Of course it is a duplicate. The software doesn't catch all of those; that's on purpose, to allow good stories multiple cracks at the bat (edit: i.e. multiple chances to get attention). We rely on users to search before posting and on moderators to bury the dupes that sneak through. User comments pointing out the duplication are helpful.
This isn't a perfect system but it's much better than being too strict about reposts. We're going to work on a more effective dupe detection system as soon as we can get to it.
Because it's not reddit (stop acting like it's reddit - the communities and conventions are quite different) and if you want to participate in a discussion, stay in the thread.
Did you come from /r/programming? There have been a few comment threads talking about hacker news recently.
You're making excuses for poor UX in a way that makes you sound elitist. Not alerting you that you have replies is ridiculous. "Stay in the thread"? No, thanks, I'm not going to keep checking my comments for replies. Thankfully there's hnnotify.
It really does, but the anti-Javascript crowd here is very vocal and would likely inspire some sort of Digg-like exodus if the UI were ever brought into the 21st century.
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.
It's awesome to read about use cases in countries I know little about. Viber, Telegram for direct marketing? Wow. How do people decide to join? How do you do ad's?
Just like in Argentina in '11 I was amazed that all SME had Facebooks, and were just skipping the website-part I was used to.
Funny how local circumstances (might your Whatsapp problem just be an upload-to-US problem?) create different business environments. It reminds me that country-specific network and adoption effect exist and matter.
Doing business in countries like Uzbekistan is tough because of inability to get payments. But there is a solution to that and it's called MIDDLE MAN.
For example, Facebook ads are really picking up here. Of course, most small businesses cannot pay to Facebook directly due to tight payment regulations. So what happens? A middle man comes in. He signs up as a Facebook partner (or regular user), finds small local businesses that pay him extra and then he pays Facebook through his internationally accepted cards to show ads belonging to others.
I have no doubt that if American companies came here and tried a little, they would quickly realize that Uzbeks are entrepreneurs, who can be good partners and can make lots of money.
Even the ideas that I see pop up in the United States have been implemented here long time ago. For instance, we had car-sharing service in Uzbekistan since I was a child -- we just didn't have GPS and mobile phones to make an Uber, so we had middle men finding riders and putting them into one car. Then the driver would pay a fee for that.
Same thing with delivery -- we had delivery services, which you could call, so they could find the closest person to you (or the store/pharmacy) and deliver the items quickly. You would just pay cash to the driver (which of course had to be trustworthy-- otherwise delivery service wouldn't work with them)
What you call a "Middle Man" is also known as a "Market Maker" or a "Liquidity Provider". He takes on the risk of connecting supply and demand in order to profit from the bid/ask spread.
The "Middle Man" has been replaced with technology because it's more efficient and enables more liquidity than an actual man or a network of men could.
If you see solutions popping up in Uzbekistan for basic logistical problems such as transportation and delivery, perhaps you should try to implement them elsewhere? I would be interested to hear more examples that could be implemented elsewhere in the world.
> Viber, Telegram for direct marketing? Wow. How do people decide to join? How do you do ad's?
I've lived in a country where LINE, an IM/Call/Video/Games/etc is hugely popular.
Companies have official accounts which works for a couple of reasons:
1. Sometimes they gets automatically added to your list I think. I might have just forgotten how I got them though do don't quote me on this.
2. App specific promotions "follow us for xy and z". I guess this is the ads you're wondering about, it's basically a "100%" impression rate towards costumers you already know is interested in your brand.
3. Stickers are something that are huuuuge. Companies can create their own cute ones that obviously include the logo in one way or another. People then get them for free or buy them. I think companie pay to have them in the store for free, while paid stickers gives LINE a cut.
4. General curiosity from costumers, "Hm I wonder if AirAsia has a LINE account, maybe they have some discount there?"
Obviously you can block each account if you so please.
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 :))
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.
Perhaps someone can answer this for me. I've seen several comments here saying WhatsApp doesn't store conversations. The other day someone sent me a picture on WhatsApp. Before looking at the message I was going through my photo gallery and noticed a random picture I didn't take so I deleted it. When I went to look at the message it was just a blurred out photo of the picture I had deleted and when I clicked it it said the media didn't exist on my SD card. Now, if I log into the web version that picture is fully visible. This suggests to me that they keep at least the pictures on their server. So is it only the text portion they don't keep?
Recently my Z10 got bricked. The only backup available was from April 2014. I bought a new Z10 and restored the backup on that phone. I was expecting that all WhatsApp messages and pictures received between April 2014 and the restoration date would not be available. But, WhatsApp did somehow pull the messages and pictures from recent months. So, where did it restore the messages/pictures from? From other contacts' phones?
WhatsApp definitely stores your messages on their server. They have to. If you send a WhatsApp message to someone and their phone is off, does it bounce? If not, they are storing your messages at some point.
Just because they say they don't store them forever really doesn't mean much, and I am pretty surprised by how many people on HN keep repeating it.
Yes, the photos are indeed stored on the server for some amount of time. If you dig into the obfuscated messages.db file from WhatsApp (I don't know about now, but it used to be encrypted with a known key, and there are tools for decryption available), you'll see that it stores a tiny JPEG thumbnail and an HTTPS URL on their servers where the photo can be retrieved. Though if you try to get to older pics you are just presented an error message that it's no longer available.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. :)
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.
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...
I believe the issue is that unlike web chats and apps like Telegram, Whatsapp doesn't store conversations on their servers beyond what is required to deliver messages to the required destination device(s).
This presents obvious problems with having not just a web client, but any client other than the main device, since the main device is the only store of the existing conversations. New messages sent also need to be synchronized across devices, which I presume is why it's required to keep your phone connected to the Internet. Otherwise Whatsapp would need keep conversations on their servers until they could be synced, which is very much not their model.
If the system is reliant on the main device, what happens if that gets run over or destroyed? WhatsApp have no control over the fate of the device.
Why wouldn't they store the messages on the server and sync from that? WhatsApp have control of the fate of their own servers, which is far more reliable, SURELY.
If I send a new message from a device, either the other devices can poll periodically for messages that I have sent, or they can use WebSockets and be notified when a new message is sent, or when the app opens it can fetch all the recent messages that I have sent from other devices. It isn't difficult with a fine grained timestamp, surely? That's what Google Talk does.
You'd only need to order my messages by timestamp to get all messages that I had sent.
It's a bit of a daft architecture if it is incapable of this basic mechanism, isn't it?
It's actually a feature, not poor architecture. They're putting security and privacy above UX. This is especially important in this day and age with all of the NSA and related revelations.
If you want a better UX there are hundreds of other options available.
WhatsApp operates at insane scale very cheaply. It's one reason they can charge $1 per year or less (lots of users don't seem to pay - they keep giving me free extensions for example). Not archiving all messages on their end keeps their costs in check, and is better for privacy.
I think they are using web sockets or something which requires persistent connection between the phone and browser. Since on iOS, apps can't run in background this approach will not work on iOS.
I would have thought the whole point of a web client was so that people who don't have a supported phone can get in on the fun. If I have to have WA on my phone to authenticate a web client then said client is just the useless toy described in the article.
I confess, I've never used it and don't want to pass judgment without actually checking it out but if what the article describes is true than, yeah, they screwed this one up big time.
Telegram store your message and conversation history on their servers, whereas Whatsapp run somewhat like SMS - they pass your message on to the destination and then forget about it.
Clearly every point in the chain matters, but it always surprised me that a company that puts so much emphasis on security and privacy thinks it's a good idea to keep your messages in the cloud:
"Unlike WhatsApp, Telegram is cloud-based and heavily encrypted. As a result, you can access your messages from several devices at once"[1]
Actually, you have to assume that any encryption is a temporary measure; it can and will be broken in the future. With that in mind, if something is worth encrypting, it's possible you don't want the service to store it after it's useful.
Of course, whatsapp could register devices which are thrown away after x days without delivery then store the messages until delivered to all end devices but that's likely a core infrastructure update which would require them to store more data, not the same as just writing another client.
Still, what they've created as a web client is a little batty; typically I'd want to use those when I can't find my phone.
>> "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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
"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"
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.
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?
...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."
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
WeChat is extremely popular in China, which is why I bring it up. And as far as I am aware, QR is the ONLY way you can log in on desktop. Or I just haven't figured it out yet.
Seconded. Please stop writing articles that look like they're aimed at 14 year olds.
EDIT: If you feel the need to use cutesy graphics to get your point across, at least make them static. Animated gifs are incredibly distracting when trying to read anything more involved than a tweet, or a silly meme macro.
PM on the WeChat desktop client here! Lots of users say this, but has been pointed out, has security/architecture implications. Let me know if you have any other suggestions!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
