Readers respond on what's got them most excited about Instant Messaging

Instant messaging has been growing at a rapid rate in India, with smartphones becoming increasingly pervasive and India having one of the cheapest data package rates in the world. Couple that with the need to always be connected and SMS costing money, a lot of people opt to just communicate via various IM clients such as WhatsApp, BBM, WeChat etc. With these apps becoming a staple feature for almost all cellphone users, we set out to find out what exactly it is that gets these users excited. 

Of the 1074 votes that were cast, 39% of the audience couldn’t contain their excitement about the new Voice Messaging feature on Whatsapp. For some reason, being able to send voice through an app on the cellphone is exciting. Turns out 39% of the people on the poll also overlooked a convenient feature built into their phones called “calling.”

It was rather interesting to see that only 23% of the responders (of the 104) were excited about BBM coming to Android. Come on people, this is the messaging client that started the trend of IM (and consequently the demise of the SMS). BBM is expected to land on Android and iOS sometime soon, with no confirmed date. Not leaving out the underdog, 6% of the pollsters thought it was exciting to see WeChat’s user-base expanding rapidly.

Lastly, a large chunk of those who voted, a hefty 32% felt that IM clients are a waste of time as they can just call and get their business taken care of. Who needs extra features when you don’t even use the IM client to begin with, right?