Truecaller is fairly popular in its own right, as a way for people to flag and block spam callers and the like, but the company is now trying to broaden its uses.
Truecaller is now making a play for WhatsApp¡¯s throne, with an instant messaging feature of its own in-app.
So, you think Truecaller launching a messenger tool isn¡¯t necessarily the start of a rivalry? Well just listen to this quote from their announcement. ¡°With the aim to make communication safer and to prevent fake news from circulating, the IM platform will allow users to report links, ensuring that fake news is not circulated unchecked by users.¡± Yeah, burns don¡¯t get any sicker than that.?
So, just like its crowd-sourced robocall flagging system, Truecaller¡¯s messenger will supposedly focus on letting users mark fake news links for others on the platform. I suppose it doesn¡¯t hurt them that you might just end up switching to Truecaller entirely if you like the app, especially given the recent problems plaguing WhatsApp.
Truecaller Chat will supposedly integrate its own chat with your SMS as well. According to TechCrunch, it¡¯ll work similar to iMessage from Apple. Messages sent between users on the app will be free, but those sent to non-users (which will be sent over SMS from within the app) will obviously be according to your telecom plan.?
Truecaller Chat reportedly won¡¯t stop at just having users flag fake news though, the company says it also plans to eventually implement a machine learning algorithm. This will aggregate and analyse the reports generated by users to anticipate dangerous misinformative viral trends.