State of Messaging 2026: The Future is Conversational

Bandwidth’s 2026 State of Messaging Report calls this the “biggest messaging transformation in a decade.” I’ve been on both sides of the RCS ecosystem — DevRel at Google building the Business Messages program, a stint as CTO at a GenAI startup, and now back at Google focused on RCS — and I think they’re underselling it. A decade? Try generational.

Here’s why, and where the real opportunity sits.

The RCS Gap #

One number matters more than all the others: 96% device coverage. Apple shipped RCS support in iOS 18; Android had it for years. That single move from Apple closed the last meaningful gap. Projections put active RCS users at 3.8 billion by end of 2026.

Year of Missing ROI on GenAI Investments

Full disclosure: Google signs my paychecks. AI sits at the core of everything the company does. So understand the position this comes from — the enterprise GenAI ROI story ranks, for most organizations, as pure fiction.

Not for every organization. And not forever. But right now, in March 2025, the gap between investment and measurable return staggers. The industry’s collective unwillingness to talk about it honestly? That starts to feel irresponsible.

Replacing GBM Entry Points: Managing the July Deadline

Three days. That’s what you’ve got before Google yanks GBM entry points from Maps and Search on July 15.

If you haven’t started migrating, this post is your triage plan. If you started but aren’t done, keep reading anyway — there are gotchas I ran into that Google’s docs don’t mention.

I’ve been through this migration at DreamFlare. We relied on GBM for customer intake flows. The timeline is tighter than it looks.

GBM Deprecation: Planning the Migration to RCS

Google’s finally pulling the plug on Business Messages. The timeline is tight: no new partner registrations after May 22, entry points vanish from Maps and Search by July 15, and the API starts throwing errors July 31.

I worked on the GBM ecosystem at Google before moving to DreamFlare, so this isn’t abstract for me. GBM served its purpose — it brought conversational messaging into Search and Maps where users were already hunting for businesses. But it was always an overlay on Google’s properties, not a native messaging channel. RCS Business Messaging is the bet Google’s consolidating around, and honestly? It’s the right call.

MetriRank CPaaS Report: Ranking the Messaging Leaders

Metrigy published their inaugural CPaaS MetriRank report this month. The top spot went to Infobip.

Not Twilio. Not Sinch. Infobip.

If you’re not deep in the communications platform space, that result might surprise you. If you are, it probably doesn’t. I spent years working on the platform side at Google’s RCS Business Messaging team, and the CPaaS layer—the bit that sits on top of messaging protocols—was always the part of the ecosystem I found most fascinating. And the most misunderstood.

nasscom TechForGood: The Strategic Value of Social Good

Most companies treat social impact the way they treat office plants. Someone remembers to water them occasionally, they look nice in photos, and nobody measures whether they’re actually doing anything.

nasscom’s TechForGood initiative makes a different argument. Technology for social good isn’t a line item in your CSR budget. It’s a strategic lever that compounds over time.

I find this framing compelling because I’ve seen it work firsthand. Before moving to the Bay Area, I co-founded Doare.org in Brazil — a donation platform for non-profits that became the largest of its kind in Latin America. We built it because the problem was real and the technology to solve it was accessible. But what surprised me was how the mission attracted talent. Engineers who could have taken higher-paying jobs elsewhere chose to work on something that mattered to them. That retention advantage was worth more than any signing bonus.

Why the "New Normal" Demands Branded Messaging

Six months in, and “digital-first” isn’t a trend anymore. It’s just how things work now.

The businesses that built their customer relationships around in-person interactions—retail, banking, healthcare, hospitality—are scrambling to rebuild that trust through screens. Most of them, even the ones with decent digital teams, are getting it wrong.

The core problem isn’t technology. It’s identity.

When a brand texts you today, you get a gray bubble from a 10-digit number or some short code. No logo. No verification. No way to know if that “BANK ALERT” is actually from your bank or from someone who just bought a spoofed short code on the cheap. The FTC started tracking a surge in COVID-related scam texts back in March, and it hasn’t slowed down. In a world where phishing texts impersonate health agencies and delivery services, anonymous SMS isn’t just a branding limitation—it’s a liability signal.

Digital Transformation FOMO: Survival in a Remote World

Two weeks ago, my team was in the office. Now we’re fully remote, and so is everyone else.

The speed of this shift is hard to overstate. Companies that had “2021 digital transformation roadmaps” are compressing those plans into days. I’ve watched three different vendor threads blow up in my network this week alone — each one pitching some variation of “we’ll get you remote-ready in 48 hours.”

That’s not transformation. That’s panic.