With more than a billion users all distributed across every country on the globe, WhatsApp didn’t just become everyone’s favourite instant messaging application overnight, it took some ideas and impactful changes to get to such position.
Back when WhatsApp was purchased by Facebook in 2014 for USD 19 Billion, many ridiculed the acquisition and thought that would be the end of the fun and innovation in WhatsApp. Three years later, opposite seem to be the case. Let’s have a peek at 5 changes that WhatsApp have brought on board ever since the acquisition that have changed the way and manner we message for the better.
1. End-to-end encryption
Though end-to-end encryption was only introduced and incorporated into WhatsApp sometime last year (2016), it has definitely changed the manner we text. How? Understanding how much of a deal security is in this era we currently live in, this feature has brought confidence and should I say “peace of mind” to the heart of users knowing that their chats, conversations, media, and other details on WhatsApp are protected from Mass surveillance, unlawful, unwanted and unauthorized access, as well as from hackers. Not even WhatsApp can have access your text messages; both sent and received.
Chats are protected by encryption codes which makes only the sender and receiver of messages the only eyes that can have access to texts.
Although some instant messaging apps (like Telegram) have had this feature before WhatsApp, many users prefer WhatsApp because the end-to-end encryption is activated by default unlike Telegram where users have to delve deep into some sections of the app settings to turn on encryption (something most users do not know).
As a matter of fact, there have been numerous questions asked, debates, and articles dedicated to finding out which if the two apps end-to-end encryption is more secure. Albeit most of the time no winner is announced, the cards are often in WhatsApp favour.
2. Search Button
This feature, to me, is one of the most useful and impactful addition to the instant messaging platform. And also personally, the most used feature on my WhatsApp app. If you are the type that have so many conversations in your chats sections or you belong in so many groups, you should know how quick a message can ‘disappear’. Not disappear literally, but messages can easily be pushed very far up in your conversation. And when a particular detail in your convo is needed for maybe reference purposes, not a single person wants to go through the stress of scrolling through previous messages to obtain that particular text of interest. That’s where the search button comes in.
As long as you can remember a keyword (or a phrase) in the text of interest, finding what you need is just a click away. That’s not all, the WhatsApp team have perfected the search feature in that not only can you search for texts, you can also use it to find status updates, video and call history.
I’ll be halting here for now, but in the next article {Part 2}, we’ll look at how WhatsApp have incorporated simplicity over the years with some other revolutionary features and how you can utilize them to the best of usage. Stay glued to this page.