Cyber Dust vs. WhatsApp: A Tale of Two Messaging Apps

Cyber Dust is an aspiring messaging app, where WhatsApp already contains a solid establishment of users. According to CNBC, WhatsApp reached one billion users in early February 2016. Being owned by Facebook could be helping their cause just a little bit. So what is the difference between the two, and what makes WhatApp so popular?

Let’s first break down what the main difference between the two is: Cyber Dust text messages disappear after 20 to 100 seconds after being viewed, and WhatsApp is a text messaging app in which users use the Internet to send messages, pictures, videos, and voice messages.

In regards to Cyber Dust, Igor Shpitalnik claims, “the app was created to reduce users’ digital footprints and take back control of personal communications.” The messages that are sent through Cyber Dust never actually reach their servers, so they are gone forever and can never be recovered. Not only is Cyber Dust a text messaging app, but you can retrieve exclusive blasts from popular news sources and celebrities. So while you are waiting from a response back from a friend, you can be reading helpful articles through the app, or catch up with your favorite celebrity.

I first heard about WhatsApp at my first university, Augusta State, where my friend from Bermuda told me to download it to be able to message him. At first I did not realize why we could not just text regularly, but then I came to realize he did not use data. WhatsApp uses the Internet to be able to send messages, that way the user does not have to pay. It is the perfect platform for users that do not want to spend a lot of money on data, and it is great for those who have family and friends overseas. Another great aspect of WhatsApp was the group message I had with all of my friends in Augusta, and being able to voice chat. In text messages you can’t tell a person’s tone, so the voice chat made it more personal.

The two apps are both useful in their own separate ways. I would recommend Cyber Dust if you typically want your messages confidential and not potentially being held liable for your words. I would recommend WhatsApp if you cannot afford to spend much money on cellular data, and if you want to have traditional text messaging with group chats, among other common features.

Secure Messages in a Hacked World

Hi, my name is Chris Strevel and I’m a blogger at Marketing Introspection where I talk about Learnist, an up and coming digital learning board that helps people connect over things that interest them. Learnist is all about sharing knowledge and engaging with one another via curated content.

Thanks to my buddy Josh Lyles, I learned about Cyber Dust recently. This app can be downloaded on Android, iPhone, or Windows phones for free. The features that separates this app from the others like GroupMe, WhatsApp, or any other messaging app is that they guarantee secure and encrypted conversations. There is also the option to send out blast posts to a network of followers and then receive private messages back.

Having encrypted conversations has become more and more important to people over the past few years because of data breaches and the increased need for online security. Not only are your “blasts” encrypted, but once anyone views your post or message, it disappears. This protects people from having their words or pictures come back to haunt them later if they say or post something that they regret later. This app has plenty of applications for marketers because it would allow businesses to be able to communicate with their followers in a fun and personalized way.

The only downside that I see about this app is that the content is not sharable or viewable after it’s been viewed once. After the post or message has been viewed, it’s deleted. Sharable content is a way to gather more followers and generate excitement on standard social media platforms, so Cyber Dust is certainly trying something different. That being said, once people realize that this exclusive content is being “blasted” it may motivate them to join and find out what is going on in the lives of their favorite actors, fashion gurus, or friends.

I am really looking forward to trying this app with friends and seeing if it catches on down the road. The idea is certainly a good one and I can see how it would be helpful for people that are concerned about their privacy.

Where Does Cyber Dust Fall on Gartner’s Hype Cycle?

Cyber Dust came into the app market with it’s biggest asset being it’s owner, Mark Cuban. The app allows users to message privately and send “blasts” to their followers for exclusive content. The messages never hit a hard drive, so when users close out of a chat conversation, their messages are gone forever. Cyber Dust took a page out of Snapchat’s book, but just how well will Cyber Dust sell? One tool to measure the app’s potential and current position is Gartner’s Hype Cycle.

What is Gartner’s Hype Cycle?

Find more about this graph and Gartner’s Hype Cycle by clicking here.

Gartner’s Hype Cycle is a graphic representation that helps break down the hype from what success is actually practical in the market. There are five key phases of a technology’s life cycle: Technology Trigger, Peak of Inflated Expectations, Trough of Disillusionment, Slope of Enlightenment, and Plateau of Productivity. Let’s see where Cyber Dust falls on this hype cycle.

Technology Trigger: A potential technology breakthrough kicks things off. Early proof-of-concept stories and media interest trigger significant publicity. Often no usable products exist and commercial viability is unproven.

I would not say Cyber Dust is in the Technology Trigger phase right now just because of Snapchat. Yes, Snapchat is primarily used for picture messaging and Cyber Dust is primarily used for regular text messaging. But, Cyber Dust is using the same selling point that Snapchat first created, which was that the pictures and messages are gone forever.

Peak of Inflated Expectations: Early publicity produces a number of success stories — often accompanied by scores of failures. Some companies take action; many do not.

This is where I believe Cyber Dust resides right now in Gartner’s Hype Cycle.

The main reason being Mark Cuban being the owner of the app. Cuban is one of America’s most famous businessman and investors. His name alone is what has drawn attention to Cyber Dust, and the app was created based off his past experiences. The app has been successful in that they have gotten popular news sources such as Forbes, Economic Times, Business Insider, Inc. Magazine, and others to collaborate with Cyber Dust. There are plentiful popular athletes, music artists, and successful businessmen and women to follow. That is the success, the failures have been getting these companies and people to constantly post to Cyber Dust.

Trough of Disillusionment: Interest wanes as experiments and implementations fail to deliver. Producers of the technology shake out or fail. Investments continue only if the surviving providers improve their products to the satisfaction of early adopters.

Slope of Enlightenment: More instances of how the technology can benefit the enterprise start to crystallize and become more widely understood. Second- and third-generation products appear from technology providers. More enterprises fund pilots; conservative companies remain cautious.

Plateau of Productivity: Mainstream adoption starts to take off. Criteria for assessing provider viability are more clearly defined. The technology’s broad market applicability and relevance are clearly paying off.

If you have not downloaded Cyber Dust, visit the Cyber Dust Twitter to see who is active on the app. Also, if you have a question for Mark Cuban, the company has tweeted on their Twitter account that he will respond there.

Private Messaging – Who Needs It?

How many times have you sent a text message, posted a tweet, or posted a Facebook status and later on regretted it? If you answered yes, you are certainly not alone. Many people will look back on messages they have sent out through text or social media and wish they would not have sent outor posted what they did.

Click the Cyber Dust logo above to visit their website!

Introducing Cyber Dust, a private messaging app where all of your messages disappear as soon as a user has viewed and closed out of the window. I found out about Cyber Dust by the founder, Mark Cuban, promoting it on Twitter. Cuban is a billionaire investor and host of the ABC hit show Shark Tank, which is viewed by thousands of entrepreneurs throughout the country, including myself.

I downloaded Cyber Dust shortly after it launched to see just how different Cuban was making this app to the competition. What hooked me to the app was when I added Mark Cuban to my “dusts” and I sent him a personal message asking for a piece of advice in entrepreneurship. He gave me a response back and told me to “keep selling and work harder.” Being able to directly contact and communicate with a billionaire investor was the coolest thing in the world for me, so I stayed on the app for a couple weeks.

The app contains two different factors for usage: dusts and blasts.

Dusts are private messages sent between you and another user or a group of users. Dusts disappear for the receive once opened and read. This is how I was able to communicate directly with Mark Cuban.

Blasts are messages sent by one person out to many others who follow them. The blast section let’s you discover users throughout the app where you can follow popular businesses, news sources, business experts, and celebrities that are blasting exclusive content. There is then a “Chatters” section where people can talk about their favorite topics, network with one another, or just simply chat.

Cyber Dust is great for people who are reaching for success because you have access to exclusive content from news sources and can directly reach out to famous, successful people. I was actually surprised to find the number of news sources that are on the nap. You would think those sources want people to revisit and share their posts that they spend a decent amount of time on.

With all of that said, who needs private messaging? Private messaging benefits two types of people: rich people and people with something to hide. Let’s first take a look at why the app was created. Cuban created to app due to lawsuits against him for old messages he had sent out. The reason Mark Cuban is such an easy target for a lawsuit is because he is a billionaire. There are less than 2,000 billionaires on the whole planet. Yes, people would like to be protected so they do not have legal action against them for text messages and social media posts. The flip side is that the people that get pressed make up a very small demographic. The second group of people are the people with something to hide. Whether they have committed a crime or cheated on their significant other, private messaging could turn out to be more troubling than useful. As a person with bad memory, I personally prefer to be able to look back on past conversations and posts to refresh my mind on the topic.

Overall, I believe Mark Cuban needs to find a way to pitch to Millennials and younger people on why Cyber Dust is significant for them. The way the app is set up has a target audience for those with an established job and entrepreneurs. I understand where Cuban comes from about the liability you have when you press send on message and posts. My question to him would be, I’m a 21 year old student who makes under $40,000 a year. What makes Cyber Dust important for someone of my standards?

 

Can Cyber Dust Compete With Snapchat?

The whole concept of Cyber Dust hinges from Snapchat. Both are communication platforms where messages and pictures disappear. Mark Cuban originally came up with the idea of Cyber Dust after the invention of Snapchat, and after he ran into legal trouble where he was being held accountable for extremely old e-mails and messages. While both apps claim that after a given amount of time that your messages disappear forever, Cuban says that is not entirely true for Snapchat. Take a listen.

In this video, Cuban states that it is a huge mistake to use other messaging channels, including Snapchat, because every time you hit send, you lose ownership of the message, yet you still maintain responsibility. Again, Snapchat claims that whatever amount of seconds you choose for a person to view your message, that message will be deleted by their server’s. The YouTube video by Business Insider with Mark Cuban revisits a time back in 2014 where hackers released a searchable database of private Snapchat photos and videos. It was after this issue, that Cuban founded Cyber Dust. He claims that Cyber Dust does not store or search any messages sent by their users.

Now, while Cuban has a solid idea with the privacy of Cyber Dust, can he really make an impact on Snapchat? According to Fortune Magazine, Snapchat users view over 7 billion videos a day on the app. This vast amount was a result of them adding the “stories” feature to the app. Between June and November of 2015, Snapchat’s video traffic increased by more than three times to 6 billion views. The last report of the amount of users on Snapchat was in May of 2015, and they had 100 million active users daily. Cyber Dust had somewhere over 500,000.

In my opinion, Cyber Dust mainly lacks due to their target audience and the fraction of users compared to Snapchat. As a Millennial, Cyber Dust does not have anything to keep me glued and addicted to the app. On Snapchat, my friends and other users are constantly taking funny pictures and sending videos all day for the most part. With the content and current users that are currently on Cyber Dust, the target audience to me would be a more professional audience. Again, Cuban built this app due to his legal trouble. Yes, people have legal trouble, but not for the reason he did because we’re all not billionaires. Snapchat is super addicting for Millennials and younger people and they are the ones that stay on apps for hours throughout every day.