Late 2017 saw a slew of articles paying tribute to AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) following the news that AOL was shutting down the venerable service. One of the earliest messaging platforms, AIM helped spawn countless instant message applications, gained widespread mindshare and helped pave the way for the current generation of messaging services and applications, including WhatsApp, Signal, WeChat, and LINE.

In fact, an article in Business Insider proclaimed that messaging apps are even bigger than social media. In such a crucial industry, it’s more important than ever to employ technology and standards that are open, robust and reliable. This is what makes Web Real-Time Communications (WebRTC) an ideal way to improve peer-to-peer (P2P) messaging.

Why WebRTC for P2P Messaging?

Messaging apps, especially in such a competitive and saturated space, need to provide the best user experience possible to beat out their rivals. In order to produce this, two major fundamentals are critical: security and scalability.

Security

With increasingly tight privacy laws, especially in the European Union, proper encryption is more important than ever for P2P messaging providers. Fortunately, encryption is one of the fundamental requirements of any application or service using WebRTC. Even more significantly, WebRTC offers true end-to-end encryption, making it possible to create extremely secure and private messaging and communication methods. For example, Signal’s secure messaging protocol is used by several apps including Skype, WhatsApp, Google Allo, and Facebook Messenger.

Scalability

Another benefit of truly peer-to-peer messaging is scalability. In an industry where an app can suddenly explode in popularity, traditional server-client messaging apps sometimes struggle to keep pace with the demand and scale of an ever-increasing user base. WebRTC, with its decentralized approach, ensures that a P2P messaging service or app is truly scalable, and relies on server assistance only when the user is unavailable/offline and the messages are stored on the server for later delivery.

Harnessing the Power of WebRTC and P2P Messaging

Slack has gained popularity in the developer and corporate world for making it easier for teams and working groups to communicate and coordinate on projects. They join an ever-growing list of platforms (Stride, Hipchat, etc) that integrate WebRTC video and audio calling to improve existing messaging services.

The acquisition of Jitsi by Atlassian and Screenhero by Slack allow users to make real-time audio calls from within their respective applications. This makes it easier for users to communicate with their team in ways that would be too complicated to handle via text messaging, all without leaving the app.

The Future of WebRTC and P2P Messaging

WebRTC and P2P messaging have revolved around human-to-human communication. But what comes next? Bots using natural language interpretation (NLI) and artificial intelligence have been taking over, whether it be for customer support or to give you the weather. For example, Zendesk and similar helpdesk apps are using bots to answer common questions with existing self-help content from the help center before registering a ticket with support. There is a place for WebRTC with bots. Even for a situation as simple as connecting a user too frustrated with the bot to an actual live human, WebRTC can simplify the process for developers.

Other WebRTC Use Cases

This post is the fourth in a series dedicated to WebRTC use cases. In this series, we explore several use cases of WebRTC. To read the first post in the series, please check it out here.

WebRTC and IoT

The second post in this series is dedicated to WebRTC and the internet of things. The internet of things device industry has expanded significantly in the past several years, and only has more room to grow. Using WebRTC with IoT devices is a natural fit, and can have a positive impact on communication between these devices. To read the second post in this series, please check it out here.

WebRTC and P2P Video Calls

The third post in this series is dedicated to WebRTC and P2P Video Calls. 66% of CXOs consider mobile video and real-time information sharing to be critical aspects of their daily communication. In this post, we explore how WebRTC is changing the video call landscape and making real-time video calls more accessible. To read the third post in this series, please check it out here.