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Facebook To Buy WhatsApp
Facebook has announced an agreement to buy WhatsApp, the mobile messaging platform used by over 450 million people. The deal involves $4 billion in cash and an additional $12 billion in Facebook stock. They say WhatsApp will remain independent; its headquarters won't move, and it will continue to exist separately from Facebook's Messenger app. Mark Zuckerberg indicated they will focus on growth: 'Over the next few years, we're going to work hard to help WhatsApp grow and connect the whole world. We also expect that WhatsApp will add to our efforts for Internet.org, our partnership to make basic internet services affordable for everyone.' On WhatsApp's blog, they say, "Here’s what will change for you, our users: nothing. WhatsApp will remain autonomous and operate independently."
It's Jabber, but without the hassle of account creation. Username is automatically set up as your phone number, and password is your IMEI or something.
So it's about as secure as SMS, but also as practical for technophobes. It's free of charge and allows much more data than SMS (file transfer of pics etc.), which is why people use it.
No, it's more than yet another SMS replacement.
It can do cross-mobile-platform IM, group chats, file sharing (video and audio mostly) and as of recent push to talk communication. Also, the phone number is your user account - everyone of your phone contacts will show up in your WA contact list if they use it. Many agree it is the tidies and simplest messenger for mobile platforms around.
On the downside there is their shitty data protection and blatant security faults in the past. On Android, you can't switch off presence and reading confirmations which is quite unfortunate if your boss or knows your phone number - they will always be able to check when you were last on.
As much as I'd love to dispose WhatsApp, I have given up any attempt to do so. Once you registered, you can't unregister (or rather, the function does nothing) and people will continue to send you things. I resigned and tell everyone to not send any sensible information over this service and I use a modded Android app (WhatsApp+ ... you can find the project page on Google+) which allows me to hide my online status.