More encryption! It's everywhere! Let's take a term and throw "bit" on it to be cool and make a new product. Well, we have another new product that seems to be used by professionals and criminals alike. Here we go, let's discuss....BITMESSAGE!!
So first question -- what is it???
"Bitmessage is a P2P communications protocol used to send encrypted messages to another person or to many subscribers, similar to an e-mail service. It is decentralized and trustless, meaning that you need-not inherently trust any entities like root certificate authorities. It uses strong authentication which means that the sender of a message cannot be spoofed, and it aims to hide "non-content" data, like the sender and receiver of messages, from passive eavesdroppers like those running warrantless wiretapping programs."
Yes, believe it or not there's actually association from Bitcoin (you probably guessed, huh? So, think of a typical email message encryption like PGP. Overall, it's similar. If we're making comparrisons, BitMessage is the "bitcoin" of online communications.
Here's a great video explaining and detailing more:
So overall, it's encrypted messaging that's peer-to-peer, not having to rely on email servers. The only drawback is speed. Since you have to look at and decrypt all the messages on the network (you're only able to with the key that you have), it does take longer.