The explosion of interest in mobile messaging platforms has prompted heated competition to secure the largest and most loyal global user base. From LINE’s stickers to WeChat’s partnership with Lionel Messi, there’s a race to innovate, and fast.

From messaging to social media to a marketplace to browsing the internet, WeChat is the app the does everything. While Western companies and app developers race to unbundle their services into efficient single-purpose apps, WeChat continues to add feature after feature.

From Ask.fm to Secret, and from Whisper to Yik Yak, anonymous platforms that let people share or communicate in secret have seen explosive growth. But what happens if the anonymity is an illusion? With Whisper collecting data on its users, can it regain their trust?

Social network YikYak has raised $62 million in financing from the investors who backed Google and WhatsApp. Adding anonymity and geolocation to a Twitter-like stream, could YikYak, and its gossipy intimacy, be an indication of the future of social media?

On social media, we see what we want to see; it’s a filtered version of the real world. But a new app from MIT’s Playful Systems department aims to change that, letting you intimately share in the life of a stranger for 20 days via regular anonymous social media-esque updates.

When WhatsApp introduced its one-tap record-and-send voice function in 2013, many would’ve been forgiven for wondering how much use it would get. After all, smartphones are used more as miniature computers than for actually calling people these days. But in Argentina, talking still trumps typing.

In Spike Jonze'sHer, protagonist Theodore Twombly converses with his operating system as though she was a real human. And whileHeris set in the future, voice user interface is increasingly relevant to the streamlined design modern consumers have grown accustomed to.

The number of teens who voice call on their phones every day dropped 50% between 2009 and 2012. Just 3% of UK Millennials now use the function daily. With texts, iMessage and WhatsApp becoming the preferred method of communication, can audio message app Cord get us talking again?