Do these chat services have what it takes to become the next WhatsApp?

In early September, two weeks after Mark Zuckerberg told the world that Facebook had just achieved its first billion person day, WhatsApp founder Jan Koum announced that WhatsApp had 900 million active users.

That’s 600 million more than Twitter, 500 million more than Instagram and 200 million more than Facebook’s own messenger service. Moreover, 18% of all US social media users are on Snapchat, WhatsApp’s biggest rival.

While WhatsApp and Snapchat are hundreds of millions of users in front of their competitors, an emerging second wave of chat apps promises to offer up real competition in the future. Read more...