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Messaging Apps Fragmentation

Users debate the overabundance of competing messaging apps like Telegram, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, iMessage, and new ones from Google, expressing frustration with fragmentation and preferring unified or specific alternatives.

📉 Falling 0.3x Other
5,927
Comments
20
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#9571
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

2007
5
2008
25
2009
46
2010
76
2011
124
2012
129
2013
195
2014
330
2015
286
2016
564
2017
500
2018
448
2019
379
2020
427
2021
640
2022
570
2023
554
2024
336
2025
279
2026
14

Top Contributors

PaulHoule (14) kevincox (14) lxgr (12) amelius (12) paulie_a (12)

Keywords

e.g FB XMPP IM WhatsApp PLEASE MSN MVP SMS messenger messaging chat app apps whatsapp sms discord imessage facebook

Sample Comments

zuppy • Jun 17, 2025 • View on HN

these guys don’t use their own product. everyone i know uses only 2 things: direct message and group chats.everything else is just noise.

nestorp • Sep 16, 2015 • View on HN

Because they work on the shittest mesaaging app...use Telegram!

yalogin • Mar 2, 2023 • View on HN

This is 10yrs late. Messages is not a texting clone anymore. I don't see why this makes sense.

bukhtarkhan • Mar 19, 2021 • View on HN

this is exactly why we need 1000000 different messaging apps lol

ruler88 • Jun 28, 2016 • View on HN

FB's messenger - everyone should be using this instead of SMS

rubber_duck • Jul 25, 2019 • View on HN

Also Telegram (unless I missed the type of apps you're comparing ? I really only use messaging aspect of all of these)

draw_down • Sep 21, 2016 • View on HN

Why do they need another-nother-nother messaging app?!

i386 • Oct 23, 2015 • View on HN

handled by the Messenger app these days. Not sure why they would need it in the Facebook app

randyrand • Oct 29, 2018 • View on HN

I was talking about the messenger texting app

fareesh • Aug 3, 2017 • View on HN

Does Google really need another messaging app?