8 ms·

WhatsApp doesn't understand the web

224 points by NietTim 12y ago

vertex-four 12y ago
Umm. Obviously the web client is supposed to be used on the desktop, not on a phone. They have apps for phones. Doesn't excuse the Chrome-only-ness, though.
- Joona 12y ago
  I have a Jolla (Sailfish) phone. I can not use the web client, because I need an Android, Windows or Blackberry phone. WhatsApp does however work fine on my phone (via Alien Dalvik). This "web client" is not actually a web client - it's just an app for your phone that you can display on your computer monitor.
  - zeroDivisible 12y ago
    A bit of an off-topic question - how would you rate Sailfish and it's interop with Android stuff?
    - Joona 12y ago
      Sailfish itself is much better than anything I have ever used - it's clearly designed for touchscreens. For hackers it's awesome because it's actually a Linux, and you can access shell (as a root, too). Android support is a bit buggy though - for example Skype sometimes breaks (can not send messages), but Spotify and WhatsApp have worked perfectly fine. If you are interested in it, they dropped the price a while back (down to 250eur).
    - fotcorn 12y ago
      The interop with Android works great. Spotify, HN App, reddit is fun, YouTube, Google Chrome and Google Play Store(!) work without problems except for some crashes from time to time. The only problematic app is WhatsApp because the notifications only go into the native Sailfish notification area when an Android app is in the foreground. Many apps and copy&pasting between native/Android apps were fixed in the last Sailfish version released 3 weeks ago.
- DanBC 12y ago
  There are phones that have WWW access that do not run Android or iOS. Whatsapp apps miss very many people who'd use it if they could.
  - Kurtz79 12y ago
    Android and iOS have more than 95% market share. http://www.idc.com/prodserv/smartphone-os-market-share.jsp http://www.idc.com/prodserv/smartphone-os-market-share.jsp I suppose the benefits of supporting the remaining 5% against the costs of having to develop and mantain another client(s) have been discussed internally in Whatsapp. "It would be nice" and "it would be commercially sound" are very different propostions.
    - icebraining 12y ago
      Android and iOS have more than 95% market share of the smartphones market. Plenty of people access the web with feature phones. In fact, that's why Whatsapp has clients for Nokia S60 and S40.
      - Kurtz79 12y ago
        My argument still stands. Would be commercially sound to support these "plenty of people" ?
        icebraining 12y ago
        Apparently it is, since Whatsapp does write clients for them. You can't tell me that writing a J2ME app from scratch is easier than adapting a web client to work on a somewhat more limited browser.
    - briandear 12y ago
      That statistic is meaningless. The percentage of what's app users using a particular platform is far more important, assuming their customers matter to them. There are a lot of Nokia users on What's App. As far as iOS, with iMessage, what's app is redundant unless you have a lot of friends using another platform. If there's a legitimate security benefit from What's App, then perhaps that's compelling, but trusting a Facebook company with anything remotely related to privacy and security is a fool's errand. Zuck has yet to prove that privacy and security matter. For secure messaging I generally use a courier and a message written on paper using a one-time pad. Slower but more secure. If it goes over a wire, the odds of it being actually secure are low, unless you handle the encryption and control the keys yourself.
- bcraven 12y ago
  >not on a phone If the app isn't running on the phone then there shouldn't be any need for the phone to be connected to the internet ("Mistake Three" in the article)
- pjmlp 12y ago
  Chrome is the new IE. The new web developers generation just replaced IE with Chrome.
  - TheAnimus 12y ago
    Having a very quick look, I see a websocket connection, which IE can do just fine. The only thing I see that it can't is the desktop notification, which you still have some ability, in fact 'pinned' sites in IE let you have a number badge on the taskbar, which is quite good for a chat app, see Skype.
eatonphil 12y ago
To be fair, the WeChat desktop client also requires that you scan a QR code from your smartphone to log in. I'm not defending WeChat, but it doesn't seem like the author knows WhatsApp is not alone there.
- snitko 12y ago
  Exactly. This is outrageous. The only decent chat app these days is Telegram, really. Even they still want you to use your phone to log in (but only once). But I guess that's the way it is for now. Frankly, I hope those apps will all be gone and forgotten in favor of an actual open sourced, widely used protocol. Or maybe they'd incorporate one. But in any case, I think it's a shame that when email is decentralized, chatting is not.
  - jhasse 12y ago
    Telegram's protocol is open source.
    - pferde 12y ago
      If they do not allow me to run my own server, I'll pass.
- soapdog 12y ago
  author here. I didn't knew about WeChat since it is not popular here in Brazil. Using a QR to facilitate login is not a bad decision. Having this as the only method to authenticate makes it a bad client because it can't work as a standalone offering. I don't like when "web clients" are not full featured in the sense of allowing registration and login. Look at Evernotes, you can register and use thru the web client interface, there is no need for the app if you're on a platform that is not supported.
  - tempodox 12y ago
    Hi, author, I like your article but those animated GIFs are driving me nuts. Please don't make readers also watch a movie at the same time. Thanks.
shadeless 12y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8926644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8926644
- NietTim 12y ago
  Oh! I looked for it a bit but couldn't find it. My bad
  - julianwachholz 12y ago
    Try searching for "WhatsApp".
    - NietTim 12y ago
      TIL Hackernews has a searchbar I'm still finding my way trough this UI (Why is there no 'inbox' with replies to your comments?!)
      - phabian 12y ago
        Or google-fu: allintitle:whatsapp understand site:news.ycombinator.com
      - Jacqued 12y ago
        https://hn.algolia.com/ https://hn.algolia.com/
      - riquito 12y ago
        > TIL Hackernews has a searchbar It does, it's at bottom of each page
        frankzinger 12y ago
        On reddit 'TIL' means 'today I learned'. P.S. TIL some people automatically downvote any post containing the word 'reddit'.
buremba 12y ago
The web client requires my phone to be online and doesn't support offline notifications so that it has to be open all the time. I guess it's very much like Pushbullet for WhatsApp, not a desktop app for WhatsApp.
ComputerGuru 12y ago
...and it seems you can't use this feature with an iPhone (yet?). From their "web client": Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, BlackBerry 10, and Nokia S60. (In all fairness, my guess is it's pending acceptance of a newer version by the iOS/iTunes review team, but I really hope that's the case.) EDIT: Scratch that. They're not providing it on iOS because of how convoluted their approach to a web client is. What they have to say: "Unfortunately for now, we will not be able to provide web client to our iOS users due to Apple platform limitations." http://blog.whatsapp.com/614/WhatsApp-Web http://blog.whatsapp.com/614/WhatsApp-Web Yeah, right.
mmsimanga 12y ago
Whilst the developer in me appreciates the sentiments expressed in the article I have to point out that to build and app that is used by over 700 millions users you have to be focussed on a fairly narrow set of features. You need to execute those features very well and WhatsApp delivers.
- shawabawa3 12y ago
  Their original client works very well and was certainly the best im client at the time. Now all that's keeping people there is network effect. Telegram is just better at this point, and it works on almost every platform with no weird restrictions
  - plextoria 12y ago
    Does Telegram have an app for J2ME?
    - soapdog 12y ago
      No it doesn't but it does have a public API, libraries and is friendly to third-party developers so nothing is stopping someone from creating a J2ME based client. You can fetch source code from https://telegram.org/apps https://telegram.org/apps
  - samolang 12y ago
    Storing a history of all of your messages in the cloud isn't a feature for everyone.
- Joona 12y ago
  I want to chat, and WhatsApp is not letting me do that.
iagooar 12y ago
I just don't get it. What is so difficult about providing a one-time authentication through the user's phone? Just open Whatsapp on the smartphone, get a token, put your phone number and token and voilà! I mean, there have been web chats for decades now, so I don't understand why they invented such a messed up set of constraints. Besides, am I the only one who suspects that Whatsapp is boycotting Apple? They needed almost 2 months to get an iOS 8 update out, now they are limiting the "web" application to non-Apple users...
- k-mcgrady 12y ago
  >> "Besides, am I the only one who suspects that Whatsapp is boycotting Apple?" I understand the theory but all this does is hurt them. They need as many people as possible using there app for it be useful. They're also owned by Facebook who update all their apps weekly.
  - venomsnake 12y ago
    Facebook made the "Brilliant" move to remove the chat functionality from their app. So I am forced to use the mobile site of facebook ...
    - ponyous 12y ago
      On what platform are you? Is there no Messenger for it? (Maybe I'm missing the point)
      - venomsnake 12y ago
        Why should I have 2 crippled apps than one functional. Also one that has degraded functionality. And until android has fake permissions I won't install messenger.
        k-mcgrady 12y ago
        >> "Why should I have 2 crippled apps than one functional." I feel the opposite. Why should I have 1 slow, bogged down app when I can have two fast, functional ones?
frabcus 12y ago
I'd love a technical explanation of how this works. Are all the messages kept on the phone? How does it relate to the Whisper Systems end to end encryption on the Android to Android version of WhatsApp? Is there some relationship between the two - is this very bizarre web interface there because of constraints relating to privacy and encryption? i.e. WhatsApp don't have your messages. [Edit] Is it peer to peer in some fancy way - is it only for Chrome because it uses WebRTC or something?
- pjc50 12y ago
  Related discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8926644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8926644 It seems to be trying to keep the link between users and phone numbers as 1:1 as possible. This has a number of effects against bots and spam, ties in with matching users from other user's addressbooks etc. It's probably also bad for privacy/pseudonymity.
- jeffasinger 12y ago
  The Chrome only aspect is touched upon in the article. They are using the requestFileSystem() API, which only works on Chrome. I'm not sure why they couldn't have used a more standard means of storing data.
- calgoo 12y ago
  What i remember from the Erlang discussions around Whatsapp, they dont keep the messages on the server, only temporary until it has been delivered. So Im guessing that is the reason why they need your phone to be connected. Might have been in this video [1]... Not sure at the moment (will check later when im out of the office). [1] http://vimeo.com/44312354 http://vimeo.com/44312354
  - calgoo 12y ago
    OK found an explanation here: [1] "What protocol is used in Whatsapp app? SSL socket to the WhatsApp server pools. All messages are queued on the server until the client reconnects to retrieve the messages. The successful retrieval of a message is sent back to the whatsapp server which forwards this status back to the original sender (which will see that as a "checkmark" icon next to the message). Messages are wiped from the server memory as soon as the client has accepted the message" [1] http://www.quora.com/What-is-WhatsApps-server-architecture http://www.quora.com/What-is-WhatsApps-server-architecture
manion 12y ago
The web app gets approval from Snowden (http://www.bestvpnservice.com/blog/why-you-should-use-whatsapp-for-web/ http://www.bestvpnservice.com/blog/why-you-should-use-whatsa...) Great marketing!
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  Um, that's not what the article says. "The encryption tech" gets his approval, as in TextSecure's technology. Snowden didn't approve Whatsapp's implementation of it, and may not even use it for this web thing.
- lumberjack 12y ago
  It's proprietary and owned by Facebook. If that doesn't scare you away, nothing will.
ramonck 12y ago
Heck, let's just go back to Skype! :)
- giancarlostoro 12y ago
  Skype has some security issues that have yet to be resolved and knowing Microsoft's history with MSN Messenger, issues that will likely never be resolved. Also it is plenty unstable under Linux, sadly. I've found Viber to be easiest, only gotcha is you need it on your phone first before you use it elsewhere. Otherwise it's pretty spot on. It also looks and feels the same across platforms.
  - ramonck 12y ago
    I'm a Viber user but I still prefer Skype, it's the easiest platform to talk to people besides Whatsapp, and I think it's the best mobile video platform there's here today is Skype at least on Windows and iOS.
sravfeyn 12y ago
This is basically a Continuity feature that is PR-ed as Client.
waxjar 12y ago
I don't really see what purpose a WhatsApp web client serves to be honest. I was under the impression WhatsApp replaces SMS. It's linked to a phone number, so linked to a phone.
Smirnoff 12y ago
WhatsApp went from being a poster child to an ugly donkey in my country (Uzbekistan & other countries in Central Asia). Just two years ago everyone I knew was using WhatsApp, and what happened now? Most people use either Viber or Telegram, because uploading/downloading pics on WhatsApp takes forever. WhatsApp had a POTENTIALLY massive commercial use here and they blew it with paid subscriptions (which people in my country can't pay through Apple/Google stores). So people started switching their mobile numbers to get back into WhatsApp, which actually was really bad for WhatsApp but they blindly saw that as success. Their growth team probably said: "We are killing it because more and more people are signing up!" Yeah, but what's the churn rate? It's probably huge as well. These unique mobile users that they counted were actually the same people who couldn't find a way to pay. Ok, so if anyone from Whatsapp happened to read my post, here is how you can make (or could have made) money: - Charge businesses to communicate with their clients through WhatsApp. This is very straightforward -- businesses need A MAC/PC CLIENT for their team to talk to customers. I know our tech company wanted it, but you wouldn't let third party clients exist. So we sticked with Viber and Telegram. Luckily regular users also ditched WhatsApp. And look, we were not the only ones who needed it. The guy selling shoes/clothes would show products through WhatsApp. The local florist would show what he had available on particular day through pics on WhatsApp. Then he got tired of sending these pics to everyone, so he wanted to have these pics in his profile page. So who offered multiple pics in the profile? Telegram did. As much as I hated their deceptive claim about "being the most secure app", they actually managed to listen to users.
- rikkus 12y ago
  "uploading/downloading pics on WhatsApp takes forever" I haven't seen this, but I'm on Windows Phone, so perhaps it's platform-specific?
  - Smirnoff 12y ago
    Most likely it is geography-specific
  - saiya-jin 12y ago
    what is annoying for me is unreliability of delivery of messages. some never get to target phone! Simple scenario - I send messages 1, 2, 3. All three gets delivery on target phone (double gray "hook"), first one gets to be read (hooks turn blue), second doesn't, third does. Country - Switzerland. Both platforms - android. Just one step away from moving away from whatsapp, considering competition offers sometimes much more (ie viber - emoticons, childish but lovely way to talk to my gf :))
CmonDev 12y ago
Does it matter? They are sold now, so anything regarding them is yesterday news.
P4u1 12y ago
Don't you get it? It's a mobile app, which performs really well(hence no cloud storage I guess) and is associated with your phone, your phone is and will be the most important thing for whatsapp, the web thing is just a convenience for while you're at your laptop or desktop, like working and stuff, I find it awesome, it's a lot more productive then picking up the phone. I don't mind it requires having my phone connected to the web, it is all times, that's the point o whatsapp.
- alimbada 12y ago
  It's the one missing feature of WhatsApp that I personally have been wanting for a very long time so they have at least one happy customer with this... or they would if they'd hurry up and update the iOS client to to work with this. :)
- Joona 12y ago
  Not really. I want a replacement for Skype (just for text chat). That includes desktop.
- josteink 12y ago
  My wife just got an tablet and she absolutely loves it. She now uses it for absolutely everything she used to use her smart-phone for (except phone-calls I guess). She can't understand why she has to pick up the phone to use Whatsapp. Her solution has been to just use Facebook messenger instead. That was my reaction as well when I considered whatsapp: Why would I sign up for a IM service which only works on my phone? You may play this as a strength, but for a considerable amount of the user-base it seems like a pointless limitation. And the user-base sees that every other competitor offers this feature, and to them whatsapp is suddenly no longer that interesting.
TeeWEE 12y ago
While i agree whatsapp web should work in every browser the auther is forgetting one IMPORTANT gotcha: Whatsapp, is a messaging-routing platform. It doesnt store any messages. Thats what makes whatsapp strong. Its a feature. Thats why you need your phone. Its like SMS. They are not storing all your sensitive message. If you dont care about storing sensitive messages on servers. Use Telegram/Facebook Messaging, etc... I think its really a feature, that its not storing your messages.
- podgib 12y ago
  Plus one of the reasons whatsapp is useful is because you know your contacts have it on their phone, so it's like sending them a text message. If they made a standalone web client that you could use without a phone, it becomes just another IM platform.
- Igglyboo 12y ago
  Totally agree, this is a feature, not a shortcoming. I use WhatsApp primarily because it is extremely fast when compared to SMS, iMessage is fast as well but not all of my contacts have iPhones. If I want persistent group chat I'll use Hangouts or IRC/XMPP/Jabber etc. I have hundreds of options for that.
  - easytiger 12y ago
    > extremely fast In what way is, for example, Hangouts slow?
    - Igglyboo 12y ago
      It's slower than WhatsApp in almost all aspects. I can send a WhatsApp message to someone who is 500 miles away on wifi and get a response from them in less than 2 seconds. It takes 2 more than 2 seconds for them to RECIEVE a message on hangouts. I've personally timed this and heard similar experiences with a few other people.
- RIMR 12y ago
  But why not just store the messages in the browser memory?
azmenak 12y ago
This reminds me of how weChat/weixing implements their web client, minus the ridiculousness of chrome only `requestFileSystem()`. Scan a QR code from the client on your phone, and re-authentiate every time the connection is interrupted. If you don't use a supported platform, like a Blackberry, you pretty much have no way of communicating with anyone in China, since you can't login to the web client.
pshin 12y ago
o
Heliosmaster 12y ago
I don't get all the complaints. We are already talking about a modified version of XMPP that only works within their network. We should not complain about the crappyness of their web-client, but rather on the fact that they are not using an open-protocol like XMPP for which the plenty of clients, that suit everyone needs, already exist!
ce4 12y ago
This one is missing on the list: https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=web.whatsapp.com&s=158.85.40.234 https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=web.whatsapp.... Are they serious??? - Vulnerable to POODLE - too short HSTS value - RC4 - SSL3 "maybe they need to support ancient broken browsers" EDIT: As only Chrome is supported, RC4 & SSL3 are moot.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
niklas_a 12y ago
I love the web client. Works great for me!
newbington 12y ago
Sorry but after reading your post and your bio, I got a few points. 1st your career is too short to fully understand the web and be able to judge a company like facebook. 2nd you haven't realized that whatsapp might be its own company but its owned by facebook, and after the buyout facebook did a clear up on devs and hired / assigned their own devs to that. 3rd you haven't realized that the power of the web is fading over the power of mobile web! I understand that that's a blog and you are free to express your thoughts, but I am really repulsed by the fact that this post has so many upvotes. It makes me think that people reading and upvoting on this site have no idea of technology.
mataug 12y ago
I disagree with most of the things in this blog post. The web UI works and quite well that too. Whatsapp has been known to build things that work and that too fast. I don't care if it works only on chrome and doesn't work on the iPhone. They'll most probably fix it soon. I can think of one good reason why not having official APIs has been in whatsapp's favour. Almost no spam.
duckson 12y ago
Their site seems to be down, here's a Google cache link: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2VSoNL8SUcEJ:andregarzia.com/posts/en/whatsappdoesntunderstandtheweb/+&cd=1&hl=nl&ct=clnk&gl=nl http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2VSoNL8...
yummyfajitas 12y ago
I'd love to say this will make me drop whatsapp. But their lack of a web client didn't, neither did the terrible search or the invasion of privacy (not letting me turn off the blue double check mark). Sadly, whatsapp can do whatever they want and I'm stuck with it. No whatsapp, no women. I really like women.
dzamo_norton 12y ago
Standards defiance notwithstanding, the web client appears to work as advertised and will surely save many a neck and thumb from premature aging. It's interesting at this point to think about identity and authentication in WhatsApp. They've never had a username or password and their use of your mobile phone number as your identity seems to have been key to their success (the other factor I'd cite is good cross-platform support). WhatsApp authn on mobile consists of a once-off SMS verification to confirm you are running WhatsApp on the mobile device hosting the SIM card corresponding to the phone number identity you've claimed for yourself. That said, I recently saw a case of someone using a temporary pre-paid SIM card while she was traveling here in South Africa yet her WhatsApp messages from that phone still appeared to come from her New Zealand number. Not sure how that passed the authn. The lack of username and password, I believe, is what has led to some of the unnaturalness of the WhatsApp web app. I don't think that their remarks of "the web browser mirrors conversations and messages from your mobile device -- this means all of your messages still live on your phone." reveal all of what guided their design choices. Instead I think they need the phone there and online because they have no username and password (or any other identity + authn).
mercer 12y ago
Is there a good reason to not switch to Telegram (or another alternative), which has a web client and native desktop clients? Especially on mobile it's almost no trouble to use two chat apps side by side, as most of the interaction happens through notifications (which send you straight to relevant app). I switched initially because I was a bit uncomfortable with having long, personal conversations on a Facebook-owned property with no export capabilities, but I've been getting more and more of my friends to switch simply because of the very solid web and desktop apps. And even though they complain initially about installing 'yet another app', in practice it's no trouble (since they only have to use the two apps on mobile, where using both is not really an issue). The main thing I'm wondering, I guess, is: is it mostly perception that keeps people within one mobile chat ecosystem, or am I underestimating how difficult it is for the average user to use more than one app, and/or slowly move to another app?

224 points by NietTim 12y ago

Umm. Obviously the web client is supposed to be used on the desktop, not on a phone. They have apps for phones. Doesn't excuse the Chrome-only-ness, though.

Joona 12y ago
I have a Jolla (Sailfish) phone. I can not use the web client, because I need an Android, Windows or Blackberry phone. WhatsApp does however work fine on my phone (via Alien Dalvik). This "web client" is not actually a web client - it's just an app for your phone that you can display on your computer monitor.
- zeroDivisible 12y ago
  A bit of an off-topic question - how would you rate Sailfish and it's interop with Android stuff?
  - Joona 12y ago
    Sailfish itself is much better than anything I have ever used - it's clearly designed for touchscreens. For hackers it's awesome because it's actually a Linux, and you can access shell (as a root, too). Android support is a bit buggy though - for example Skype sometimes breaks (can not send messages), but Spotify and WhatsApp have worked perfectly fine. If you are interested in it, they dropped the price a while back (down to 250eur).
  - fotcorn 12y ago
    The interop with Android works great. Spotify, HN App, reddit is fun, YouTube, Google Chrome and Google Play Store(!) work without problems except for some crashes from time to time. The only problematic app is WhatsApp because the notifications only go into the native Sailfish notification area when an Android app is in the foreground. Many apps and copy&pasting between native/Android apps were fixed in the last Sailfish version released 3 weeks ago.
DanBC 12y ago
There are phones that have WWW access that do not run Android or iOS. Whatsapp apps miss very many people who'd use it if they could.
- Kurtz79 12y ago
  Android and iOS have more than 95% market share. http://www.idc.com/prodserv/smartphone-os-market-share.jsp http://www.idc.com/prodserv/smartphone-os-market-share.jsp I suppose the benefits of supporting the remaining 5% against the costs of having to develop and mantain another client(s) have been discussed internally in Whatsapp. "It would be nice" and "it would be commercially sound" are very different propostions.
  - icebraining 12y ago
    Android and iOS have more than 95% market share of the smartphones market. Plenty of people access the web with feature phones. In fact, that's why Whatsapp has clients for Nokia S60 and S40.
    - Kurtz79 12y ago
      My argument still stands. Would be commercially sound to support these "plenty of people" ?
      - icebraining 12y ago
        Apparently it is, since Whatsapp does write clients for them. You can't tell me that writing a J2ME app from scratch is easier than adapting a web client to work on a somewhat more limited browser.
  - briandear 12y ago
    That statistic is meaningless. The percentage of what's app users using a particular platform is far more important, assuming their customers matter to them. There are a lot of Nokia users on What's App. As far as iOS, with iMessage, what's app is redundant unless you have a lot of friends using another platform. If there's a legitimate security benefit from What's App, then perhaps that's compelling, but trusting a Facebook company with anything remotely related to privacy and security is a fool's errand. Zuck has yet to prove that privacy and security matter. For secure messaging I generally use a courier and a message written on paper using a one-time pad. Slower but more secure. If it goes over a wire, the odds of it being actually secure are low, unless you handle the encryption and control the keys yourself.
bcraven 12y ago
>not on a phone If the app isn't running on the phone then there shouldn't be any need for the phone to be connected to the internet ("Mistake Three" in the article)
pjmlp 12y ago
Chrome is the new IE. The new web developers generation just replaced IE with Chrome.
- TheAnimus 12y ago
  Having a very quick look, I see a websocket connection, which IE can do just fine. The only thing I see that it can't is the desktop notification, which you still have some ability, in fact 'pinned' sites in IE let you have a number badge on the taskbar, which is quite good for a chat app, see Skype.

eatonphil 12y ago

To be fair, the WeChat desktop client also requires that you scan a QR code from your smartphone to log in. I'm not defending WeChat, but it doesn't seem like the author knows WhatsApp is not alone there.

snitko 12y ago
Exactly. This is outrageous. The only decent chat app these days is Telegram, really. Even they still want you to use your phone to log in (but only once). But I guess that's the way it is for now. Frankly, I hope those apps will all be gone and forgotten in favor of an actual open sourced, widely used protocol. Or maybe they'd incorporate one. But in any case, I think it's a shame that when email is decentralized, chatting is not.
- jhasse 12y ago
  Telegram's protocol is open source.
  - pferde 12y ago
    If they do not allow me to run my own server, I'll pass.
soapdog 12y ago
author here. I didn't knew about WeChat since it is not popular here in Brazil. Using a QR to facilitate login is not a bad decision. Having this as the only method to authenticate makes it a bad client because it can't work as a standalone offering. I don't like when "web clients" are not full featured in the sense of allowing registration and login. Look at Evernotes, you can register and use thru the web client interface, there is no need for the app if you're on a platform that is not supported.
- tempodox 12y ago
  Hi, author, I like your article but those animated GIFs are driving me nuts. Please don't make readers also watch a movie at the same time. Thanks.

shadeless 12y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8926644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8926644

NietTim 12y ago
Oh! I looked for it a bit but couldn't find it. My bad
- julianwachholz 12y ago
  Try searching for "WhatsApp".
  - NietTim 12y ago
    TIL Hackernews has a searchbar I'm still finding my way trough this UI (Why is there no 'inbox' with replies to your comments?!)
    - phabian 12y ago
      Or google-fu: allintitle:whatsapp understand site:news.ycombinator.com
    - Jacqued 12y ago
      https://hn.algolia.com/ https://hn.algolia.com/
    - riquito 12y ago
      > TIL Hackernews has a searchbar It does, it's at bottom of each page
      - frankzinger 12y ago
        On reddit 'TIL' means 'today I learned'. P.S. TIL some people automatically downvote any post containing the word 'reddit'.

buremba 12y ago

The web client requires my phone to be online and doesn't support offline notifications so that it has to be open all the time. I guess it's very much like Pushbullet for WhatsApp, not a desktop app for WhatsApp.

ComputerGuru 12y ago

...and it seems you can't use this feature with an iPhone (yet?). From their "web client": Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, BlackBerry 10, and Nokia S60. (In all fairness, my guess is it's pending acceptance of a newer version by the iOS/iTunes review team, but I really hope that's the case.) EDIT: Scratch that. They're not providing it on iOS because of how convoluted their approach to a web client is. What they have to say: "Unfortunately for now, we will not be able to provide web client to our iOS users due to Apple platform limitations." http://blog.whatsapp.com/614/WhatsApp-Web http://blog.whatsapp.com/614/WhatsApp-Web Yeah, right.

mmsimanga 12y ago

Whilst the developer in me appreciates the sentiments expressed in the article I have to point out that to build and app that is used by over 700 millions users you have to be focussed on a fairly narrow set of features. You need to execute those features very well and WhatsApp delivers.

shawabawa3 12y ago
Their original client works very well and was certainly the best im client at the time. Now all that's keeping people there is network effect. Telegram is just better at this point, and it works on almost every platform with no weird restrictions
- plextoria 12y ago
  Does Telegram have an app for J2ME?
  - soapdog 12y ago
    No it doesn't but it does have a public API, libraries and is friendly to third-party developers so nothing is stopping someone from creating a J2ME based client. You can fetch source code from https://telegram.org/apps https://telegram.org/apps
- samolang 12y ago
  Storing a history of all of your messages in the cloud isn't a feature for everyone.
Joona 12y ago
I want to chat, and WhatsApp is not letting me do that.

iagooar 12y ago

I just don't get it. What is so difficult about providing a one-time authentication through the user's phone? Just open Whatsapp on the smartphone, get a token, put your phone number and token and voilà! I mean, there have been web chats for decades now, so I don't understand why they invented such a messed up set of constraints. Besides, am I the only one who suspects that Whatsapp is boycotting Apple? They needed almost 2 months to get an iOS 8 update out, now they are limiting the "web" application to non-Apple users...

k-mcgrady 12y ago
>> "Besides, am I the only one who suspects that Whatsapp is boycotting Apple?" I understand the theory but all this does is hurt them. They need as many people as possible using there app for it be useful. They're also owned by Facebook who update all their apps weekly.
- venomsnake 12y ago
  Facebook made the "Brilliant" move to remove the chat functionality from their app. So I am forced to use the mobile site of facebook ...
  - ponyous 12y ago
    On what platform are you? Is there no Messenger for it? (Maybe I'm missing the point)
    - venomsnake 12y ago
      Why should I have 2 crippled apps than one functional. Also one that has degraded functionality. And until android has fake permissions I won't install messenger.
      - k-mcgrady 12y ago
        >> "Why should I have 2 crippled apps than one functional." I feel the opposite. Why should I have 1 slow, bogged down app when I can have two fast, functional ones?

frabcus 12y ago

I'd love a technical explanation of how this works. Are all the messages kept on the phone? How does it relate to the Whisper Systems end to end encryption on the Android to Android version of WhatsApp? Is there some relationship between the two - is this very bizarre web interface there because of constraints relating to privacy and encryption? i.e. WhatsApp don't have your messages. [Edit] Is it peer to peer in some fancy way - is it only for Chrome because it uses WebRTC or something?

pjc50 12y ago
Related discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8926644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8926644 It seems to be trying to keep the link between users and phone numbers as 1:1 as possible. This has a number of effects against bots and spam, ties in with matching users from other user's addressbooks etc. It's probably also bad for privacy/pseudonymity.
jeffasinger 12y ago
The Chrome only aspect is touched upon in the article. They are using the requestFileSystem() API, which only works on Chrome. I'm not sure why they couldn't have used a more standard means of storing data.
calgoo 12y ago
What i remember from the Erlang discussions around Whatsapp, they dont keep the messages on the server, only temporary until it has been delivered. So Im guessing that is the reason why they need your phone to be connected. Might have been in this video [1]... Not sure at the moment (will check later when im out of the office). [1] http://vimeo.com/44312354 http://vimeo.com/44312354
- calgoo 12y ago
  OK found an explanation here: [1] "What protocol is used in Whatsapp app? SSL socket to the WhatsApp server pools. All messages are queued on the server until the client reconnects to retrieve the messages. The successful retrieval of a message is sent back to the whatsapp server which forwards this status back to the original sender (which will see that as a "checkmark" icon next to the message). Messages are wiped from the server memory as soon as the client has accepted the message" [1] http://www.quora.com/What-is-WhatsApps-server-architecture http://www.quora.com/What-is-WhatsApps-server-architecture

manion 12y ago

The web app gets approval from Snowden (http://www.bestvpnservice.com/blog/why-you-should-use-whatsapp-for-web/ http://www.bestvpnservice.com/blog/why-you-should-use-whatsa...) Great marketing!

higherpurpose 12y ago
Um, that's not what the article says. "The encryption tech" gets his approval, as in TextSecure's technology. Snowden didn't approve Whatsapp's implementation of it, and may not even use it for this web thing.
lumberjack 12y ago
It's proprietary and owned by Facebook. If that doesn't scare you away, nothing will.

ramonck 12y ago

Heck, let's just go back to Skype! :)

giancarlostoro 12y ago
Skype has some security issues that have yet to be resolved and knowing Microsoft's history with MSN Messenger, issues that will likely never be resolved. Also it is plenty unstable under Linux, sadly. I've found Viber to be easiest, only gotcha is you need it on your phone first before you use it elsewhere. Otherwise it's pretty spot on. It also looks and feels the same across platforms.
- ramonck 12y ago
  I'm a Viber user but I still prefer Skype, it's the easiest platform to talk to people besides Whatsapp, and I think it's the best mobile video platform there's here today is Skype at least on Windows and iOS.

sravfeyn 12y ago

This is basically a Continuity feature that is PR-ed as Client.

waxjar 12y ago

I don't really see what purpose a WhatsApp web client serves to be honest. I was under the impression WhatsApp replaces SMS. It's linked to a phone number, so linked to a phone.

Smirnoff 12y ago

WhatsApp went from being a poster child to an ugly donkey in my country (Uzbekistan & other countries in Central Asia). Just two years ago everyone I knew was using WhatsApp, and what happened now? Most people use either Viber or Telegram, because uploading/downloading pics on WhatsApp takes forever. WhatsApp had a POTENTIALLY massive commercial use here and they blew it with paid subscriptions (which people in my country can't pay through Apple/Google stores). So people started switching their mobile numbers to get back into WhatsApp, which actually was really bad for WhatsApp but they blindly saw that as success. Their growth team probably said: "We are killing it because more and more people are signing up!" Yeah, but what's the churn rate? It's probably huge as well. These unique mobile users that they counted were actually the same people who couldn't find a way to pay. Ok, so if anyone from Whatsapp happened to read my post, here is how you can make (or could have made) money: - Charge businesses to communicate with their clients through WhatsApp. This is very straightforward -- businesses need A MAC/PC CLIENT for their team to talk to customers. I know our tech company wanted it, but you wouldn't let third party clients exist. So we sticked with Viber and Telegram. Luckily regular users also ditched WhatsApp. And look, we were not the only ones who needed it. The guy selling shoes/clothes would show products through WhatsApp. The local florist would show what he had available on particular day through pics on WhatsApp. Then he got tired of sending these pics to everyone, so he wanted to have these pics in his profile page. So who offered multiple pics in the profile? Telegram did. As much as I hated their deceptive claim about "being the most secure app", they actually managed to listen to users.

rikkus 12y ago
"uploading/downloading pics on WhatsApp takes forever" I haven't seen this, but I'm on Windows Phone, so perhaps it's platform-specific?
- Smirnoff 12y ago
  Most likely it is geography-specific
- saiya-jin 12y ago
  what is annoying for me is unreliability of delivery of messages. some never get to target phone! Simple scenario - I send messages 1, 2, 3. All three gets delivery on target phone (double gray "hook"), first one gets to be read (hooks turn blue), second doesn't, third does. Country - Switzerland. Both platforms - android. Just one step away from moving away from whatsapp, considering competition offers sometimes much more (ie viber - emoticons, childish but lovely way to talk to my gf :))

CmonDev 12y ago

Does it matter? They are sold now, so anything regarding them is yesterday news.

P4u1 12y ago

Don't you get it? It's a mobile app, which performs really well(hence no cloud storage I guess) and is associated with your phone, your phone is and will be the most important thing for whatsapp, the web thing is just a convenience for while you're at your laptop or desktop, like working and stuff, I find it awesome, it's a lot more productive then picking up the phone. I don't mind it requires having my phone connected to the web, it is all times, that's the point o whatsapp.

alimbada 12y ago
It's the one missing feature of WhatsApp that I personally have been wanting for a very long time so they have at least one happy customer with this... or they would if they'd hurry up and update the iOS client to to work with this. :)
Joona 12y ago
Not really. I want a replacement for Skype (just for text chat). That includes desktop.
josteink 12y ago
My wife just got an tablet and she absolutely loves it. She now uses it for absolutely everything she used to use her smart-phone for (except phone-calls I guess). She can't understand why she has to pick up the phone to use Whatsapp. Her solution has been to just use Facebook messenger instead. That was my reaction as well when I considered whatsapp: Why would I sign up for a IM service which only works on my phone? You may play this as a strength, but for a considerable amount of the user-base it seems like a pointless limitation. And the user-base sees that every other competitor offers this feature, and to them whatsapp is suddenly no longer that interesting.

TeeWEE 12y ago

While i agree whatsapp web should work in every browser the auther is forgetting one IMPORTANT gotcha: Whatsapp, is a messaging-routing platform. It doesnt store any messages. Thats what makes whatsapp strong. Its a feature. Thats why you need your phone. Its like SMS. They are not storing all your sensitive message. If you dont care about storing sensitive messages on servers. Use Telegram/Facebook Messaging, etc... I think its really a feature, that its not storing your messages.

podgib 12y ago
Plus one of the reasons whatsapp is useful is because you know your contacts have it on their phone, so it's like sending them a text message. If they made a standalone web client that you could use without a phone, it becomes just another IM platform.
Igglyboo 12y ago
Totally agree, this is a feature, not a shortcoming. I use WhatsApp primarily because it is extremely fast when compared to SMS, iMessage is fast as well but not all of my contacts have iPhones. If I want persistent group chat I'll use Hangouts or IRC/XMPP/Jabber etc. I have hundreds of options for that.
- easytiger 12y ago
  > extremely fast In what way is, for example, Hangouts slow?
  - Igglyboo 12y ago
    It's slower than WhatsApp in almost all aspects. I can send a WhatsApp message to someone who is 500 miles away on wifi and get a response from them in less than 2 seconds. It takes 2 more than 2 seconds for them to RECIEVE a message on hangouts. I've personally timed this and heard similar experiences with a few other people.
RIMR 12y ago
But why not just store the messages in the browser memory?

azmenak 12y ago

This reminds me of how weChat/weixing implements their web client, minus the ridiculousness of chrome only `requestFileSystem()`. Scan a QR code from the client on your phone, and re-authentiate every time the connection is interrupted. If you don't use a supported platform, like a Blackberry, you pretty much have no way of communicating with anyone in China, since you can't login to the web client.

pshin 12y ago

Heliosmaster 12y ago

I don't get all the complaints. We are already talking about a modified version of XMPP that only works within their network. We should not complain about the crappyness of their web-client, but rather on the fact that they are not using an open-protocol like XMPP for which the plenty of clients, that suit everyone needs, already exist!

ce4 12y ago

This one is missing on the list: https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=web.whatsapp.com&s=158.85.40.234 https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=web.whatsapp.... Are they serious??? - Vulnerable to POODLE - too short HSTS value - RC4 - SSL3 "maybe they need to support ancient broken browsers" EDIT: As only Chrome is supported, RC4 & SSL3 are moot.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

niklas_a 12y ago

I love the web client. Works great for me!

newbington 12y ago

Sorry but after reading your post and your bio, I got a few points. 1st your career is too short to fully understand the web and be able to judge a company like facebook. 2nd you haven't realized that whatsapp might be its own company but its owned by facebook, and after the buyout facebook did a clear up on devs and hired / assigned their own devs to that. 3rd you haven't realized that the power of the web is fading over the power of mobile web! I understand that that's a blog and you are free to express your thoughts, but I am really repulsed by the fact that this post has so many upvotes. It makes me think that people reading and upvoting on this site have no idea of technology.

mataug 12y ago

I disagree with most of the things in this blog post. The web UI works and quite well that too. Whatsapp has been known to build things that work and that too fast. I don't care if it works only on chrome and doesn't work on the iPhone. They'll most probably fix it soon. I can think of one good reason why not having official APIs has been in whatsapp's favour. Almost no spam.

duckson 12y ago

Their site seems to be down, here's a Google cache link: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2VSoNL8SUcEJ:andregarzia.com/posts/en/whatsappdoesntunderstandtheweb/+&cd=1&hl=nl&ct=clnk&gl=nl http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2VSoNL8...

yummyfajitas 12y ago

I'd love to say this will make me drop whatsapp. But their lack of a web client didn't, neither did the terrible search or the invasion of privacy (not letting me turn off the blue double check mark). Sadly, whatsapp can do whatever they want and I'm stuck with it. No whatsapp, no women. I really like women.

dzamo_norton 12y ago

Standards defiance notwithstanding, the web client appears to work as advertised and will surely save many a neck and thumb from premature aging. It's interesting at this point to think about identity and authentication in WhatsApp. They've never had a username or password and their use of your mobile phone number as your identity seems to have been key to their success (the other factor I'd cite is good cross-platform support). WhatsApp authn on mobile consists of a once-off SMS verification to confirm you are running WhatsApp on the mobile device hosting the SIM card corresponding to the phone number identity you've claimed for yourself. That said, I recently saw a case of someone using a temporary pre-paid SIM card while she was traveling here in South Africa yet her WhatsApp messages from that phone still appeared to come from her New Zealand number. Not sure how that passed the authn. The lack of username and password, I believe, is what has led to some of the unnaturalness of the WhatsApp web app. I don't think that their remarks of "the web browser mirrors conversations and messages from your mobile device -- this means all of your messages still live on your phone." reveal all of what guided their design choices. Instead I think they need the phone there and online because they have no username and password (or any other identity + authn).

mercer 12y ago

Is there a good reason to not switch to Telegram (or another alternative), which has a web client and native desktop clients? Especially on mobile it's almost no trouble to use two chat apps side by side, as most of the interaction happens through notifications (which send you straight to relevant app). I switched initially because I was a bit uncomfortable with having long, personal conversations on a Facebook-owned property with no export capabilities, but I've been getting more and more of my friends to switch simply because of the very solid web and desktop apps. And even though they complain initially about installing 'yet another app', in practice it's no trouble (since they only have to use the two apps on mobile, where using both is not really an issue). The main thing I'm wondering, I guess, is: is it mostly perception that keeps people within one mobile chat ecosystem, or am I underestimating how difficult it is for the average user to use more than one app, and/or slowly move to another app?