Messaging Business
Trends

🚀  WhatsApp officially launched its new WhatsApp Business app in select markets, including Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, the U.K. and the U.S., ahead of its planned worldwide rollout.

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✋  France’s data privacy watchdog may fine WhatsApp if it does not comply with an order to bring its sharing of user data with parent company Facebook into line with French privacy law.

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💰 David Marcus, head of Messenger at Facebook, will be joining Coinbase’s board. In addition, he admitted that Messenger has gotten to cluttered and plan to invest in massively simplifying and streamlining the app.

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💬  Instagram is testing Direct, a standalone messaging app that replaces the current inbox.

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⚒  Google today announced the beta launch of its enterprise edition of Dialogflow, its tool for building chatbots and other conversational applications.

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📱 Facebook launched Messenger Kids, an app designed for kids 6-12 to connect with their family and friends, with parental controls to ensure they do so safely.

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⚖️  Uber's use of encrypted messaging app Wickr may set legal precedents.

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🤖  Facebook shuts down robots after they invent their own language.

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📛  Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype.

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💵  Popular messaging app Telegram is set to join the blockchain craze by launching its own cryptocurrency later this year in an “initial coin offering” (ICO) that could raise as much as $500m.

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✉️  German researchers say that a flaw in the WhatsApp's group-chat feature undermines its end-to-end encryption promises. On another register, the app has set a new messaging record with 75 billion messages sent on New Year’s Eve.

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💳  Tencent gets a licence to sell funds to its 1 billion WeChat users. Traditional finance houses now being seriously challenged! In addition, WeChat will be China’s official electronic ID from Jan 2018 making physical identity cards and wallets a thing of the past.

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🖥  The Alibaba browser no one’s heard of is dethroning Google in Asia.

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