New investor Foundation Capital led the round bringing with on board Twitter veteran Anamitra Banerji. Kik is evolving from a texting clone to an HTML5 app platform, which has helped drive big growth in recent months. Read more »
Why would Google be interested in WhatsApp when it already has a bevy of peer-to-peer messaging and communications apps at its disposal? For the same reason Facebook bought Instagram. Read more »
The mobile-messaging value chain is changing as OTT players upend mobile operators’ SMS business. There will be 27.7 trillion messages by 2016, and most of the growth in traffic will come from IP-based services. Successful carriers will use this new technology to extend reliability and scalability. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Facebook will soon allow anyone to sign up for its Facebook Messenger App with just a name and a phone number instead of requiring users to have a Facebook account. The roll out begins on Android in select countries before going international and iOS soon. Read more »
It seemed like a no-brainer when Apple first unveiled iMessage for iOS devices: Why not build it into OS X, too? Well, turns out we may soon see iMessage work across nearly all Apple hardware, if new code discovered in Lion’s iChat is any indication. Read more »
Carriers are struggling to address the gap between mobile data usage and revenues even as their networks approach capacity. Here’s how they can innovate to better monetize in the era of the ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Pinger, a San Jose, Calif.-based startup that initially dealt in web-based voice messaging, has launched a free service for sending texts over a web browser. The new feature, dubbed Textfree Web, could well bridge the gap between traditional SMS and the quickly growing mobile messaging market. Read more »
The mobile messaging space, already hot with a number of start-ups on a roll and last week’s purchase of Beluga by Facebook, got a little hotter today with news that Kik has raised $8 million from Union Square Ventures, RRE Ventures and Spark Capital. Read more »
