Earlier this year IMO Messenger app made the announcement that it would cut its association with third party networks like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and AIM; which made it to receive one of the biggest changes. The app has rather focused in emulating the features of Skype like video and audio calling. For their credit, everyone was given a warning (by them) so that their chat logs could be downloaded. They then cut the access to all the outside services in the end.
According to Harik Georges, who is a former Google employee and one of the co-founders of IMO, the shift and changes has got nothing to do with immediate pressure to rake in revenue and compete. Their main objective is to have as many users as they can. Specifically, these changes come from the challenges that the developers of this company have been undergoing through while writing software that can be effectively supported by third party communication.
This problem dates back in 2014 when Skype, without any warning, started blocking IMO Messenger accessing their network. Customer thought that it was the fault of IMO, something that made the company to shoulder most of the blame. Moreover, some third party services aren’t doing in the best way they could have done when supported by IMO only. A good example is the fact that users of IMO can’t update their Google Hangout status. This makes them to appear like they are offline at all times. Facebook has also been treating third party apps in a different way, which has resulted to many messages going undelivered to the users of IMO.
Such things have been frustrating the users of IMO Messenger, although when looking into the future of this app things would appear even bleaker. For instance, messaging apps like Line, Viber, and Whatsapp doesn’t allow for an access from third party apps. With such consideration, IMO made the decision of consolidating. A decision was arrived at, that the third party route wasn’t viable at all. This has led IMO to take a route that will see it competing with some major providers like Skype and Google Hangouts.
Skype is taking the merit of having the brand name that is most popular among the three. It is best for connecting user who have got no technical knowledge, computers, and strong connections. Specifically, Skype’s emphasis is in the reduction of barriers of entry for its users. Most of the analyst have described IMO as a cross between Facebook and Google hangouts. It has not abandoned its main objective of being an instant messaging provider over different networks.
