iMessages for iOS 10 adds third-party iMessage Apps, rich media, “emojification” of words, bubble and full screen effects, and more
Russell Brandom / The Verge :
Context & Ripple Effects
iMessage has been drifting toward this for a year: Apple's iOS 9 work around Force Touch already hinted at deeper Messages integration, and today's iOS 10 announcement makes it explicit by turning Messages into a platform — third-party iMessage Apps, rich media, word 'emojification,' and bubble and full-screen effects. It lands alongside Apple's broader developer opening in the same release, including an API for VoIP apps plus voicemail transcription and spam detection.
The competitive frame is WhatsApp: within months of this launch, WhatsApp shipped its own emojis plus drawing on photos and videos, and by 2021 reporting had Apple working toward making iMessage more like a social network to compete head-on.
First-order effects
- Developers gain a new distribution surface inside Messages — iMessage Apps run where conversations happen, so stickers, media, and mini-experiences reach users without leaving the thread.
- Users get expressive tooling immediately: bubble and full-screen effects, tap-to-emojify words, and richer media change what a default message can look like.
Second-order effects
- WhatsApp is forced to match feature-for-feature on expressiveness, as its emoji-and-drawing update shows — the battleground shifts from reliability and cost to creative engagement inside chats.
- Third-party developers must now decide whether to build for a walled-garden app surface inside iMessage versus cross-platform messaging SDKs, splitting their investment.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, messaging apps stop being pipes and become platforms competing with social networks for session time — exactly the direction Apple's later push to make iMessage more like a social network points toward.
- Default messaging clients become strategic lock-in assets: whoever owns the richest in-thread experience raises switching costs between ecosystems.
The trend: Messaging apps are evolving from plain-text utilities into extensible platforms that compete with social networks for user engagement.