Surprise, Telefonica launches globally an OTT all-in-one communication app !

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Almost a year ago, in June 2011, I published a post titled “Group messaging the next big thing to invest in and deploy“, I was talking about “2011 is the year of group texting” : $35M invested in startups (GroupMe, TextPlus, Kik and Yobongo) at least, two internet giants, Facebook and Skype, bought respectively Beluga and GroupMe, and above all Apple and Samsung, the two major leaders in the smartphone industry launched their own messaging over IP service : iMessage and ChatOn. Continue reading →

New Facebook Messenger “Seen by X” indicator : Confidence vs. Privacy ?

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Interesting the new Facebook move in favour of displaying whether or not you’ve seen the incoming message wihtin Facebook Messenger… Facebook Messenger is following Blackberry Messenger, BBM, in the disclosure of personal information with its well-known indicator “Message has been read”. I remind you that BBM is displaying 3 status : “Sent” (from app) , “Delivered” (to app) and “Read” (by the app… thus the user).

Remember the “old time” of Instant Messaging – I wouldn’t say this because I’m still using and selling it – we were talking about “Available”, “Not available”, “Away”, “Do not disturb”. After using these online status presence, we asked all IM users to type by themselves their own custom status message and ended up by proposing to hide this status presence and status message. Why ? Simple because, by selecting theses statuses, I was revealing some privacy info and moreover I was spending too much time to parameter an info that ended not to be really crucial to my receivers. That was the end of the use of online status presence and status message in favour of hidding everything… Too long, too complex!

Today the sole important information that needs to be disclosed to the receiver(s) is “Sent and Delievred”. The rest belongs to the category of personal info I do not really want to disclose. At ProcessOne, we’ve developed another way of showing indicators within our messaging over IP service, TextOne : only when a message is not delivered or a message delivery has not been confirmed, the mobile app shows a red or blue icon respectively.

Amazing no that the VentureBeat is writing “Sure, you may sacrifice a little privacy in favor of better conversations, but the exchanges are with people you presumably like, so maybe more information is better”. Guess what I’m messaging with other people than my close friends, my family… I’m messaging with my clients even sometimes my prospects (that would like to test our TextOne messaging service). So I really don’t want to share that I read or even seen his/her message… but it’s not the case with my peers and friends but not Facebook friends (some of them I do not even know who they are!).

Like other privacy settings, location for instance, you would be able to customize this “Seen by X” in Facebook Messenger. Otherwise, you would chat with a bunch of people known or not, and without knowing it, you would be disclosing some kind of interest by revealing that you’re reading and seeing messages.

What do you think ? What is your standpoint on this privacy-disclosing feature ?

http://venturebeat.com
In an effort to eradicate some of the challenges associated with text-based communication, Facebook has today updated the iOS and Android versions of Messenger, the social network’s cross-platform messaging-only app.
Version [...]
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Credits: Facebook Messenger by Dekuwa

TextOne Android 1.5.3

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TextOne Android 1.5.3 is out, immediately available on the Android Market!

We have been working on improvements on TextOne Android: these are all small improvements, but overall, this version 1.5.3 is a solid one.

You know of course that TextOne Android 1.5 has gained the photo feature: you can send and receive photos, whether you take a picture from TextOne, or pick one in your gallery. You can also view all the photos of a conversation in a specific gallery. This is one of the most favorite features of our users!

Continue reading →

Is iMessage evil ?

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On the 6th June 2011, Steve Jobs introduced iMessage to the world.

iMessage is a simple messaging platform which offers the following features:

  • Simple conversation that is simpler than instant messaging but more advanced than SMS.
  • Group messaging: you can have many contacts in a single conversation.
  • Multimedia support: ability to send pictures and other media.
  • Notification of message status: you can see the current status of each message.

It just so happens that TextOne mobile client has the same features. This has been available since early 2010 for iPhone and Android and will soon be obtainable for WebOS and Blackberry.

To be frank, simple messaging is a very competitive field, with tens of competing tools, such as Whatsapp, Beluga, Groupme, Kik, etc.

The simple messaging approach was first launched by BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), another closed system that Apple would like to compete with.

Apple decided to take this feature and integrate it into the phone. This is their right as platform owner, and I agree with the view of Fred Wilson: “You have to expect platform owners to work against you” (GigaOM).

As stated by Mark Mulligan in a Financial Times article: “Third-party developers can become a free R&D resource from Apple”.

We know the rule and we accept that when we build a solution for Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Google platform, they have total control on the platform and can even decide to compete with you.

However, speaking of TextOne, we try to reuse our open background to do good. We have features that no one else has and that will make a difference in the long run.

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Sea Beyond 2011 Talk 1: Mickaël Rémond on ProcessOne and TextOne protocol

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Mickaël Rémond speaks about a few of ProcessOne focus for 2011 and presents TextOne Protocol.

Mickaël Rémond, ProcessOne’s CEO, explains at Sea Beyond what you can expect soon from ProcessOne on a few XMPP related topics.

He then introduces TextOne Protocol, XMPP related optimisation for mobile usage.

Enjoy the presentation here:

You can see the slides here:

You can watch Sea Beyond video summary to get an overview of the full event.

TextOne by example (part 3): Facebook friend search and federation

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TextOne integrates well with Facebook, in a non-intrusive way.

We know that many of our users have already a good deal of friends in different places. We use the address book on the phone to simplify chat and discovery of contact using email (see TextOne by example Part 2: email fedearation). In two words, TextOne federates with email, thus you can chat with email users.

However, many of you also have a large network of friends on Facebook. We deal with that situation in two ways: Facebook application and Facebook messaging federation (email).

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TextOne by example (part 2): email federation

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You might like it or not but the largest messaging community in the world is email. It is almost instant. Everyone has an email address. If you look at your address book, you will see lots of email addresses already.

Email has drawbacks but email is both a widespread communication endpoint (everyone has an email address on the internet) and a widespread identity.

TextOne make use of both.

Continue reading →