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It's funny how Google Talk and MSN were so much popular but weren't able to successfully transition to mobile and capture that market. WhatsApp is number one me

It's funny how Google Talk and MSN were so much popular but weren't able to successfully transition to mobile and capture that market. WhatsApp is number one messaging app in the world right now and probably will stay for some time.

ugjka 5y ago
What I like about whatsapp is that they don't do any bullshit. Unlike Viber, when they tried to pivot into some sort of social network for celebs and what not.
- financetechbro 5y ago
  WhatsApp is very much a social network
  - ugjka 5y ago
    Then SMS is too, right?
    - mrkramer 5y ago
      SMS is communication protocol; you can only send text messages or reply to text messages, nothing beyond that. No profiles, status updates, friends etc.
    - 2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
      No. Hard to do group threads. Not encrypted end to end (but WhatsApp is owned by FB so moot point). Even iMessage seems very much like a 1-1 messaging system.
    - eitland 5y ago
      SMS cannot do group chats in any meaningful way. So no, at least SMS is not a social network. I don't like WhatsApp anymore but it was in its time my favourite social network. I had all my important groups there, used it exclusively to communicate with close friends and family. It was the place were most images were shared and discussions were held and so on.
- dagmx 5y ago
  They did try and tie into FB more in India with disastrous results, and had to backtrack hard
- nicoburns 5y ago
  I used to think that, until I realised it's impossible (well difficult, and not officially supported) to export your messages from WhatsApp. That's pretty bullshit.
  - Someone 5y ago
    https://faq.whatsapp.com/android/chats/how-to-save-your-chat-history/?lang=en https://faq.whatsapp.com/android/chats/how-to-save-your-chat...: “Depending on your settings, you can also periodically back up your WhatsApp chats to Google Drive” “You can use the export chat feature to export a copy of the chat history from an individual or group chat.” I haven’t checked the full backup, but exports of individual chats are easily readable (zip with a .txt of all texts in the chat and individual images, IIRC)
    - nicoburns 5y ago
      The full backup is unfortunately not accessible! I can’t think why they’ve done this, but it’s incredibly user hostile! The individual exports work fine, but it’s very tedious to go through every conversation individually.
  - square_usual 5y ago
    If you have an Android phone, you can extract the SQLite DB that contains all your WhatsApp messages. When I switched from Android to iOS I backed up my DB and still use it when I need to read an old conversation.
lupire 5y ago
Because Facebook and Apple built closed networks that locked Talk (XMPP) out.
- acdha 5y ago
  This is highly revisionist history: Google shut down XMPP after years of neglect, and they were still late to the party implementing things like video chat even within their proprietary network. There was one legitimate technical concern — XMPP complicates push notifications for mobile clients since you don't want to prevent power-saving by keeping a TCP socket active — but that didn't force them to neglect everything else, or to close out 3rd-party clients. Trying to build their own closed network did that.
  - rakoo 5y ago
    > you don't want to prevent power-saving by keeping a TCP socket active Slight aside: keeping a TCP connection consomes almost nothing. In fact, that's how push notifications work today on Android: a TCP connection is kept open, and apps' server send a ping to Google to tell the mobile to wake up. What prevents power-saving is if every app keeps a different socket open to a different server and pings the servers on different schedules. That forces the mobile to wake up constantly.
    - acdha 5y ago
      Note that I said “active” — if you're getting things like presence updates, you'd want to filter them to allow the client to avoid keeping the radio active and that wasn't built in to XMPP. It's definitely not an excuse given Google's level of resources — they could have had a very optimized Google Talk client and published a spec for third-party clients to use the same notifications framework so I don't consider this more than a speed bump.
      - zaik 5y ago
        This is already implemented in modern XMPP clients like Conversations. See https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0352.html https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0352.html
deleted 5y ago
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ugjka 5y ago

What I like about whatsapp is that they don't do any bullshit. Unlike Viber, when they tried to pivot into some sort of social network for celebs and what not.

financetechbro 5y ago
WhatsApp is very much a social network
- ugjka 5y ago
  Then SMS is too, right?
  - mrkramer 5y ago
    SMS is communication protocol; you can only send text messages or reply to text messages, nothing beyond that. No profiles, status updates, friends etc.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
    No. Hard to do group threads. Not encrypted end to end (but WhatsApp is owned by FB so moot point). Even iMessage seems very much like a 1-1 messaging system.
  - eitland 5y ago
    SMS cannot do group chats in any meaningful way. So no, at least SMS is not a social network. I don't like WhatsApp anymore but it was in its time my favourite social network. I had all my important groups there, used it exclusively to communicate with close friends and family. It was the place were most images were shared and discussions were held and so on.
dagmx 5y ago
They did try and tie into FB more in India with disastrous results, and had to backtrack hard
nicoburns 5y ago
I used to think that, until I realised it's impossible (well difficult, and not officially supported) to export your messages from WhatsApp. That's pretty bullshit.
- Someone 5y ago
  https://faq.whatsapp.com/android/chats/how-to-save-your-chat-history/?lang=en https://faq.whatsapp.com/android/chats/how-to-save-your-chat...: “Depending on your settings, you can also periodically back up your WhatsApp chats to Google Drive” “You can use the export chat feature to export a copy of the chat history from an individual or group chat.” I haven’t checked the full backup, but exports of individual chats are easily readable (zip with a .txt of all texts in the chat and individual images, IIRC)
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    The full backup is unfortunately not accessible! I can’t think why they’ve done this, but it’s incredibly user hostile! The individual exports work fine, but it’s very tedious to go through every conversation individually.
- square_usual 5y ago
  If you have an Android phone, you can extract the SQLite DB that contains all your WhatsApp messages. When I switched from Android to iOS I backed up my DB and still use it when I need to read an old conversation.

lupire 5y ago

Because Facebook and Apple built closed networks that locked Talk (XMPP) out.

acdha 5y ago
This is highly revisionist history: Google shut down XMPP after years of neglect, and they were still late to the party implementing things like video chat even within their proprietary network. There was one legitimate technical concern — XMPP complicates push notifications for mobile clients since you don't want to prevent power-saving by keeping a TCP socket active — but that didn't force them to neglect everything else, or to close out 3rd-party clients. Trying to build their own closed network did that.
- rakoo 5y ago
  > you don't want to prevent power-saving by keeping a TCP socket active Slight aside: keeping a TCP connection consomes almost nothing. In fact, that's how push notifications work today on Android: a TCP connection is kept open, and apps' server send a ping to Google to tell the mobile to wake up. What prevents power-saving is if every app keeps a different socket open to a different server and pings the servers on different schedules. That forces the mobile to wake up constantly.
  - acdha 5y ago
    Note that I said “active” — if you're getting things like presence updates, you'd want to filter them to allow the client to avoid keeping the radio active and that wasn't built in to XMPP. It's definitely not an excuse given Google's level of resources — they could have had a very optimized Google Talk client and published a spec for third-party clients to use the same notifications framework so I don't consider this more than a speed bump.
    - zaik 5y ago
      This is already implemented in modern XMPP clients like Conversations. See https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0352.html https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0352.html

deleted 5y ago

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