It’s been admitted by the search giants seeing Rich Communication Services (RCS) more consumer-facing with an important role in surfacing the name of the standard in Messages for Android.
Since last year’s “Get the Message” advertising campaign online and in New York City, awareness of Rich Communication Services (RCS) is growing more mainstream.
Our best source for the Google 9to5Google furls Google now uses ‘RCS chat’ throughout the Message app. The same cannot be said about “RCS” and “chat.” “Chat” is the word Google chose for a message sent with the standard meant to replace SMS/MMS.
Google Messages described that functionality like reading receipts, typing indicators, and “Chat features” when RCS first rolled out several years ago. It’s the name of the menu at the top of the Messages Settings page and appears in various set-up prompts.
To improve awareness and user education, Messages is now changing that to just “RCS chat.” “Enable chat features” becomes a much more explicit and straightforward “Turn on RCS chats.”There are a handful of other branding changes in the app, but the most important sees the “Chat Message” hint in the text field of a conversation — which tells you whether or not SMS is being used — change to “RCS message.”
Google Messages choosing to embrace and surface the RCS brand to users is much better than sticking with “Chat features.” While it did evoke a more modern online service and set of features, it was generic, and confusing in the context of there also being “Google Chat.”
Over time more people will see “RCS”, for now, Google confirmed change is currently rolling out to users enrolled in the Messages open beta.
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