s $19bn deal points to the internet’s future, but from Viber’s domination to upstart Kik, WhatsApp is hardly unique

Facebook just recently closed the deal into buying whatsapp for $19 billion. It should highlight how important one of the most basic forms of digital communication – messaging – is to the internet’s future. whatsapp and other messaging surfaces is a medium used by many people all over the world. Messages on these types of services provide the fastest way for people to connect or find each other in a crowd. Messages also allow people to buy stuff in an almost criminally seamless manner.

WhatsApp’s competitors make its current revenue model look really, really sluggish.

In my opinion I think that whatsapp is a good social medium for talking and communicating with people across the globe. Despite this being a good means to use for communication, I don't think the service is worth $19 billion and I think this instant messaging app is at its peak and the only way it's going to down is downhill. There are so many other services out there that are similar that I don't think this was a smart investment for Facebook. 

A Guardian trainee considers cortados, the pace of digital change and a promise of diverse voices

Nabeelah Shabbir, freshly returned from continental Europe, opens our first instalment of monthly blogposts from the ten trainees working on the Guardian's inaugural digital journalism scheme

We are starting to see a massive change in the way people consume media and especially the traditional medium. People seem to be more interested in getting news online rather than from traditional sources as it makes it more easier for them in their day to day lives. 

The two lads who run this open-air little coffee hut are eager to make conversation with punters. I don't get to order a cortadoin London very often, and it's my chance in the day to pretend I am ordering a little coffee with milk in Spain. "It was called piccolo before," the boys explain, when I mention it. "It wasn't selling. Since we renamed itcortado it's been flying off the shelves." What? Londoners respond more to Spanish than Italian coffee names? Why am I buying expensive coffee anyway – is it because it came from something looking like a wheelbarrow, and that is a novelty? As I leave the stand, I try to remember the Twitter handle and hashtag for the coffee cart. I forget. The next day I see the name has been stamped on the cup. I follow the account, by reflex, on most social networks

People are starting to realise that in order to effectively promote and gain a much larger profit margin in this day and age, they must be willing to take their businesses and organisations online. In my opinion I think that as people spend most of their times online; whether that's socially on social networking sites or if they're purchasing things online ; this is still a wide advertising medium which can be done cheaply and effectively if done right.