WHATSAPP: A UNIQUE WAY OF COMMUNICATION
We all living in the era of mobile technologies where the mobile is used to interchange messages or exchange information’s with the other users at anytime and anywhere. We all are using the instant messaging application like BBM, line, Wechat and Whats app. lets walk through an instant messaging tool which got so popular is small span of time and provide user the freedom of sending and receiving not only text but audio, video and pictures too.
Whats app is a cross platform instant messaging service that was developed by the former employees of yahoo and USA citizens “Brian Acton” and “Jan Koum” (Ceo of whats app) and company is based in mountain view California. Whats app was launched whats beta version in November 2009 at that time user has to buy sms pack for sharing free messages. Application (named Whats app) was designed by jan koum and brian acton provides user the advantage of sharing unlimited number of messages to the user who is using the application using a data connection to transmit messages and whats app charges $0.99 for the service.
Whats app provide user the advantage of not only sharing the text messages between users or groups but also provide the advantage of sharing videos, audio and Picture messages between the users without costing them for each message.
WHATS APP: HOW IT BECOME MILLION DOLLAR IDEA…….
It was started when in june 2009 apple launched its service Push notification for letting developers ping users when user is not using an application. Koum (Ceo and master mind behind the Whats app) updated whats app so that each user in network will get notified when the user change its status.
Whats app 2.0 version was enhanced with the features of messaging component which leads to an increase in users to 250,000.
Koum visited Brian Acton who was unemployed at that time to join the company. In October 2009 Brian convince 5 ex-yahoo employees to invest in the whatsapp an amount of $250,000 for enable seeding for application. Brian Acton joined whats app official on November 1 2009.
App was launched in November 2009 in Apple App store and mainly for apple users. Then koum hire an old friend chris peiffer for developing a version of whats app for blackberry operating system which was also lauched after 2 months of initial launch of the application.
Within a period of 2 years users on whats app are exchanging over a 1 billion Messages on the application ever day.
In Early 2011 whats app was among the top 20 apps on the U.S app store
WHATS APP: REASON BEHIND MAKING THE SERVICE A PAID ONE………
The main reason behind making service to paid because due the cost occurring for sending verification messages to the application user as the application is growing at fast pace the team decided to take a small charge from users using the service.
WHATS APP: PLATFORM SUPPORT
The service was eventually launched for apple users only but after launch of beta version of app for apple and after few months the blackberry version of application was launched for blackberry users And in may 2010 launched the application for the symbian operating system and developed application for android platform which is widely used platform now a days in august 2010. Support for non – Smartphone platform nokia series 40 was launched in august 2012.subsequently support for windows phone was launched.
WHATSAPP: TECHNICAL ASPECTS
Whats app uses an open standard Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) for transferring data between the application and the servers. It create user account by using phone number as the username (Jabber ID: [phone number]@s.whatsapp.net) and uses phone IMEI Code for the Password but in 2012 application generates a random password on the server side.
Whats app automatically compares contact numbers from the address book and match them from the centralized database maintained by whats app for the user listed on whats app to get connected to them easily.
WHATS APP: SECURITY ISSUES WITH THE APPLICATION
In may 2011 security breach was reported as the data transmitted by the application was as a plain text if a hacker get access to the packet then s/he will easily reads the information and send manipulated data to the user.
In January 2012 an unknown hacker published a website named whatsappstatus.net where the status message of whats app user can be changed without his permission if the phone number is known.
In January 2012 again whats app was removed from apple app store and from windows phone store due to some technical reasons the app was added back after few days.
On September 14, 2012 a german tech site demonstrate the api which hacks any whats app accounts.
WHATS APP: ACQUISITION BY THE SOCIAL NETWORKING GIANT FACEBOOK
On February 19, 2014 acquisition of the largest growing instant messaging application company (Whats app) was announced by Facebook. It was the highest paid acquisition till date worth $19 billion in the history of acquisitions of companies. The users of whats app increases as many folds and facebook introduced many feature on facebook and in application to make connectivity between users of application and facebook more effective.
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