Messengers of the future: 3 functions we are waiting for

Millions of people use instant messengers, but as full-featured applications, messengers take an unstable position. Primarily they were created to communicate as a free alternative to SMS-services from cell phone providers. The first messengers became very popular because they were free and accessible. Now they are slowly pushing out social networks. As many new messenger apps are being created, there is a trend where each one tries to surpass the others and offer something new.

Popular messengers, WeChat, Viber, Snapchat, Google Hangouts, WhatsApp, Telegram, all have interesting and unique functions. Each of them is aimed for a particular audience. But still, most of them do not have internal systems for marketing, so you have to pull users from social networks into instant messengers using advertisements in the same social networks. As a result, the audiences tend to be the same, and there is no sense of this change-over.

The IT- developers are actively looking for new ways to create and use instant messengers, for example, based on the blockchains. On the blockchains, there already exists a whole platform Ethereum for building decentralized online-services. And as for the messengers, they have convenient crypto currency transfer functions with a high level of protection.

There are some features that can surprise us in the near future.

Crowdfunding

Request and exchange money in group chat.

By the tap of your phone, you can create a request for money and all participants can pay you right inside the chat group.

Payment for an event or merchandise from the collected money in a group chat.

To do this, just select the payment method and confirm it using the TouchID. When all participants pay the fee, the screen changes its appearance.

Dating

On the chat list screen you can scroll downward and a screen with people near you will open - geolocation is taken into account. These are users who are also looking for dates.  Larger pictures will show that people are closest to you. The smaller pictures will mean that the user is further away from you.

By tappin on an interesting photo, information about a person opens on the screen: age, name, other photos. You can send likes, write a message and add a person to your contact list.

And the most futuristic innovation - Augmented reality

Today, the most promising upcoming features are virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR). Virtual reality implies a total immersion in a modeled world, augmented and mixed is the introduction of certain objects from the virtual world into the real world.

Each of these technologies has its own characteristics, but in general they are similar: they all allow you to literally overcome distances - to experience significant events and interact not only with each other, but also with the environment.

Do you remember how in Star Wars characters contacted with holographic images? 

We are almost getting there.