How to make a messenger app development process insights by Alexey Porubay

2/1/2018

How to Make a Messenger App: Development Process Insights

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HOW TO MAKE A MESSENGER APP: DEVELOPMENT PROCESS INSIGHTS 17 march 2016

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Messenger apps have changed our lives at some point. They gave us an opportunity to chat instantly with our friends and relatives for no charge. Nowadays, most people prefer sending a message in seconds instead of calling to tell a few words. That's why many enthusiasts strive to create a messenger app of their own and fail because of the colossal competition in this niche.

Contents Should you create a messaging app?

In this article, we will get through the best messenger features that users expect to see in a modern chat app, as well as the basics of instant messaging app development.

Should you create a messaging app? If you want to learn how to make a chat app successful, you should ﬁrst understand how and why people use them. Softwareadvice research shows that people choose live chats because they save their time, make the conversation convenient, provide the record of things discussed, and go easy for multitasking. Let's take a look at some statistics connected with how people use messengers.

Basic functionality Additional options Trendy messenger app features How to earn on chat app development?

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According to On Device Research, users from diﬀerent parts of the world have at least two installed messenger apps on their smartphones.

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Why to make messenger app: They are popular all over the world (Source: On Device Research)

The authoritative resource Statista claims that 55% of UK users reach their phones several times a day to send or receive a text message and this tendency seems to be the same in other countries. There are hundreds of messenger apps on the market and the most popular of them managed to get ahead of social networks in the number of active monthly users. Even so, there is still enough space for new players that will bring to messengers new features. The best way to do so is to carefully consider the world's most popular messengers. https://www.cleveroad.com/blog/how-to-make-a-messenger-app-development-process-insights

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How to Make a Messenger App: Development Process Insights

How to make messenger successful: Analyze the biggest players on the market (Source: Statista)

Messaging app development: Basic functionality Enough statistics, let's get to the practice and consider how to make a messaging app including its basic and additional functionality.

Login Answering the question how to create a chat application, it's better to start with the very beginning -login. The authorization in messenger apps can be done in diﬀerent ways: phone number, email, social media. As a rule, the app asks users to let it accesses their contacts and identiﬁes which ones already have the app installed. However, some messengers have other schemes.

Create chat app: Easy to register in the most popular messengers

Authorization can be implemented with the help of open authorization protocol, like OAuth, or direct interaction via the client-server API. During chat application development, the usage of these protocols is necessary if you want to provide users with the ability to log in with an existing account in social media or other sources. If registration occurs by entering a phone number, it's usually required to implement a mechanism used for interacting between the client side of the application and the mobile operating system in order the client side could read the confirmation SMS sent by the server side in response to the client's request to register. In case you need to create a messenger app where users register without the phone number or third party account, it is implemented by means of direct interaction between client and server sides (clientserver API). The app server simply creates another entry in its database when the user fills in appropriate fields and confirms the request by pressing the appropriate button.

Adding contacts It's quite simple in case with registration via the phone number. Actually, users don't have to do anything as the application adds contacts automatically. You can create chat app that will scan all the contacts in the contact book on a smartphone. Afterwards, it sends them to the app server. In turn, a special mechanism on the server checks whether such records already exist in the app database. If so, a user sees that the particular contacts do have the app installed.

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How to Make a Messenger App: Development Process Insights

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If the registration does not imply adding a phone number and cannot make phone calls or send SMS, it's not necessary to access the phone's contact book. The contact list can be enriched by means of searching particular users when entering appropriate parameters (e.g. app login, email). Among a variety of live chat features many developers allow its users to invite their friends to join the messenger.

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Create messenger app: Invitation feature in Telegram

Instant messages In chat app development, this feature can be implemented in several ways. The main diﬀerence between them lies in the data transmission method. In the ﬁrst case, the messages are passed through the server, in the second -- from user-to-user.

Method #1

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If apply the ﬁrst method for chat app development, the messages will be stored on a server and the communication between users and a server will go via HTTPS protocol with SSL cryptography. In order to implement messages exchange in a real-time mode, the polling interval to access the server should be reduced to the minimum, e.g. 1 or 2 seconds. This method may include or not include additional cryptography (when a message from the server goes to the recipient in an encrypted form as well).

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Create chat application: Scheme of data transferring

Method #2

The second method of chat organizing implies that messages aren't stored on the server. The only authentication is done by the central server. Further, messages (encrypted using some asymmetric cryptography algorithm, which is the same as "public-key cryptography") go to their recipients through the mesh network of devices used by other application users.

Make a chat app: Scheme of passing messages without server involvement

If you want to create a messaging app with the video chat, it's necessary to select video and audio codecs that'll contribute to good quality of video even at the minimum ﬂow (Internet speed). The quality of video and audio should be able to change as the call goes in case the Internet quality falls down. You should also think of the way the video is going to be transferred. It can be done either via the server or from user to user. The second variant could be better as you will not have to overload the server.

Files sharing Chat application development with file sharing involves using specific APIs and passing data to the server with the help of SOAP or RESTful APIs. This feature should cover both sending existed files by means of downloading them from the gallery and taking photos or videos from app to furtherly send them to the recipient.

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Make a messenger app: File sharing feature on Telegram

Detecting location It can be implemented by means of Location services (e.g. classes of the android.location package -for Android, CLLocationManager Class -- for iOS).

Make a messaging app: Location detection feature on Telegram

Messaging app development: Additional options Along with basic functionality, you may want to implement additional options. Let's overview some of them in a nutshell.

Group video How to create a messenger app with group video chat? You should select codecs the same way as for video chat. Also, you have to think how to gather the video/audio streams and distribute them to each participant. Note that each of X chat participants gives Y bytes a second. In case the server gives video/audio streams for each participant from each participant, it'll quickly go down (more speciﬁcally, its channel). Also, the participants' Internet traﬃc won't be enough to maintain this task (they will need Y* (X-1) takeup speed and Y speed of transmission).

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Live chat features: Group video calls on Facebook Messenger https://www.cleveroad.com/blog/how-to-make-a-messenger-app-development-process-insights

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Sending SMS The ability to send SMS through messengers is in-demand nowadays. Usually, it goes for the extra payment.

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You and your team of iOS or Android developers can use services like Twilio or Clickatell to implement this feature.

Public chats They encourage users to discuss certain topics like books, movies, food etc. This feature implies that any user can join such kind of chat and start communicating with people interested in the same subject. The technique of development isn't complex. You should simply gather the messages and send them to all the participants of the chat.

Trendy messenger app features We've already considered some basic and additional features. It's time to pay some attention to the ones that are becoming popular and likely to shape mobile chat application development for the next few years.

Focus on multi ple platforms The ability to use applications on diﬀerent operating systems oﬀers ample opportunities to attract new customers. If you want to create instant messaging app, you should think not only about its version for iOS and Android but also cover the web. All popular messengers including Telegram, Viber, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger already have a web version.

Encryption According to the latest surveys, about 62% citizens of the U.S. are worried about the probability to be hacked. That's why chat application development will demand more focus on Internet security and it tends to become a separate feature for apps. For example, among other Telegram chat app features, it has two types of encryption -- Cloud Messages and Secret Chats. The ﬁrst one is kind of standard encryption, so messages can be seen on any device with installed app. The second one implies that messages can be deciphered only with the help of your phone and the phone of your friend. In addition, there are some additional limitations like the ban on forwarding messages to other people.

Self-destructing messages I suppose that the purpose of this feature is clearly understood from its name. The practice of Snapchat shows that messages and multimedia that destroy themselves through some time are quite popular. If to make a chat application with such feature, it'll give your users the feeling of privacy. For example, Wickr app makes the recovery of self-destroyed messages impossible even with the help of specialized software and prohibits taking screenshots of conversation.

Cloud synchronization This feature allows synchronizing the chat stories, as well as the attached media. Many companies like Viber and partially WhatsApp (which provide an option for syncing only through Google Drive or iCloud) ignore this feature. So, if you want to make a messaging app you better pay your attention to it since it's in demand.

How to earn on chat app development? Of course, if you create your own messenger app, you should think through how to cover costs that were spent on its development and maintaining. The question is which monetization model to choose? For instance, WhatsApp initially used the subscription model, so users paid $0,99 annually. However, the same as the paid app model that may work only in case the app has a large user base. If it's new -it'll be hard to compete with dozens of free popular messengers. Underneath we've listed the most popular ways of monetization for messengers:

The main thing is not to overdo with ads. Your customers should feel comfortable when using the application. The ad shouldn't take all their attention.

Setting up in-app purchases

You can make a proﬁt by providing users with the ability to buy extra content like emoticons, stickers, themes, games, etc.

Subscri ption

You can add paid subscription with the help of which users could access premium options like calling, sending SMS to phone numbers, turning oﬀ ads, etc.

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How to create a messaging app: Monetization model

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