Getting acquainted with social networks and apps: WhatsApp-ening with mobile instant messaging?

The use of mobile messaging (MM) or mobile instant messaging has grown in the past few years at astonishing rates.

This growth has prompted data gatherers and trend forecasters to look at the use of MM apps in different ways than in the past.

In a 2015 survey, The Pew Research Center asked about the use of MM apps separately from cell phone texting for the first time (Duggan, 2015).

Digital marketing site eMarketer.com published their first ever worldwide forecast for MM in 2015. This forecast report shows 1.4 billion current users of MM apps or 5 per cent of smartphone users accessing an MM app at least once a month. This is a 31.6 per cent increase from the previous year. The forecast predicts that by 2018, there will be two billion users, representing 80 per cent of smartphone users (eMarketer.com, 2015).