It seems that WhatsApp Web has new competitors in sight. The newcomer is called Charge Messenger and has already raised funds for $1.7 million. The company in fact stated that $1.7 million had already been allocated to start the activity, besides a new web client to allow users to synchronize the chats on their Android and iOS devices on the desktop. Maybe someone recalls that at the beginning Charge Messenger was called Bolt, but the name has been changed into Charge Messenger to avoid confusion with the Instagram service One-Tap Photo.

But who is involved in this challenge? These are the names of some investors: Pelion Venture Partners, Atlas Venture,  Maiden Lane Ventures, Metamorphic Ventures, Cherubic Ventures, Craig Walker (founder of GrandCentral/Google Voice), John Wolthuis (cofounder of Twilio) and Matt Tanase (cofounder of Slicehost).

If you wonder how can you immediately recognise Charge Messenger among the many instant messaging services currently on the market (first of all WhatsApp), you’ll discover that it is quite easy. The first noticeable feature of Charge Messenger is “GIF Roulette”, which allows its users to add a random GIF to their chat simply by typing “+ gif” followed by a keyword (or phrase).

Animated GIF images are living a moment of incredible popularity on the Web, and even Mark Zuckerberg had to recognize their popularity and integrate them in the advertising pages of Facebook. It is still early to make prediction about this new startup, which is currently still a beta app. But it seems to be growing a lot in the Middle East, India and the United States.

Will this new app force WhatsApp Web to accellerate more improvements in its services? We know that recently the popular instant messaging service introduced a lot of updates, and now the system is available for Windows and Android Phones, BlackBerry and even for iPhone. But the competition is fierce, and we must not forget that in addition to Charge Messenger, Viber and Line also contend to WhatsApp a good share of the market.