Technology must make our life easier. The more closely companies adhere to this philosophy, the better products they make that become non substitutable over a period of time. Whatsapp messenger exemplifies this approach as the mobile app developers at whatsapp enjoy their sheer size which has now surpassed that of Twitter. The company claims that the app generates 12 billion outbound messages and the owners are in no mood of entertaining any merger and acquisition. The application has now become a utility app for users that is simply impossible to replace.The gaps in SMS and the smarts of whatsapp mobile app developers-
Threaded view messaging is conceptualized by the iPhone but mobile app developers at Whatsapp saw the potential in it. They also kept in mind the international boundaries that hindered SMS communication. Hence the developers employed the XMPP protocol that supports real time data transfer, signaling through VoIP, Video, file transfer etc. Using the XMPP protocol a particular phone number (which is always unique) is saved on the whatsapp database as a user ID in the form of [phone number]@s.whatsapp.net. Thus each user has a unique ID (as two users cannot have the same number in the entire world after adding the country code) and every time a new user creates his ID, he is automatically presented with the existing phone contact registered on whatsapp.
This creates a web based platform to transfer messages and files across the globe with no charges paid to the carrier (except for a few Kbs of data used to send the messages each time). Mobile app developers at Whatsapp took the utility factor to another level by enabling picture and video sending option to its users. The developers employed the Base64 encoded thumbnails and that was it. A full scale, robust application for communication and data sharing was born.
The best thing about the application is that that phone contacts are highly valuable than an e mail id or Facebook connection. Hence the users are likely to engage in conversation in an app which in 24by7 online.
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