Growth is about finding new channels.
Messaging in general as a channel is young and fresh – and there will be a goldrush very, very soon. Services like Slack and Facebook Messenger are following the lead set by the asian chat successes like Line and WeChat in turning chat into a platform that allows access to services over the top – services like payments, shopping, games and more.
You can now order an Uber by typing a command in Slack
, or you can order a pizza within the WeChat app in China.
What happens when chat becomes our interface with the world?
Before the point-and-click windows-based GUI evolved, the earliest PCs running DOS or similar operating systems had a ‘chat-style’ interface – a command line.
Messaging could be the next Operating System
, and the starting point could be, once again, the command line. The difference is this time the abstraction level is much, much higher. Instead of a command like cd /uber which would change your working directory to the one called ‘uber’, now a command like /uber ride can literally order you an Uber. What’s old is new again.
There is a big possibility chat will be the next user interface. Chat – or personal assistants – or more likely a combination of both – will replace the apps grid as the next major UI paradigm. The chat window is always open. Yes, you use it to talk to your colleagues or friends – but it is already replacing email, and will piece-by-pice replace everything else around it. It’s so much easier to order an uber by typing “/uber ride” into the chat window that’s already open, than pulling your phone out, unlocking it, opening an app, etc.
(As a fun thought experiment: What comes next? What does the next part of the cycle look like? What does a GUI for chat look like?)