Author Archives: Christine

Who doesn’t use WhatsApp nowadays? It seems nearly nobody. This popular instant messaging application has reached in August 900 million active monthly users who, through this app, exchange messages, pictures, make Voice Calls and much more. Many platforms support this app, which can currently be used on Android, iPhone, and Windows Phone smartphones.These are the most famous, but we must not forget that you can enjoy WhatsApp also on other kind of devices, and Symbian is one of them.

In the last few days there were some news for Symbian users, who can now download a new beta version of WhatsApp. Version 2.12.128 has been released (the last one was version 2.12.100) and, along with some usual bug fixes, it doesn’t bring any change-log, at least not officially. Anyway, you can download this new version of WhatsApp from the official web site of the app. So, what actually changes? As we were saying, there aren’t any change log or any new features. But performances of chat and media have been improved, especially for the loading time of phones like Nokia N8.

To download the new WhatsApp update on your Symbian phone first of all you have to be connected to the internet. Then you need to launch WhatsApp. Once you have opened the app (which has a built in update checker completed by an updater function) you simply have to go to Menu > Settings > Updates > Check for updates. At this point, after a while, WhatsApp will show you if there is an available update. If so you have to click on the “Install update” button, and you will have the upgrade installed on your device.

Even if it seems not a great change in itself, nevertheless it represents something really remarkable, as WhatsApp is maybe the only app for Symbian which is still regularly updated. In fact, the developers of the other apps stopped improving their apps due to the end of the mobile OS. Symbian is still used by millions of people, particularly in Africa and Asia, where Symbian 3 Bell based phones are still used. At the moment developers can’t update any app through the Nokia Store (OVI) as Microsoft has already suspended every online service related to Symbian.

So, are you one of those people that when chatting with someone can’t help using emoticon a lot? This news might interest you very, very much. Kika Tech, the company that produces the famous Kika Keyboard, has released an update for its keyboard app. You may say: what does it have to do with my emoticons? That’s how: the upgrade includes native support for WhatsApp latest emoji’s update.

You have no idea of what a Kika Keyboard is? Strange, but in this case quite certainly you are not an Android user. In fact this special keyboard is an Android one, and it is the first one to introduce this implementation natively. As you probably know, the latest version of WhatsApp for Android enabled the use of new emoticons (for example the famous, and quite controversial, “middle finger” emoji, or the popular “Spock’s Vulcan salute”) and added the ability to choose the skin tone of your emojis.

Now, if you have the latest Kika Keyboard, you will be able to load WhatsApp’s emoticon automatically into the keyboard, whitout switching functions. Isn’t it a great news? According to Bill Hu, CEO of Kika Tech, the company has considered this upgrade necessary in order to help people communicate in a better and easier way. That’s what Bill Hu declared: “Kika has always been about helping people communicate their ideas in a way that best represents themselves. When we learned what WhatsApp’s latest update provided, it was only natural for us to prioritize getting this functionality out to our users.”

The news is a further indication of the growing (and fast) success of WhatsApp all over the world.  A tangible proof of the popularity of WhatsApp comes from recent statistics which show  that this popular instant messaging app in August reached 900 million active monthly users. And it really seems that WhatsApp’s race to the top will not stop here.

WhatsApp, the popular instant messaging app, in August reached another important milestone: 900 million active monthly users. It is an extraordinary result indeed, considering that the app created in 2009 by Jan Koum (who is now a Facebook board member) only during the past four months has earned 100 million users. And what are the results obtained by the other messaging services?

Facebook, with 1.5 billion users, is the leader, while Messenger reaches seven hundred million. In April, the last public data reported that the monthly active users (MAU) of the popular app were 800 million. Obviously the acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook in 2014 (costed more than $21 billion) has largely contributed to the success of WhatsApp, which was already much appreciated by users all over the world.

Beyond that, also the usage of Android (which is the mobile operating system more used in the world) has greatly facilitated the success of WhatsApp. And statistics seem to confirm the importance of the cooperation between WhatsApp and Android. A recent survey published by Global Web Index shows that 73% of WhatsApp users access the app through Android.

The first signs of this unstoppable success could already be seen in March, when WhatsApp reached a billion installations on devices with Google os. Again, clearly, Facebook was the first to overcome this record, but then came WhatsApp. And the numerous updates that are regularly introduced, will only increase the growth of the app.

But after all these remarkable results, everyone seems curious to find out how Facebook can monetize the success of WhatsApp, and a huge debate has been opened among experts. The question arises because the positions of Zuckerberg and Koum seem to diverge. Infact Jan Koum and his team stated that their app won’t have “No ads! No games! No gimmicks!”, while months ago Mark Zuckerberg declared that “there are many clear ways that we can monetize”. So, who will win? We just have to wait to see what happens.

Are you curious to find out who are your best friends on WhatsApp? With a new hidden feature you can now immediately find it out. It seems that WhatsApp added this hidden tool in June, with the update 2.12.3, according to what Rhiannon Williams of The Telegraph says. But how does it work and how can you use it? Actually, it is quite simple.

In fact, if you open your settings options on WhatsApp, you can find the list of the people you contact most often. This tool lists your contacts in order of importance, creating a kind of ranking. So, to find out who your best friends are, you simply have to go to Settings, select Accounts and then Storage Usage. From here you can see the total amount of messages you have sent and received at the top of the page, and the people to whom you send more messages.

Also, you can order the messages by size, discovering in this way which conversations take up more space on your smartphone. How? Simply selecting the “Size” tab located at the bottom of your screen. For now this option is only available for iOS users, and it is yet unknown if and when it will be available also for Android or Windows Phone. Currently Android users are “only” allowed to see the total amount of sent messages and information on data use.

To think about it, it seems quite strange that WhatsApp left Android without this option, as it has always been the first one to be updated. So let’s wait for  the reaction of Android users to this news, maybe their reaction will force WhatsApp developers to add this feature also on other platforms.

It is certain that with 64 billion messages sent every day, WhatsApp is currently the most successful instant messaging application across the globe, and even though other services are emerging, its spread seems unstoppable.

A few days have passed since the last update of WhatsApp for Windows Phone was released, and yet a new updated version, the 2.12.126.0, is already available. Quite obviously, this last one is a minor update, which doesn’t bring new features and seems to have no change log (a detailed description of what changes).

This new version 2.12.126.0 should thus serve simply to fix minor bugs which were present in the previous version. But those who use WhatsApp with Windows Phone devices will surely be pleased to notice that WhatsApp developers are not neglecting them and are working to improve the app also on Windows Phone devices.

But which were the new functions for Windows Phone that WhatsApp recently introduced? In case you missed the last upgrade,  let’s see together those new features.

• You can now share your location, exchange contacts email your chat history and set custom wallpapers;
• you can now talk with two or more people at the same time. In fact, if you have a couple or more of your friends who are using WhatsApp, now you can join or create chat rooms;
• Voice Calling Feature: finally even Windows Phone users will be able to call their WhatsApp contacts using this eagerly awaited function;
• your mobile phone number is the ID on WhatsApp, so you don’t need anymore usernames and passwords.

But let’s leave aside for a moment updates and let’s talk about statistics. If you are passionate about statistics, you might find interesting a recent GlobalWebIndex survey which shows that among WhatsApp users, 73% of them use this famous instant messaging app with Android devices, 22% with iOS and 10% of them with Windows Phone.

What are the percentages obtained by other devices? It seems that BlackBerry OS users reach 4%, Symbian 3%, others as Firefox OS, Sailfish, Tizen, Ubuntu Touch reach 7%. These figures explain why WhatsApp developers work mainly on the Android version of the app, even if it seems that now they started to upgrade the application for other devices more often.

It seems that WhatsApp Web has new competitors in sight. The newcomer is called Charge Messenger and has already raised funds for $1.7 million. The company in fact stated that $1.7 million had already been allocated to start the activity, besides a new web client to allow users to synchronize the chats on their Android and iOS devices on the desktop. Maybe someone recalls that at the beginning Charge Messenger was called Bolt, but the name has been changed into Charge Messenger to avoid confusion with the Instagram service One-Tap Photo.

But who is involved in this challenge? These are the names of some investors: Pelion Venture Partners, Atlas Venture,  Maiden Lane Ventures, Metamorphic Ventures, Cherubic Ventures, Craig Walker (founder of GrandCentral/Google Voice), John Wolthuis (cofounder of Twilio) and Matt Tanase (cofounder of Slicehost).

If you wonder how can you immediately recognise Charge Messenger among the many instant messaging services currently on the market (first of all WhatsApp), you’ll discover that it is quite easy. The first noticeable feature of Charge Messenger is “GIF Roulette”, which allows its users to add a random GIF to their chat simply by typing “+ gif” followed by a keyword (or phrase).

Animated GIF images are living a moment of incredible popularity on the Web, and even Mark Zuckerberg had to recognize their popularity and integrate them in the advertising pages of Facebook. It is still early to make prediction about this new startup, which is currently still a beta app. But it seems to be growing a lot in the Middle East, India and the United States.

Will this new app force WhatsApp Web to accellerate more improvements in its services? We know that recently the popular instant messaging service introduced a lot of updates, and now the system is available for Windows and Android Phones, BlackBerry and even for iPhone. But the competition is fierce, and we must not forget that in addition to Charge Messenger, Viber and Line also contend to WhatsApp a good share of the market.