Twitter Preparing To Launch Direct Messaging App – Report

Twitter is reportedly preparing to launch a standalone instant messaging application that would bring it into direct competition with the likes of WhatsApp and BlackBerry Messenger (BBM).

According to AllThingsD, the microblogging platform has been working on such a service for the past year and has been internally testing a setting that allows users to send and receive direct messages without following each other.

This feature received a limited rollout earlier this week, mainly for companies to respond to customer feedback, but Twitter wants to take private messaging one step further, and could release the app before its expected initial public offering (IPO) next month.

Twitter messenger

Twitter has previously had a stance of trying to make all communications public, and apparently even toyed with the idea of abandoning direct messages altogether at one stage.

However the rise of instant messaging apps, including Snapchat, has caused Twitter to re-evaluate its stance. WhatsApp is arguably the most popular such over-the-top service and it was reported earlier this year that Google was eyeing up a $1 billion takeover of the business.

WhatsApp CEO said the company’s messaging platform is ‘bigger than Twitter’, while mobile operators have also grown concerned about the popularity of the service as it erodes their traditional revenue streams.

WhatsApp is believed to have had a real impact on the use of SMS messages: The increased use of social messaging applications is estimated to have cost mobile operators $13.9 billion (£8.8bn) in lost SMS revenues in 2011.

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