Welcome to the 10th issue of our newsletter. April will be remembered by the renaissance of the chat bubble, the rise of the bots, and the end-to-end encryption for the masses. You can subscribe to the XMPP Radar newsletter and receive it in your inbox at the end of each month. Here are the links we found interesting in April:
ejabberd 16.04 released
This new ejabberd release includes bugfixes, and also two major source code refactorings: one for ejabberd commands, and other for database specific code in many modules. This version is doing lot of under the scene changes to prepare further improvements and refactoring.
ejabberd ARM64 support
ARMv8 represents a fundamental change to the ARM architecture. It adds a 64-bit architecture instruction set, named “AArch64”, or ARM64. ProcessOne has been playing with ARM64 ejabberd servers for few months already, but with recent availability of many low cost 64-bit ARM development platforms, we decided to announce official ARM64 support.
Messenger and WhatsApp process 60 billion messages a day, three times more than SMS
Facebook’s Messenger app was the company’s fastest-growing platform in 2015, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said at the annual F8 developers conference, and is the second most popular app on iOS globally, just behind Facebook.
WhatsApp switched on encryption for a billion people
For most of the past six weeks, the biggest story out of Silicon Valley was Apple’s battle with the FBI over a federal order to unlock the iPhone of a mass shooter. The company’s refusal touched off a searing debate over privacy and security in the digital age.
Messaging app Kik launched a bot store
Messaging app Kik announced a new bot store to urge users and developers alike to embrace the trendy new form of artificial intelligence-powered software. The company has offered bots in its chat app in the past, which you can converse with over text and use to perform basic web tasks.
Use instant messaging to provide top-notch customer experience
Instant messaging is quickly becoming one of the most important channels for brands to communicate with consumers. The tourism industry is following suit, using it as a customer relationship management tool.
Sorry to burst your (chat) bubble
Conversational software, limited to the conventional chat bubble-based SMS form-factor, isn’t the future. It’s the past. Or perhaps it’s the HTML 3.2 to today’s HTML 5, the latter leading to an explosion in performant, designer-driven apps and experiences. But the bubble is just the beginning, not the end.
