New communication industry – Term Paper

Whatsapp for iphone

WhatsApp is among the most phenomenal features in information communication technology. It has brought about significant changes in the sending of messages and making calls. Its recent features include voice calling and video calling by which most people have gotten used to. It can be perceived as an entire communication package that allows the transmission of both verbal and non-verbal messages. More than 900 million people use the application and hence quite popular (Montag et.al 2015, p. 331).

WhatsApp Inc. began its operation in 2009 with the focus being on the iPhone with the view that the iPhone was a progressive industry and hence promising. The founders of the application were two former Yahoo employee, Brian Acton, and Jan Koum (Ndedi & Kingsley 2017, p. 84). The idea was to have an application where people could have their statuses located next to their names. The main attraction of the application is the lack of adverts that keep on appearing on other sites with the view that people do not like the appearance of advertisements when using applications. It is currently under Facebook that purchased it in 2014 after a $19 billion deal (Ndedi & Kingsley 2017, p. 84).

The Voice Calling and Video Calling features

Some of the important milestones of the company include; the release of the Android and Symbian OSt in 2010, the release of a different version of messenger for the iPhones in 2011 that put barriers on privacy issues, releasing a messenger for the Blackberry 10 and the Windows phones in 2013, the release of smartwatches in 2014 that used the Android OS, and the introduction of a call feature targeted for a particular audience in 2015 whereby by 2016, voice calling and video calling were popular among the users (Nitza & Roman 2016, p. 255).

The free voice calling and video calling by WhatsApp have made it easier for people to communicate especially those in separate geographies (Rastogi & Hendler 2017, p 2). The video and voice calls are cost effective in the sense that, instead of spending a lot of money on airtime to make an international call, an individual only requires a little amount of data to connect. The voice calls were introduced in 2015 while the video calls began in 2016. The cost effectiveness is among the factors that boost the popularity of the application among its user. Also, one does not have to register or rather use an account to log in such that they can make either video calls or voice calls at ease when compared to applications such as Skype. When a user wants to make a call using WhatsApp, two options are provided; voice calling or video calling. When compared to a feature such as Skype that was available basically used by computer users, WhatsApp has billions of users using the video calling option. The popularity of WhatsApp is also associated with the user only using their numbers to make the calls unlike Skype where an individual has to create an account. In other words, an individual only needs a personts number to make a voice or video call. In other words, both features in the application have improved its effectiveness in regards to the exchange of information in terms of cost and the geographical location of the users (Nitza & Roman 2016, p. 255).

References

Montag, C., BKHaszkiewicz, K., Sariyska, R., Lachmann, B., Andone, I., Trendafilov, B., Eibes, M. and Markowetz, A., 2015. Smartphone usage in the 21st century: who is active on WhatsApp?. BMC research notes, 8(1), p.331.

Ndedi, A. and Kingsley, K.M., 2017. Understanding How Failing a Job Interview May Be a Source of Innovation: The Case of WhatsApp Founders. In Managing Knowledge and Innovation for Business Sustainability in Africa (pp. 83-92). Springer International Publishing.

Nitza, D. and Roman, Y., 2016. WhatsApp Messaging: Achievements and Success in Academia. International Journal of Higher Education, 5(4), p.255.

Rastogi, N. and Hendler, J., 2017. WhatsApp security and role of metadata in preserving privacy. arXiv preprint arXiv:1701.06817.