With the billions of messages sent each year it is tough to come to the conclusion that messaging is broken but it is. If I send an SMS from a cell phone for example it typically goes to another cell phone. Lets say I am on a PC and want to communicate via SMS – I can use an email gateway but I would have to know which carrier first before I choose a gateway. For example Vodafone in western Japan uses the following gateway address: [email protected] while Vodafone in Okinawa uses the following slightly different address: [email protected].

Likewise for iMessage, it works great until you want to communicate outside the Apple ecosystem. Skype works great but requires downloads to all of your devices – of course we expect tighter integration into all Microsoft products over time.

This leaves an opening for Chorus.im which recently launched an HTML5-based messaging solution which works across platforms without the need for downloading plugins, software or anything.

Certainly, there is a need for such a solution since I do beleive messaging is broken but inertia is a powerful force and it remains to be seen how quickly people jump off their current messaging systems and embrace this new solution. One benefit of course to Chorus is it allows messaging without identities needing to be shared meaning it can be used as a communications medium for online dating or transactions where you don’t want to give your email address. This reminds us of SnapChat – the service which allows a user to send messages which quickly auto-destruct. Chorus.im could be an enabler for a web-based version of such a solution and it could in-turn be embraced by people who gravitate to services like Facebook’s Poke.