Venture capitalist Fred Wilson believes “the social media phase of the internet ended” this year. He says messaging apps have replaced social media apps, where families rely on apps like WhatsApp to communicate with each other instead of Facebook.
Data seems to support this idea: Based on the various messaging and social networks charted for us by BI Intelligence, messaging apps added users faster than the social networks over the last two years, and will probably eclipse social networks by early 2015. That’s great news for Facebook, which owns two of the most popular messaging apps right now, including Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, as well as two of the biggest social networks, Facebook and Instagram.