Articles about WhatsApp

Like all messaging apps and services, WhatsApp has its fair share of advantages and disadvantages. For many people, the end-to-end encryption the app offers is a major draw, although being owned by Meta requires some users to hold their noses while they use it.

But among the great things about WhatsApp are the speed at which its developers work, and their willingness to listen to -- and act upon -- user feedback. And it is user demand for greater privacy options that has driven the addition of online status control for beta users.

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Twitter is looking to make sharing content easier and wider-reaching by cross-pollinating with other social platforms. The micro-blogging site -- which may or may not end up being bought by Elon Musk -- is adding an option for sharing tweets via WhatsApp.

For now, the new sharing option is limited to certain markets, but it is hard to imagine that it will not spread globally in the near future. The question is, will it be welcomed by users or not?

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WhatsApp is a great messaging tool, and one that I use daily, both for individual and group chats. Meta has added new features to it over time, with yet more welcome additions on the way, but it’s long overdue a full redesign.

If you’ve ever wondered what kind of makeover the service could benefit from, we have the answer for you right here.

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WhatsApp is not only one of the popular messaging apps out there, it is also one that is subject to some of the fastest development work. Existing features are constantly being tweaked, new options are being added all the time, and Mark Zuckerberg has just revealed three exciting new privacy-focused features.

In an announcement on his personal Facebook page, the CEO of Meta teased a trio of new features which will help to improve the privacy of group and one-on-one chats. The upcoming additions are part of a new global campaign from WhatsApp that focuses on and promotes privacy and security features.

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The ability to edit sent messages is something that is common -- although far from universal -- in chat and social apps. The likes of Slack and Skype make it easy to make changes, such as correcting typos in messages, and it is an option that is said to be coming to Twitter at some point in the future.

But while the option to edit tweets may be some way off, users of WhatsApp may have this option sooner rather than later. The developers of WhatsApp are currently working on bringing a message-editing option to the mobile versions of the apps, as well as the desktop and web editions.

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WhatsApp users may enjoy the benefits of end-to-end encryption, but the same cannot be said of messages sent via Facebook or Instagram. What's more, this is not going to be changing any time soon.

While Meta (or Facebook as it was at the time) previously announced plans to introduce encrypted messaging to the Facebook and Instagram platforms, there was heavy criticism from campaigners and organizations for child safety. Now the company has said end-to-end encryption will not be arriving until 2023.

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In October, the internet was shaken by the Facebook outage that affected dozens of big-name companies, as well as millions of brands and businesses that advertise on Facebook’s platform. Because of something as simple as a misconfigured Domain Name System (DNS) record, every device with the Facebook app integration started DDoS-ing recursive DNS resolvers -- DDoS meaning "Distributed Denial of Service." This, in turn, caused overloading in countless cases across the board.

You might be thinking to yourself, "So, what? A few sites were offline for a couple of hours." But the outage brought to light other issues. Communications for the very Facebook employees that could fix this issue were crippled. Some of these hindrances went so far that people were unable to enter buildings because the physical badge system wasn't even online.

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History will treat Monday and Tuesday as days the tech world would love to forget. 

Monday was Black Monday for those who rely on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. All of these Facebook-owned properties went down for around eight hours, leaving a lot of people confused and services such as Twitter booming with the extra traffic. This was a critical outage that even affected Facebook employees and their internal systems, making it impossible for many people at Facebook to use anything they needed to get their jobs done. 

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There are a huge number of messaging apps to choose from these days, and the chances are that many people you know use different chat tools. You may use Facebook Messenger with your family, WhatsApp with friends, and Slack for work, for example.

While there are various apps that claim to unify the chat experience and let you chat across multiple networks, they always miss out an important player. The same cannot be said of Beeper. This app lets you chat with people across no fewer than 15 messaging platforms, including Apple's iMessage, across MacOS, Windows, Linux‍, iOS and Android.

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The coronavirus pandemic has people around the world searching for information about what they should and shouldn't be doing, as well as news about the spread. But there is a lot of misinformation out there, and social media platforms are breeding grounds for such harmful content to spread.

Facebook has been taking steps to counter misinformation about COVID-19, not only on the main Facebook platform, but also on Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Now the company is expanding its efforts to connect people with trustworthy information about coronavirus.

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WhatsApp is a wildly popular chat program globally, but in the USA, not so much. Don’t get me wrong, there are many Americans that use it, but it is far more ubiquitous in other countries such as India, for instance. In the USA, SMS and iMessage seem to reign supreme.

Today, the social network Facebook — which owns WhatsApp — is celebrating a huge milestone. You see, the company is claiming there are now 2 billion people using WhatsApp.

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When app hackers discovered references to Disappearing Messages in beta versions of WhatsApp, it was -- understandably -- assumed that this was going to develop into a self-destructing messages feature. But when the same option was renamed to the less-exciting Delete Messages, the name didn't really tally.

Further details shared by WABetaInfo about the latest beta of the WhatsApp app for iOS shows that the feature is very much not what people were expecting... or hoping. Oh, and if you were hoping for a Dark Mode option, you're going to have to wait a bit longer.

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While WhatsApp is primarily a communication tool, a new integration from Any.do also makes it possible to extend the capabilities of the chat app to create tasks and reminders using natural language.

As WhatsApp is often used in both the business and personal worlds to discuss a set up meetings, appointments and get-togethers, the ability to set reminders at the same time as discussing plans makes perfect sense. Like Any.do and WhatsApp themselves, the new feature is cross-platform, and can be found on iOS, Android, Mac, Windows and the web.

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Facebook has launched a new payment service that can be used to send money and buy goods and services from within its apps -- and it's nothing to do with Libra.

The service is called Facebook Pay; it's available in the US for now, but it will expand into more countries in due course. The service allows for payments to be made in Facebook, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram. Given the social network's reputation for privacy, it remains to be seen whether people trust it as much as the likes of Google Pay and Apple Pay.

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In today’s digital workplace, taking advantage of digital collaboration and social media tools is a business imperative. With global social media use greater than ever before, and still very much on the rise, it comes as no surprise that it has embedded itself into the workplace. Just like email, social media and instant messaging apps like WeChat and WhatsApp are becoming business essentials.

We’re all familiar with the shadow IT problem and how many IT departments are still unaware of all the applications and channels their employees are downloading and using for business conduct. Today, the social media channels and instant messaging apps needed to communicate with customers and cultivate new business are both easier for an average employee to use and come with much greater risks. This ease of use and popularity also means that several departments within a company like marketing and sales are both vulnerable to and responsible for preventing a variety of threats that they’re simply not equipped to handle.

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