Friday, February 28, 2014

Whats Up With WhatsApp?

I used many mail service providers, messengers, tools at work for development. With all of these at least there is one annoying thing that makes me disappointed in them. Say ads, say documentation, say ease of use, or say stupid crazy processes that make no sense anyone.

My favorites among all are Perl( the programming language that I use at work) and the WhatsApp. Never did I like anything else more than these tools that I use in my day-to-day life. Why is it that WhatsApp is so popular? I have been using it only for an year and I am totally in love with this mobile application. What is so great about it - it's simplicity.

No Gimmicks
It does not ask for you email ID or for signup. No stupid reminders or advertisements. No invitation requests. If you are on someone's contact list they can message you. Of course there is a block feature to block users from messaging. You have a smart phone and whatsapp installed, then there is no better way to communicate with your friends and family than WhatsApp.

Share Anything You Like
You can share texts, images, files, videos, audio and what not. It uses internet to send or receive. How simple is that? It is platform independent. How cool is that? There is no upload first, set the privacy and then share. You send to the people you want to and there you go. Its shared.

Respect for Privacy
Is there a way to make your cover photo on facebook not public? Seriously? Who made those rules that cover photo has to be public for people to know you? How should I choose not to make these too personal? You share with only those who are on your contact list. Of course you share your number only with trusted people. And even on top of it you always have "Block" feature.

Ease Of Use
User interface is so easy to use that any naive user who is not a tech savvy can adapt and use it. How thoughtful of that? Most importantly it is free of cost for an year and a negligible subscription fee of 1$/year. I have my Dhobi's number on my contact list and am surprised to know that he uses WhatsApp too. He cannot even do a simple addition of numbers.

Literature
I send a message to my friend on Facebook and it gives me another notification to tell if the message is delivered or not. Showing me a red indicator that message was not sent. And how does WhatsApp do it? With simple tick marks. Not so fussy about notifications you see? Isn't that enough? Telling you the status using a simple symbol than "Sent" or  "Not Sent" blah blah. Who needs literature here?

Speed
And talk about the speed! I bet no other messengers can match that speed and THAT is why it beats the rest. Could you wait even for half a second when you have to share a good news with your loved ones? All the time spent on WhatsApp is on sharing but no on waiting.

And did it earn anything by being so cheap? Oh yes! Guess who's buying WhatsApp for 20 billion dollars. Gaint in Social Network Sites - The Facebook. When they started developing WhatsApp, did they get threatened, disheartened by other messengers available in the market? Did they think of the profits? Did they think it would sustain and beat the rest? What was their motive?  Did they have a strategy? Or it was just do it and lets see what happens, and then the luck favored them?

Also posted on MouthShut.

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