Highlights:
- You value both function (Direct, group, multimedia) and usability (reaction, typing indicator, read receipt, multi-platform)
- Voice is still king, followed by video chat and conference calls
- Security and privacy is very high on your minds
- Most use Telegram, second by WhatsApp
- You believe Telegram is most secure, following by Signal
Introduction
Messaging applications have become ubiquitous as an important communication tool both for our personal and professional use. Some of the most popular of these applications like WhatsApp and WeChat have more than a Billion monthly active users. With such wide popularity and usage, we at NKN wanted to know how our community is using these applications. More importantly, what features and capabilities are critical and what is missing from today’s messaging applications.
It’s also no secret that NKN has been developing our own Messaging application that we call nMobile. Your input is valuable in helping us to improve nMobile to make it the best messaging application yet. Therefore, we created a community survey to gather your input and you delivered! We had 100 responses to our survey in just 3 days and we wanted to share the detailed results with you.
#1. Which of these text based messaging features have you used in the past week? (Choose all that apply)
The top selections were: Direct Messaging (93%), Group Chat Private (72%), Push Notifications (68%), Media Files (64%), Messaging Reactions (62%), Group Chat Public (61%), Typing Indicators (60%), and Multiplatform (51%)
It’s clear that the NKN community values both direct and group chats, however, you also value realtime notifications like push notifications and read receipts in your interactions online. Also, being able to enrich the experience with multimedia files and message reactions (e.g. using emoji) helps build a more engaging experience. Finally, many of you are using the same messaging service across multiple platforms not only on mobile phones but also on computers.
#2: Which of these messaging features have you used in the past week? (Choose all that apply)
Top Selections were: Voice Call (84%), Video Call (71%), and Multiparty conference call (52%)
Communication is certainly the number one priority when using messaging applications, and voice call is clearly still the most important for you. And a majority of the NKN community are choosing live features such as video calls and multiparty conference calls to make that happen.
#3: How important is security in deciding which messaging application to use? 
Top Selections was: “I don’t want any of my data to be stored or accessed by the application developer”
Security and data privacy are top priorities for the NKN community when using messaging applications. That is a loud and convincing signal for us to continue to improve and differentiate NKN’s nMobile as the most secure messaging app.
In a recent NKN blog post, we analyzed the security features of WhatsApp and provided best practice:
https://blog.nkn.org/is-whatsapp-safe-heres-what-you-need-to-know-nkn/
#4: I have used these applications within the past week. (Choose all that apply)
Top Selections were: Telegram (88%) and WhatsApp (72%)
Telegram and WhatsApp are the clear favorites when it comes to messaging applications. However, it is interesting that Telegram is being used by more of our community than WhatsApp since sources like Statista ranks usage of Telegram a distant 5th place behind apps like WhatsApp, WeChat, and others. We estimate this is due to the crypto community’s preference for Telegram over WhatsApp, especially due to Telegram’s massive public group functionality.
#5: In your impression, which of the following messaging apps is the most secure?
Top Selections was: Telegram (56%), while Signal comes in second at 28%.
Telegram was shown to be the most secure messaging platform as ranked by our community. This is no surprise since Telegram does offer end-to-end encryption, private keys that are not accessible by the service, two step verification open source, and more.
NKN recently published a blog evaluating and comparing several popular messaging apps for their security and privacy:
https://blog.nkn.org/encrypted-messaging-what-is-it-and-why-you-should-use-it-nkn/
Thank you!
Thanks again for your valuable input! We hear you and will be incorporating your input and suggestions into our nMobile application to make it the most secure messaging application for our community and general public.
To thank you for your participation, we will be announcing the three winners of our lucky draw soon. Stay Tuned on Twitter/Telegram for the announcement and if you win, check your inbox for an email from us!