Why the smartphone address book is making a billion-dollar comeback

By Jenna Wortham

The address book is making a billion-dollar comeback.

Weary of noisy social networks filled with mundane updates from the most remote acquaintances, millions of people have turned to their smartphone address books - and the diverse array of messaging services that rely on them, like Snapchat, Secret, Kik and WhatsApp - for more intimate social connections. Now the stampede toward those messaging services has Silicon Valley's giants scrambling to catch up.

Being able to tap into this address-book messaging is a major reason why Facebook decided that WhatsApp, the most popular of these services, was worth as much as $19 billion. In announcing this week it would buy WhatsApp, Facebook is betting that the future of social networking will center on not just broadcasting to the masses but also the ability to quickly and efficiently communicate with your family and closest confidants - those people you care enough about to have their numbers saved on your smartphone.

Facebook has long defined the digital social network, and the average adult Facebook user has more than 300 friends. The company's strategy has mostly been about making that circle of friends even bigger, cajoling users into combining their friends, former friends, co-workers, second cousins and everyone they've ever met into a single, ballooning social network.

But the average adult has far fewer friends - perhaps just a couple in many cases, researchers say - to whom they talk regularly in their real-world social network.

"The prominence of the address book simply reflects the shift in relevance on the Internet to cater to the most universal and basic human need: communication," David Byttow, a founder of a new messaging application called Secret, said in an email. "The address book is a simple, reusable list for any application, and simplicity always wins."

Services like Instagram, Google Plus, Twitter and Facebook encourage users to share from the rooftop every life event and moment as material to be viewed and commented on. The Internet enabled that sort of broad outreach like never before, and the services continue to grow, as more than 1 billion people have signed up on Facebook alone.

Yet the popularity of private-messaging applications like WhatsApp, which has more than 450 million users, suggests that despite all the technological advances in recent decades, people still crave to communicate in small groups and often just with one person at a time.

"There's a very human need for intimate, one-to-one communications," said Susan Etlinger, an analyst with Altimeter Group, who studies social technologies.

While the original ideas behind services like Facebook and Twitter may have been to connect people, Etlinger said, they have "evolved into a news feed," one that is increasingly clogged by advertisements, brands and near-strangers, all competing to be seen and heard.

In addition, many people may be growing tired of worrying about how an image or status update will be perceived by their broader social network of employers, in-laws and ex-flames.

"Contacting someone on Facebook is the equivalent of opening up the phone book and calling someone," said Scott Feinberg, 22, a user of WhatsApp. "With WhatsApp you've given me your number and actually want me to contact you."

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