WhatsApp Messenger Review

After leaving Yahoo and being turned down from Facebook, Jan Koam (CEO) and Brian Acton on February 24 2009 (on Koam’s birthday actually) incorporated WhatsApp Inc. in California. Later in 2014, Facebook acquired WhatsApp for US $19 billion.

Competing with other messaging services like Viber, I would say WhatsApp is doing pretty good considering the fact that in January 2015 they announced reaching 700 million monthly active users with over 30 billion messages being sent every day.

This review refers to the Version 2.11.528 of WhatsApp Messenger, the one that I’m currently using.

WhatsApp started as an iPhone app, but now besides iOS, it is available for Android, Blackberry, Symbian, Windows Phone and Nokia S40 devices. It is an instant messaging application for smartphones. You can send text messages, videos, photos, voice recordings, location, contact information to a contact or a group. In order to register you have to provide your phone number and the application automatically gives you an access code which they apply automatically as well. After this very simple and easy setup, you are good to go. The application synchronizes your contact address book and shows which of your contacts use WhatsApp too. You can interact only with those who already have WhatsApp.

When you register the home panel is the place where all you chats are displayed. There’s a search bar where you can type a name of a person and the app will respond with a chat as a result (if there’s a conversation in the history, of course). There’s another button right next to the search bar that lets you to browse through your new contacts’ address book consisted of those contacts only that use WhatsApp. You can even search through a conversation.
You get another button where you can choose through various drop-down menu options.

– New Group is an option that allows you to create a group about some subject and add up to 30 participants who can interact with each other.

– New Broadcast is the option that enables you to send a message to several of your contacts at once. You can save Broadcast Lists too, which in fact are the lists of message recipients that you repeatedly send this type of messages to.

– WhatsApp Web is a computer based extension, Webclient as a matter of fact, developed by the app for your PC in order to deliver a better experience. You can activate this option through your browser on your PC. You have to visit www.web.whatsapp.com where you will see a barcode generated. Then you tap on the WhatsApp Web option in the drop-down menu on your phone so that the app permits you to scan the barcode, and once you do that you can use your WhatsApp account on your PC. After this quick setup WhatsApp Web synchronizes all of your contacts and chats, so that you can use your account through your PC as well.

– Contacts as an option in the menu redirects you to your full contacts’ address book.

– Settings in the menu provides a few options like: Help, Profile adjustments, Account and Chat settings, Notification and Contacts options.

– Status like a feature in the menu of WhatsApp is a real time indication of what are you doing and enables you to keep up to date with your contacts and that your contacts keep up with you.

The application is free the first year of using, and then it’s US $.99 annually. This is a fair trade for an add-free application.
An interesting fact is that WhatsApp’s license agreement requires users to be age 16 or older.
Although the app didn’t launch this way and had some serious issues about the privacy and protection of personal information and data, it’s widely known for its stable use and encryption of data.

I still haven’t made up my mind about which app I prefer better when it comes to WhatsApp and Viber, but neither have my friends. Since they both have pros and cons and I already strongly recommended Viber, I will do the same with WhatsApp. It a really awesome app that’s a must have these days.