WhatsApp to launch voice calling in the second quarter

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/24/whatsapp-launch-voice-calling-facebook-app

by harel • 12 years ago

40 51 12 years ago

aleem• 12 years ago

I have mixed feelings about this. I like WhatsApp because they fixed SMS (by adding group chat and cheaper messaging). I also like the fact that they do one thing and do it really well (ala DropBox).

The client is light and fast. I can use it a dozen times a day and it doesn't get in the way. Skype, et al by contrast are bloated because every new release must add new features. By the time version 20.0 comes out, it's bloated.

Same thing keeps happening over and over again with torrent clients. It happened with WinAmp and to MS Word and nearly every other software that gets popular.

You can almost see the thinking machinery in work. "450 million users? How much are we making per user? $1 per user per year, that's it? Let's get into VoIP, it's a billion trillion dollar per annum industry. Let's get the project managers to layout the roadmap for the next year and set the milestones so we can get there fast."

netcan• 12 years ago

This is kind of interesting since facebook is finding that getting all your features into a single app is not necessarily the best approach.

enscr• 12 years ago

Whatsapp's footprint (memory & battery) on Android is negligible. I love that it just silently works in the background. If I wanted Skype, I'd be installing Skype, so please Whatsapp, do what you do best. Oh wait, there's that new manager of yours who wants to be a part of everyone's private lives. So long.

dethstar• 12 years ago

Your project either dies young and does one thing really well or lives long enough to become an OS of it's own.

adnam5• 12 years ago

That's nice, but will you be able to make free, unlimited calls to all US, UK and Canadian mobiles + landlines, like you already can with Upptalk.com? ;)

adnam5• 12 years ago

Which was obviously a horrific thing to say.

hnha2• 12 years ago

if only ios would allow background processes like a real computer. we could have perfect free and open source communications via or based on xmpp.

stephenr• 12 years ago

iOS allows VoIP apps to be backgrounded.

pilif• 12 years ago

At which point the battery drains significantly more quickly than without. At least Skype is a real battery drainer.

clemsen• 12 years ago

Actually I am quite happy that background processes are relatively restricted on iOS. When an incoming call is received the corresponding push notification should be fast enough. If all clients on my phone had to talk to their server individually the battery would be empty in no time.

untog• 12 years ago

When an incoming call is received the corresponding push notification should be fast enough.

Eh, not really. You get the notification (no guaranteed delivery time), open it up, it opens up the app, which takes a few seconds to load... before you know it the other person is going to have hung up.

skrowl• 12 years ago

Upgrade to Android. Never look back.

hnha2• 12 years ago

Oh, I use Android. Got gibberbot/chatsecure running for messaging with very few issues and no noticeable power drain. Some of my friends are restrained to ios though and their experience with xmpp clients were terrible because the hacks and battery needed to work around apple's restrictions.

callumjones• 12 years ago

But iOS isn't running on a real computer that has a either a large battery or a mains power source, it's running on a small device with a battery that is expected by users to last at least a day.

iOS' current backgrounding APIs strike a fairly acceptable balance between functional background tasks and battery life. Let's say if Apple took the reigns off background in iOS, we'd see some app developers ravage the battery and see users having terrible device experience.

rawr_reptar• 12 years ago

I'm not that surprised though. Line and KakaoTalk both implemented voice call between users this past year. I think WeChat is working on this too.

I'd actually consider WhatsApp behind its Asian competitors in terms of features. They also might be an indicator of what features we might see roll out with WhatsApp.

zaidf2• 12 years ago

I will not complain if WhatsApp makes an attempt at killing all the shitty chat apps such as Skype that are riding on their initial success but suck as a product. It boggles my mind why skype randomly pops notifications on my iPhone for messages sent to me months ago.

mistermann• 12 years ago

Oh god do I agree, I could write pages on the different ways in which Skype sucks.

Just one example....when the connection is bad, it degrades audio and video, so neither is usable. And we won't even start on the nightmare that's the UI.

That MS paid a king's ransom for this and has done nothing with it since boggles the mind.

err4nt• 12 years ago

When Microsoft purchased Skype they weren't buying software, they were buying users back who use to use MSN Messenger before jumping ship. AIM (AOL's chat client) was only popular in the US, the rest of the world used MSN for years and it finally died in favour of Skype and gTalk. This was their best way of killing MSN messenger, and rolling their remaining users into a useful userbase. That's why the only addition to Skype has been logging in with your Microsoft ID.

Microsoft also has a product called 'Lync' that (from what I've heard) is not doing so well, so I believe their goal there again is to roll their users into Skype and eventually discontinue that product. Buying Skype was all about trying to salvage their brand from the shortcomings of their own software.

pla3rhat3r• 12 years ago

If you can figure out how to keep good audio and video quality when there's a connection issue I think you'd make a killing. It's simple telecom 101. Service degrades, quality is garbage. Not sure how ANY service can keep good quality during bandwidth degradation. If you have no reception you have no service. Yeah, Skype sucks but it's suffers from the same simple problems other do.

mikevm• 12 years ago

I agree. It's about time Skype had some real competition.

adnam5• 12 years ago

Not wishing to harp on (honest), but we just launched some very real competition. We've spent the last 2 years polishing our app which allows you to make VOIP calls out to US, UK and Canadian numbers for free. You even get assigned your own phone number so people can call you back, even if they don't have the app. We can also supply a data-only SIM card for $15/month. It's called Upptalk, check it out.

rjzzleep• 12 years ago

maybe because messages are not delivered until the other party is online.

... or because skype clients start to "sync" with old chats when a different device comes online.

DominikR• 12 years ago

The only reason Whatsapp doesn't have this issue is that it doesn't allow you to login with the same account on multiple devices like Skype does.

Both use the same underlying technology (XMPP) and both know how to use the protocol, but it's still very hard to pull off at this scale once you allow multiple devices to login with the same account.

Skype just has vastly more features, that's why they have these synchronisation issues.

mercurial• 12 years ago

Both use the same underlying technology (XMPP) and both know how to use the protocol, but it's still very hard to pull off at this scale once you allow multiple devices to login with the same account.

Since when does Skype use XMPP? AFAIK, it uses a closed protocol. It appears that Whatsapp does indeed use XMPP under the hood, though.

As for Skype, it's absolutely terrible at handling multiple devices. It would get much better if the app phoned home when a given message arrived on a Skype client with a focused window, in order to prevent/cancel already existing alerts on other devices.

adnam5• 12 years ago

This is a real headache. You can either send all the messages (and info/queries) to all logged-in devices, or you select just the most recently used. In the first case, the user gets messages repeated. In the latter, there's the risk that information is lost when a user switches device.

tracker14• 12 years ago

That's funny, but Google Hangouts seems to handle this issue just fine... with Google Voice, my desktop and phones all ring, not a problem... when someone sends me a message in hangouts, it shows up on all my devices...

With MS' Lync at work, if I forget to signout on my phone, a few times a day, my phone grabs an inbound message that never shows up on my desktop, and I totally miss the conversation. Skype has a lot of similar issues, and it's painful at best.

What I REALLY want is something for the workplace to kill Lync...

lady_gigi_• 12 years ago

More on the WhatsApp tech stack over at FastCo.Labs: http://www.fastcolabs.com/3026758/inside-erlang-the-rare-pro...

balladeer2• 12 years ago

It boggles my mind why skype randomly pops notifications on my iPhone for messages sent to me months ago.

Exactly! What do you have Skype installed on your smartphone?

A year from now on you might be saying: "Hey John Doe, I WhatsApped with my SO yesterday and asked her/him can I buy him/her some nice undies. You know what, today Facebook business pages are posting underwear ads on my wall!"

zaidf2• 12 years ago

What do you mean?

amalag• 12 years ago

Viber already has voice and messaging, WhatsApp just has more users.

JTon• 12 years ago

Network effect is important though

adnam5• 12 years ago

Agreed, but the regulatory effect is potentially bigger. In many places Whatsapp will not simply be able to roll out telephony services without the OK of the local regulator. I expect them to dis-activate VOIP for many countries initially, otherwise be a loggerheads with authorities (eventually). Will be interesting to see what happens.

ulfw• 12 years ago

It's a pity Apple didn't opensource or at release for other platforms Facetime and iMesssages. Both are really very well integrated Audio/Video/Texting apps that work and look better than a third-party tool like Whatsapp

k-mcgrady2• 12 years ago

At the announcement Jobs said the FaceTime protocol would be released but it never was. I love FaceTime but locking it down to just iOS/Mac makes it so much less useful. I can understand why they want to use it to sell more iPhones but I wish they'd at least add a web or Windows client. It wouldn't hurt iPhone sales, probably wouldn't effect Mac sales, and so many more people could use FaceTime.

justinsb• 12 years ago

If I was responsible for this decision at Apple, I would definitely be much more open to doing this now (post-WhatsApp). I'd hope Google and Apple are at least trying to get first-class interoperability between iOS / Android. Maybe only for text and not voice/video, but otherwise Facebook / WhatsApp wins the space.

ubercow13• 12 years ago

I disagree, iMessage is much slower on poor network connections (and fast ones) for me than WhatsApp, and it is certainly much less reliable. It will fail consistently unless I have 3G coverage, where WhatsApp works fine on a GPRS signal. The only advantage it has for me is the ability to send larger size pictures.

thepumpkin1979• 12 years ago

Maybe is going after Line and Viber, not Skype.

k-mcgrady2• 12 years ago

Facebook seems to be making a play to own all our communications. If this replaces SMS and then voice calls for people that's most communications locked up. The only thing they are missing is email which they've tried and failed on.

rch2• 12 years ago

Is there a reason Skype and soon WhatsApp can do this, but Voice needs to connect through a phone? I might guess antiquated taxes or, more likely deals with carriers, because I can make calls with gmail from my laptop after all.

meritt• 12 years ago

WhatsApp to WhatsApp will just be a data stream. WhatsApp to Phone will need to touch a phone network at some point for call completion.

When you make calls from within gmail, your endpoint is a google server but google is still making a regular telephone call and just bridging the two.

tracker14• 12 years ago

I can only guess that Google likes to tie your account to a real phone number for Voice... when I activated my Azure account (I have MSDN via work), they required a real phone number...

This may also be a regulatory request from the U.S. Govt. If you call in a bomb threat from Voice, the gov't can track you down.

rch2• 12 years ago

I'm perfectly alright with the verification step, but it would be nice to be able to ditch the handset from time to time.

amiune• 12 years ago

I don't know if this is a good idea. Jerry Seinfeld is clear, nobody wants to talk anymore https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR1ckgXN8G0 :D

Uehreka• 12 years ago

I just got off an overseas voice call with my parents. We've been using Skype forever, and it drops calls constantly. Tonight it was particularly bad, so I googled around for a WebRTC client, found this (https://vline.com/) and told my mom to use it.

Immediately the call was clear as day. It dropped once or twice, but the quality was pretty high otherwise. If I can find a WebRTC client with a few more features, I may never use Skype (or any other XMPP video chat) again.

tracker14• 12 years ago

WebRTC is pretty cool and it will be interesting to see where it goes, and how well it works with multiple users. One thing I actually miss from before the bots took over and everyone left, was the chat rooms and group chats in yahoo messenger. It was audio only, but was pretty nice.

I've played with it a little on my phone even, and though it barely works, you can see the potential. All I can say from it all, it would be nice if MS/IE could play better with others.

neotrinity• 12 years ago

Need to wait and see if this service will bloat the app. Till now WhatsApp has worked wonderfully as a connection bus between friends and relatives. Don't know if this decision was rammed down WhatsApp's throat by FB ??

mbesto• 12 years ago

The reaction from the BigTelco will be interesting to say the least.

WhatsApp to launch voice calling in the second quarter

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