The Russian messenger market has significantly revived. In August alone, Wildberries, Blink, and Looky presented or announced their projects. Moreover, each enters the messaging space with its own audience and an already established ecosystem.
Wildberries is betting on WB Chat. The service has already passed internal testing and is available in beta mode via WB ID. The main advantage here is obvious: the company has a huge customer base who do not need to create a separate account from scratch.
Blink came from a different direction. Initially, the application was created as a Russian alternative to Zenly – a service that allowed users to see friends on a map. Now Blink is transforming into a more complete platform for communication. From January to August, its monthly audience grew by 31% and reached 10 million people.
Looky previously developed as a Russian alternative to Instagram, and now also wants to enter the messenger market. Currently, the service claims about 7 million users and expects to increase its active audience by another 15–20% by the end of the year.
But the main question is not who will launch another chat, but who will make people actually use it. According to Mediascope data for June, the monthly reach of "Max" was 86.2 million people, Telegram – 75.7 million. Experts note: a single installation is not enough – you need to convince a person to transfer their contacts, correspondence, and calls to the new service.
Therefore, the struggle here is no longer so much for downloads as for habit. Wildberries offers a chat within a familiar ecosystem, Blink tries to turn a social map of friends into communication, and Looky aims to expand a social network into a full-fledged messenger. The winner will be the one who manages to become a place where the user truly returns every day.