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WhatsApp's Co-Founder on How the App Became a Phenomenon

32 points by ghosh 11y ago

yitchelle 11y ago
"Sure, the app was simple. But it met a real need." - this sums it up. Nail this and bam!
eecks 11y ago
The reason I used WhatsApp early on was because it was more lightweight than similar apps like Viber which had more features at the time but felt slower
- RyanZAG 11y ago
  Really good point - WhatsApp probably did well because it had fewer features, and what features it did have were well polished and understandable.
- kakakiki 11y ago
  yes - lightweight, fast and reliable!
dingaling 11y ago
The question I have, as do most of my colleagues, is that if you have a data connection why not just send an email? Rather than installing yet another app and having to encourage people to adopt it.
- slazaro 11y ago
  The difference between email and IM is pretty big in terms of interactivity, threading, etc.
- ejolto 11y ago
  There is this strange social pressure about writing email in a formal manner e.g. Dear, X Best regards, Y This in addition to emails forcing you to come up with subject header for every conversation makes writing emails in a casual setting feel weird and wrong imo.
- DominikR 11y ago
  Try building an email client that supports presence (online/offline/busy/custom state), subscriptions, group chat with different admin levels (owner, admin, member ...), message receipt and read notifications, chat state notifications (composing, active, inactive ..), VoIP including video chat (XMPP Jingle), public chat rooms, buddy lists, and many other features that I didn't list. Surely someone can model it on top of email too, but the effort would be enormous and it would be proprietary. XMPP on the other hand is a standardized protocol that supports all of this with great library support on many platforms and that's why most chat clients today use this protocol.
knight17 11y ago
For me it was the network--everyone in my phone contacts was already available to text. Skype hasn't transformed to the mobile world yet: I have to add people manually even now. If WhatsApp introduces video calling and release a serous desktop/web application I am sure it will rival all Skype-like applications. However, all is not perfect--the voice calling sometimes work, and most often it doesn't. Purely on objective terms applications like Telegram work better for texting and groups, but the network effect will keep WhatsApp floating. Hope they will improve it soon.
- vezycash 11y ago
  Skype is maddening for me. I love Skype and that's why it hurts that they are going to lose to WhatsApp at this pace. I use Windows phone so here's my experience with both 1. Notifications - Skype doesn't notify me if I get a call or message when I was offline. WhatsApp does immediately 2. Call connection speed - with WhatsApp, it's instantaneous for me. Skype takes forever especially if the recipient is running Skype on mobile 3. In a poor imitation of WhatsApp, Skype now groups my phone contacts with my Skype contact. Obvious, can't call them without Skype credit so it just wastes my time unnecessarily 4. WhatsApp is much lighter. It seems they are trying to remedy this in Windows 10 mobile by decoupling the messaging part from the calling part 5. Notification count. Even on desktop, the notification count is always 1. Even if I get 100 messages, it'll show 1.
anandsriniv 11y ago
This article fails to answer questions about initial traction. I doubt wireless carriers entertained WhatsApp when it was just a few thousand users strong.

32 points by ghosh 11y ago

"Sure, the app was simple. But it met a real need." - this sums it up. Nail this and bam!

eecks 11y ago

The reason I used WhatsApp early on was because it was more lightweight than similar apps like Viber which had more features at the time but felt slower

RyanZAG 11y ago
Really good point - WhatsApp probably did well because it had fewer features, and what features it did have were well polished and understandable.
kakakiki 11y ago
yes - lightweight, fast and reliable!

dingaling 11y ago

The question I have, as do most of my colleagues, is that if you have a data connection why not just send an email? Rather than installing yet another app and having to encourage people to adopt it.

slazaro 11y ago
The difference between email and IM is pretty big in terms of interactivity, threading, etc.
ejolto 11y ago
There is this strange social pressure about writing email in a formal manner e.g. Dear, X Best regards, Y This in addition to emails forcing you to come up with subject header for every conversation makes writing emails in a casual setting feel weird and wrong imo.
DominikR 11y ago
Try building an email client that supports presence (online/offline/busy/custom state), subscriptions, group chat with different admin levels (owner, admin, member ...), message receipt and read notifications, chat state notifications (composing, active, inactive ..), VoIP including video chat (XMPP Jingle), public chat rooms, buddy lists, and many other features that I didn't list. Surely someone can model it on top of email too, but the effort would be enormous and it would be proprietary. XMPP on the other hand is a standardized protocol that supports all of this with great library support on many platforms and that's why most chat clients today use this protocol.

knight17 11y ago

For me it was the network--everyone in my phone contacts was already available to text. Skype hasn't transformed to the mobile world yet: I have to add people manually even now. If WhatsApp introduces video calling and release a serous desktop/web application I am sure it will rival all Skype-like applications. However, all is not perfect--the voice calling sometimes work, and most often it doesn't. Purely on objective terms applications like Telegram work better for texting and groups, but the network effect will keep WhatsApp floating. Hope they will improve it soon.

vezycash 11y ago
Skype is maddening for me. I love Skype and that's why it hurts that they are going to lose to WhatsApp at this pace. I use Windows phone so here's my experience with both 1. Notifications - Skype doesn't notify me if I get a call or message when I was offline. WhatsApp does immediately 2. Call connection speed - with WhatsApp, it's instantaneous for me. Skype takes forever especially if the recipient is running Skype on mobile 3. In a poor imitation of WhatsApp, Skype now groups my phone contacts with my Skype contact. Obvious, can't call them without Skype credit so it just wastes my time unnecessarily 4. WhatsApp is much lighter. It seems they are trying to remedy this in Windows 10 mobile by decoupling the messaging part from the calling part 5. Notification count. Even on desktop, the notification count is always 1. Even if I get 100 messages, it'll show 1.

anandsriniv 11y ago

This article fails to answer questions about initial traction. I doubt wireless carriers entertained WhatsApp when it was just a few thousand users strong.