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WhatsApp, Used By Over One Billion People, Gets Video Calling Feature (engadget.com)
After disrupting how people text in many regions of the world, and changing how people make voice calls, Facebook-owned instant app WhatsApp today announced it is bringing "fully encrypted" video calling feature. From a report on Engadget: Now, the Facebook-owned company is ready to unleash video calls on everybody and in the coming days will roll out the feature to iOS, Android and Windows devices. When the feature is activated, open a chat and select the phone icon. You'll then be given an option to place a voice or video call. When we tested the feature, we found that voice and video quality was excellent over strong WiFi, but your mileage may vary if you're connecting via a mobile or slower broadband connection. While Facebook Messenger users have enjoyed voice calls for over a year and a half, many popular messaging apps like still don't offer the feature. With over one billion users, WhatsApp's video calls can connect people all over the world, regardless of their choice of mobile operating system, allowing it stay ahead of apps like Google's Allo.Though video calling feature has existed on apps such as Skype for years, what gives WhatsApp an advantage is its sheer user base. In comparison to Skype, which has about 300 million active users, WhatsApp has over one billion.
I honestly dont know how people can trust that they are doing the right thing without knowing about the design....
They use a modified SIP communications for Audio is it the same for video ?
knowing the codec would be good ?
the problem is that is it point to point or simply proxied through their servers ?
anyone know ?
thanks
John Jones
This could hardly make it easier. Expect automatic tagging every time someone, friend or not, posts your picture
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
All these messenging apps.... I eman, aren't they all basically the same ?
Sign up for app
Download and install app
Log in to app
Either send text messages, or video clips, or have video chats with people in your friends list.
I mean, that basically it, right ?
This has been possible for years, decades even.
So what's the big deal ? How come these companies are valued in the billions ?
Is it just fancy wallpaper ?, or emojis? or some other crap that makes all the difference?
I don't get it.
Facebook would love to have quality, DMV style, images of all users faces. I bet the data people are drooling over that new data.
I don't care about the protocol or the codec, so long as it works well, which I can determine easily enough when the feature becomes available to me.
And I will bet my left nut that the traffic is point-to-point. Routing all that traffic through their servers would be a ridiculous load, and for what? Their servers will be used to set up the calls, actual video traffic will be point-to-point.
As an Android user, I'll be interested to see if this is better than Skype for video calls. I have found Facetime to work way better than Skype over the same connections; Skype is sometimes so crappy that I'll borrow an iDevice instead.
Congratulations, you just invented Skype.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Whichever wins, we lose.
Huh? That's one of the only reasons that I have an iPhone. FaceTime! Otherwise, most other things - including Whatsapp - are there either on my Android or my Lumia phone
Actually, WhatsApp picked up since it is a platform independent messaging system that allows one to send not just text, but also photos and brief videos through its service. One can also make voice calls. Now, video calls are added. This third one is big, since up to now, one could only make video calls on FaceTime, Skype and Duo. Of these 3, FaceTime is iOS only, Duo is Android and iOS only and Skype too is limited. WhatsApp in the meantime is there on many more platforms.
What I hope is - WhatsApp makes this feature available on all its platforms, not just iOS (the way it enabled only the iOS version for GIF files).
Well, looks like WhatsCrap is finally adding features that have been available on WeChat for years! First, aside from being feature-lacking garbage that binds itself to your phone number and at one time also charged a membership fee, I can't believe people willingly install software called "WhatsApp." The name itself is just gay on so many levels. I remember being forced to use it 2 years ago when my department head, a hideous bitch from Hong Kong who looked 20 years past her age but acted like she was 20 under, insisted that everyone else use it. I couldn't believe how lame it was. You fuckers actually use this? Sad, just sad. I'm not saying there isn't Chinese software out there that's pure dog feces. God knows there is. But WeChat/Weixin totally destroys the competition.
WhatsApp in the meantime is there on many more platforms.
Of which most are soon-to-be-deprecated (like S60, BlackBerry, etc. basically anything that isn't iOS nor Android)
Or are nothing more than a glorified remote viewer-over-html (for Windows/Mac OS X/Linux) and needs to be used together with the phone app.
So, all things said, WhatsApp only supports iOS and Android officially too, like everyone else.
And although they started as a variant of Jabber/XMPP, WhatsApp has been extremely active in trying to shut down and perma-ban any attempt at a 3rd party client.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Technically Skype was supposed to use RC4
(which is completely crappy so it doesn't work).
In practice, Skype specially since the Microsoft buyout isn't opposing 3rd party clients.
(e.g.: there's a 100% opensource Purple/Pidgin/Adium plugin that relies on the web.skype interface and works on Linux)
(And in practice Skype heading toward the direction of packaged webapps anyway. Just don't mind the current incompatibility between microsoft's ORTC and the rest of the universe' WebRTC)
Which means you could use an encryption layer such as OTR over it between any compatible client.
(Some of which are entirle opensource stacks : eg.: Pidgin + WebSkype plugin + OTR - thus verifiably encrypting and provably secure.
Meanwhile, WhatsApp is entirely closed source and puts as much efforts as possible to kick out and perma-ban any attempt at alternative client.
So yes, they have *announced* that they use Axolotl / Silent Circle-style encryption but you have to *trust* them. No way to control if encryption is properly used at all. Nor whether WhatsApp hasn't been forced by government to but a hidden backdoor)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I can tell you it is great. Here is my list of whys (I know some may be covered by other apps):
- I have several friends 2000 miles away. We have had a group chat open for almost 2 years now. We share pics, videos, and life updates. I am not on FB, and this is just more personal. We meet up once or twice a year, and it makes it easy to coordinate things
- my wife and I have a group chat with our daughter... no need to remember to send multiple messages
- WA can handle bigger photos / videos / documents. I once shared a 30MB pdf with a friend on it. My SMS app chokes out on anything over 3MB or so.
- You can leave voice messages, which is kind of fun
- It works! I don't know how many times I have missed texts, either incoming or outgoing. No idea if it is my phone, my carrier, being on wifi, planet alignment, or what. But WA is rock solid reliable
- nice and quick search feature from within a chat
- customized alerts per chat
- it does have a pretty cool set of emojis
It has had its share of bugs, and i don't know WHY it can't show in the icon that there are new messages, and it is owned by FB (which really bugs me), but overall I don't see anything that compares to it out there.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
- WhatsAppWeb - You can access your chats from your browser. Makes it so much easier for me to type things or share things that aren't on my phone.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
...Facebook-owned instant app WhatsApp today announced...
An instant app, eh? So they love agile over at Facebook I take it.
I added this "New" feature that has been around for decades in other software, but now my new feature is soo much better and gives me an advantage, because I have more users.
Only a n-i-g-g-e-r who licks the CEO's butthole thrice a day would think they would now have a magical "advantage"
disclaimer; i use none of the niggardly software mentioned above
It is confirmed: the US gov had a Skype back door in 2011-2013 (and presumably still does) according to Snowden's revelations on PRISM and other programs (here's your proof). This explicitly includes the NSA's ability to watch Skype video (launched in 14 July 2012, audio was much earlier). There have also been strong allegations that various other nations have been granted back doors.
The only good things that came out of Skype were the proof-of-concept (Skype was the first one that actually worked out of the box) and some of the technology (Skype co-developed SILK, one of the two key algorithms used by the Opus audio codec, the free and arguably superior alternative to HE-AAC). That was all before they were purchased by Microsoft. I'm guessing PRISM came after the MS purchase.
>"announced it is bringing "fully encrypted" video calling feature. "
Fully encrypted? So it is end-to-end/user-to-user without any server interception? With a closed-source app, how do we know it has no backdoors, no logging, no intentionally weakened keys, no overrides, no stored keys, etc? Just asking....
Has no one here ever heard of Line or WeChat? Great apps that have been doing this forever. It is sad that an app like WhatsApp only became so popular because no one knew of these apps. Line is huge in Japan and has been able to do video calls for as long as I can remember.