WhatsApp doesn't understand the web

http://andregarzia.com/posts/en/whatsappdoesntunderstandtheweb

by NietTim • 12 years ago

224 121 12 years ago

andregarzia.com

vertex-four• 12 years ago

Umm. Obviously the web client is supposed to be used on the desktop, not on a phone. They have apps for phones.

Doesn't excuse the Chrome-only-ness, though.

Joona4• 12 years ago

I have a Jolla (Sailfish) phone. I can not use the web client, because I need an Android, Windows or Blackberry phone. WhatsApp does however work fine on my phone (via Alien Dalvik).

This "web client" is not actually a web client - it's just an app for your phone that you can display on your computer monitor.

zeroDivisible• 12 years ago

A bit of an off-topic question - how would you rate Sailfish and it's interop with Android stuff?

DanBC• 12 years ago

There are phones that have WWW access that do not run Android or iOS.

Whatsapp apps miss very many people who'd use it if they could.

Kurtz792• 12 years ago

Android and iOS have more than 95% market share.

http://www.idc.com/prodserv/smartphone-os-market-share.jsp

I suppose the benefits of supporting the remaining 5% against the costs of having to develop and mantain another client(s) have been discussed internally in Whatsapp.

"It would be nice" and "it would be commercially sound" are very different propostions.

bcraven• 12 years ago

not on a phone

If the app isn't running on the phone then there shouldn't be any need for the phone to be connected to the internet ("Mistake Three" in the article)

pjmlp2• 12 years ago

Chrome is the new IE.

The new web developers generation just replaced IE with Chrome.

TheAnimus• 12 years ago

Having a very quick look, I see a websocket connection, which IE can do just fine.

The only thing I see that it can't is the desktop notification, which you still have some ability, in fact 'pinned' sites in IE let you have a number badge on the taskbar, which is quite good for a chat app, see Skype.

eatonphil2• 12 years ago

To be fair, the WeChat desktop client also requires that you scan a QR code from your smartphone to log in. I'm not defending WeChat, but it doesn't seem like the author knows WhatsApp is not alone there.

snitko• 12 years ago

Exactly. This is outrageous. The only decent chat app these days is Telegram, really. Even they still want you to use your phone to log in (but only once). But I guess that's the way it is for now.

Frankly, I hope those apps will all be gone and forgotten in favor of an actual open sourced, widely used protocol. Or maybe they'd incorporate one. But in any case, I think it's a shame that when email is decentralized, chatting is not.

jhasse• 12 years ago

Telegram's protocol is open source.

soapdog2• 12 years ago

author here. I didn't knew about WeChat since it is not popular here in Brazil.

Using a QR to facilitate login is not a bad decision. Having this as the only method to authenticate makes it a bad client because it can't work as a standalone offering.

I don't like when "web clients" are not full featured in the sense of allowing registration and login. Look at Evernotes, you can register and use thru the web client interface, there is no need for the app if you're on a platform that is not supported.

tempodox• 12 years ago

Hi, author, I like your article but those animated GIFs are driving me nuts. Please don't make readers also watch a movie at the same time. Thanks.

eatonphil2• 12 years ago

WeChat is extremely popular in China, which is why I bring it up. And as far as I am aware, QR is the ONLY way you can log in on desktop. Or I just haven't figured it out yet.

dangrover• 12 years ago

PM on the WeChat desktop client here! Lots of users say this, but has been pointed out, has security/architecture implications. Let me know if you have any other suggestions!

shadeless• 12 years ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8926644

NietTim7• 12 years ago

Oh! I looked for it a bit but couldn't find it. My bad

julianwachholz• 12 years ago

Try searching for "WhatsApp".

smackfu• 12 years ago

And it's not considered a duplicate submission because one has a trailing slash and the other doesn't.

dang• 12 years ago

Of course it is a duplicate. The software doesn't catch all of those; that's on purpose, to allow good stories multiple cracks at the bat (edit: i.e. multiple chances to get attention). We rely on users to search before posting and on moderators to bury the dupes that sneak through. User comments pointing out the duplication are helpful.

This isn't a perfect system but it's much better than being too strict about reposts. We're going to work on a more effective dupe detection system as soon as we can get to it.

buremba• 12 years ago

The web client requires my phone to be online and doesn't support offline notifications so that it has to be open all the time. I guess it's very much like Pushbullet for WhatsApp, not a desktop app for WhatsApp.

ComputerGuru• 12 years ago

...and it seems you can't use this feature with an iPhone (yet?).

From their "web client": Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, BlackBerry 10, and Nokia S60.

(In all fairness, my guess is it's pending acceptance of a newer version by the iOS/iTunes review team, but I really hope that's the case.)

EDIT: Scratch that. They're not providing it on iOS because of how convoluted their approach to a web client is. What they have to say: "Unfortunately for now, we will not be able to provide web client to our iOS users due to Apple platform limitations."

http://blog.whatsapp.com/614/WhatsApp-Web

Yeah, right.

mmsimanga• 12 years ago

Whilst the developer in me appreciates the sentiments expressed in the article I have to point out that to build and app that is used by over 700 millions users you have to be focussed on a fairly narrow set of features. You need to execute those features very well and WhatsApp delivers.

shawabawa3• 12 years ago

Their original client works very well and was certainly the best im client at the time.

Now all that's keeping people there is network effect. Telegram is just better at this point, and it works on almost every platform with no weird restrictions

plextoria• 12 years ago

Does Telegram have an app for J2ME?

samolang• 12 years ago

Storing a history of all of your messages in the cloud isn't a feature for everyone.

Joona4• 12 years ago

I want to chat, and WhatsApp is not letting me do that.

iagooar• 12 years ago

I just don't get it. What is so difficult about providing a one-time authentication through the user's phone? Just open Whatsapp on the smartphone, get a token, put your phone number and token and voilà!

I mean, there have been web chats for decades now, so I don't understand why they invented such a messed up set of constraints.

Besides, am I the only one who suspects that Whatsapp is boycotting Apple? They needed almost 2 months to get an iOS 8 update out, now they are limiting the "web" application to non-Apple users...

k-mcgrady2• 12 years ago

> "Besides, am I the only one who suspects that Whatsapp is boycotting Apple?"

I understand the theory but all this does is hurt them. They need as many people as possible using there app for it be useful. They're also owned by Facebook who update all their apps weekly.

venomsnake2• 12 years ago

Facebook made the "Brilliant" move to remove the chat functionality from their app. So I am forced to use the mobile site of facebook ...

sschueller• 12 years ago

Exactly, Telegram figured it out and it works fine.

ddeck2• 12 years ago

Telegram store your message and conversation history on their servers, whereas Whatsapp run somewhat like SMS - they pass your message on to the destination and then forget about it.

Clearly every point in the chain matters, but it always surprised me that a company that puts so much emphasis on security and privacy thinks it's a good idea to keep your messages in the cloud:

"Unlike WhatsApp, Telegram is cloud-based and heavily encrypted. As a result, you can access your messages from several devices at once"[1]

[1] https://telegram.org/faq

smurfpandey• 12 years ago

I think they are using web sockets or something which requires persistent connection between the phone and browser. Since on iOS, apps can't run in background this approach will not work on iOS.

smhenderson• 12 years ago

I would have thought the whole point of a web client was so that people who don't have a supported phone can get in on the fun. If I have to have WA on my phone to authenticate a web client then said client is just the useless toy described in the article.

I confess, I've never used it and don't want to pass judgment without actually checking it out but if what the article describes is true than, yeah, they screwed this one up big time.

SixSigma• 12 years ago

I haven't used the Web service but I probably will. Not having to pick my phone up to use it will be a boon.

I'm always logged in so this is a non-issue for me.

I have cursed the lack of a desktop client often.

ddeck2• 12 years ago

I believe the issue is that unlike web chats and apps like Telegram, Whatsapp doesn't store conversations on their servers beyond what is required to deliver messages to the required destination device(s).

This presents obvious problems with having not just a web client, but any client other than the main device, since the main device is the only store of the existing conversations. New messages sent also need to be synchronized across devices, which I presume is why it's required to keep your phone connected to the Internet. Otherwise Whatsapp would need keep conversations on their servers until they could be synced, which is very much not their model.

Details on their architecture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c12cYAUTXXs

http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/2/26/the-whatsapp-archi...

72deluxe• 12 years ago

Doesn't that sound like a poor architecture then?

If the system is reliant on the main device, what happens if that gets run over or destroyed? WhatsApp have no control over the fate of the device. Why wouldn't they store the messages on the server and sync from that? WhatsApp have control of the fate of their own servers, which is far more reliable, SURELY.

If I send a new message from a device, either the other devices can poll periodically for messages that I have sent, or they can use WebSockets and be notified when a new message is sent, or when the app opens it can fetch all the recent messages that I have sent from other devices. It isn't difficult with a fine grained timestamp, surely? That's what Google Talk does.

You'd only need to order my messages by timestamp to get all messages that I had sent.

It's a bit of a daft architecture if it is incapable of this basic mechanism, isn't it?

frabcus• 12 years ago

I'd love a technical explanation of how this works.

Are all the messages kept on the phone?

How does it relate to the Whisper Systems end to end encryption on the Android to Android version of WhatsApp?

Is there some relationship between the two - is this very bizarre web interface there because of constraints relating to privacy and encryption?

i.e. WhatsApp don't have your messages.

[Edit] Is it peer to peer in some fancy way - is it only for Chrome because it uses WebRTC or something?

pjc50• 12 years ago

Related discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8926644

It seems to be trying to keep the link between users and phone numbers as 1:1 as possible. This has a number of effects against bots and spam, ties in with matching users from other user's addressbooks etc. It's probably also bad for privacy/pseudonymity.

jeffasinger• 12 years ago

The Chrome only aspect is touched upon in the article. They are using the requestFileSystem() API, which only works on Chrome. I'm not sure why they couldn't have used a more standard means of storing data.

calgoo2• 12 years ago

What i remember from the Erlang discussions around Whatsapp, they dont keep the messages on the server, only temporary until it has been delivered. So Im guessing that is the reason why they need your phone to be connected.

Might have been in this video [1]... Not sure at the moment (will check later when im out of the office).

[1] http://vimeo.com/44312354

calgoo2• 12 years ago

OK found an explanation here: [1]

"What protocol is used in Whatsapp app? SSL socket to the WhatsApp server pools. All messages are queued on the server until the client reconnects to retrieve the messages. The successful retrieval of a message is sent back to the whatsapp server which forwards this status back to the original sender (which will see that as a "checkmark" icon next to the message). Messages are wiped from the server memory as soon as the client has accepted the message"

[1] http://www.quora.com/What-is-WhatsApps-server-architecture

manion• 12 years ago

The web app gets approval from Snowden (http://www.bestvpnservice.com/blog/why-you-should-use-whatsa...)

Great marketing!

higherpurpose• 12 years ago

Um, that's not what the article says. "The encryption tech" gets his approval, as in TextSecure's technology. Snowden didn't approve Whatsapp's implementation of it, and may not even use it for this web thing.

lumberjack• 12 years ago

It's proprietary and owned by Facebook. If that doesn't scare you away, nothing will.

ramonck2• 12 years ago

Heck, let's just go back to Skype! :)

giancarlostoro• 12 years ago

Skype has some security issues that have yet to be resolved and knowing Microsoft's history with MSN Messenger, issues that will likely never be resolved. Also it is plenty unstable under Linux, sadly. I've found Viber to be easiest, only gotcha is you need it on your phone first before you use it elsewhere. Otherwise it's pretty spot on. It also looks and feels the same across platforms.

ramonck2• 11 years ago

I'm a Viber user but I still prefer Skype, it's the easiest platform to talk to people besides Whatsapp, and I think it's the best mobile video platform there's here today is Skype at least on Windows and iOS.

sravfeyn• 12 years ago

This is basically a Continuity feature that is PR-ed as Client.

waxjar• 12 years ago

I don't really see what purpose a WhatsApp web client serves to be honest. I was under the impression WhatsApp replaces SMS. It's linked to a phone number, so linked to a phone.

Smirnoff3• 12 years ago

WhatsApp went from being a poster child to an ugly donkey in my country (Uzbekistan & other countries in Central Asia). Just two years ago everyone I knew was using WhatsApp, and what happened now? Most people use either Viber or Telegram, because uploading/downloading pics on WhatsApp takes forever.

WhatsApp had a POTENTIALLY massive commercial use here and they blew it with paid subscriptions (which people in my country can't pay through Apple/Google stores). So people started switching their mobile numbers to get back into WhatsApp, which actually was really bad for WhatsApp but they blindly saw that as success. Their growth team probably said: "We are killing it because more and more people are signing up!" Yeah, but what's the churn rate? It's probably huge as well. These unique mobile users that they counted were actually the same people who couldn't find a way to pay.

Ok, so if anyone from Whatsapp happened to read my post, here is how you can make (or could have made) money: - Charge businesses to communicate with their clients through WhatsApp. This is very straightforward -- businesses need A MAC/PC CLIENT for their team to talk to customers. I know our tech company wanted it, but you wouldn't let third party clients exist. So we sticked with Viber and Telegram. Luckily regular users also ditched WhatsApp.

And look, we were not the only ones who needed it. The guy selling shoes/clothes would show products through WhatsApp. The local florist would show what he had available on particular day through pics on WhatsApp. Then he got tired of sending these pics to everyone, so he wanted to have these pics in his profile page. So who offered multiple pics in the profile? Telegram did. As much as I hated their deceptive claim about "being the most secure app", they actually managed to listen to users.

rikkus• 12 years ago

"uploading/downloading pics on WhatsApp takes forever"

I haven't seen this, but I'm on Windows Phone, so perhaps it's platform-specific?

Smirnoff3• 12 years ago

Most likely it is geography-specific

saiya-jin• 12 years ago

what is annoying for me is unreliability of delivery of messages. some never get to target phone! Simple scenario - I send messages 1, 2, 3. All three gets delivery on target phone (double gray "hook"), first one gets to be read (hooks turn blue), second doesn't, third does. Country - Switzerland. Both platforms - android. Just one step away from moving away from whatsapp, considering competition offers sometimes much more (ie viber - emoticons, childish but lovely way to talk to my gf :))

wjnc• 12 years ago

It's awesome to read about use cases in countries I know little about. Viber, Telegram for direct marketing? Wow. How do people decide to join? How do you do ad's?

Just like in Argentina in '11 I was amazed that all SME had Facebooks, and were just skipping the website-part I was used to.

Funny how local circumstances (might your Whatsapp problem just be an upload-to-US problem?) create different business environments. It reminds me that country-specific network and adoption effect exist and matter.

Smirnoff3• 12 years ago

Doing business in countries like Uzbekistan is tough because of inability to get payments. But there is a solution to that and it's called MIDDLE MAN.

For example, Facebook ads are really picking up here. Of course, most small businesses cannot pay to Facebook directly due to tight payment regulations. So what happens? A middle man comes in. He signs up as a Facebook partner (or regular user), finds small local businesses that pay him extra and then he pays Facebook through his internationally accepted cards to show ads belonging to others.

I have no doubt that if American companies came here and tried a little, they would quickly realize that Uzbeks are entrepreneurs, who can be good partners and can make lots of money.

Even the ideas that I see pop up in the United States have been implemented here long time ago. For instance, we had car-sharing service in Uzbekistan since I was a child -- we just didn't have GPS and mobile phones to make an Uber, so we had middle men finding riders and putting them into one car. Then the driver would pay a fee for that.

Same thing with delivery -- we had delivery services, which you could call, so they could find the closest person to you (or the store/pharmacy) and deliver the items quickly. You would just pay cash to the driver (which of course had to be trustworthy-- otherwise delivery service wouldn't work with them)

wingerlang• 12 years ago

Viber, Telegram for direct marketing? Wow. How do people decide to join? How do you do ad's?

I've lived in a country where LINE, an IM/Call/Video/Games/etc is hugely popular.

Companies have official accounts which works for a couple of reasons:

1. Sometimes they gets automatically added to your list I think. I might have just forgotten how I got them though do don't quote me on this.

2. App specific promotions "follow us for xy and z". I guess this is the ads you're wondering about, it's basically a "100%" impression rate towards costumers you already know is interested in your brand.

3. Stickers are something that are huuuuge. Companies can create their own cute ones that obviously include the logo in one way or another. People then get them for free or buy them. I think companie pay to have them in the store for free, while paid stickers gives LINE a cut.

4. General curiosity from costumers, "Hm I wonder if AirAsia has a LINE account, maybe they have some discount there?"

Obviously you can block each account if you so please.

signal11• 12 years ago

The BBC has used Whatsapp to distribute news in India. It was a trial, I believe: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/collegeofjournalism/entries/b2b67...

k__• 12 years ago

In Germany some people stopped after FB bought it.

But my whole family still uses it. Also I've seen, the younger people use the group-chat functionality rather often.

I only use it to talk to my family. For the rest I use TextSecure.

CmonDev• 12 years ago

Does it matter? They are sold now, so anything regarding them is yesterday news.

P4u1• 12 years ago

Don't you get it? It's a mobile app, which performs really well(hence no cloud storage I guess) and is associated with your phone, your phone is and will be the most important thing for whatsapp, the web thing is just a convenience for while you're at your laptop or desktop, like working and stuff, I find it awesome, it's a lot more productive then picking up the phone. I don't mind it requires having my phone connected to the web, it is all times, that's the point o whatsapp.

alimbada• 12 years ago

It's the one missing feature of WhatsApp that I personally have been wanting for a very long time so they have at least one happy customer with this... or they would if they'd hurry up and update the iOS client to to work with this. :)

Joona4• 12 years ago

Not really. I want a replacement for Skype (just for text chat). That includes desktop.

josteink• 12 years ago

My wife just got an tablet and she absolutely loves it. She now uses it for absolutely everything she used to use her smart-phone for (except phone-calls I guess).

She can't understand why she has to pick up the phone to use Whatsapp. Her solution has been to just use Facebook messenger instead.

That was my reaction as well when I considered whatsapp: Why would I sign up for a IM service which only works on my phone?

You may play this as a strength, but for a considerable amount of the user-base it seems like a pointless limitation. And the user-base sees that every other competitor offers this feature, and to them whatsapp is suddenly no longer that interesting.

TeeWEE2• 12 years ago

While i agree whatsapp web should work in every browser the auther is forgetting one IMPORTANT gotcha:

Whatsapp, is a messaging-routing platform. It doesnt store any messages. Thats what makes whatsapp strong. Its a feature. Thats why you need your phone. Its like SMS. They are not storing all your sensitive message.

If you dont care about storing sensitive messages on servers. Use Telegram/Facebook Messaging, etc...

I think its really a feature, that its not storing your messages.

podgib• 12 years ago

Plus one of the reasons whatsapp is useful is because you know your contacts have it on their phone, so it's like sending them a text message. If they made a standalone web client that you could use without a phone, it becomes just another IM platform.

Igglyboo3• 12 years ago

Totally agree, this is a feature, not a shortcoming. I use WhatsApp primarily because it is extremely fast when compared to SMS, iMessage is fast as well but not all of my contacts have iPhones.

If I want persistent group chat I'll use Hangouts or IRC/XMPP/Jabber etc. I have hundreds of options for that.

easytiger• 12 years ago

extremely fast

In what way is, for example, Hangouts slow?

RIMR• 12 years ago

But why not just store the messages in the browser memory?

blcArmadillo• 12 years ago

Perhaps someone can answer this for me. I've seen several comments here saying WhatsApp doesn't store conversations. The other day someone sent me a picture on WhatsApp. Before looking at the message I was going through my photo gallery and noticed a random picture I didn't take so I deleted it. When I went to look at the message it was just a blurred out photo of the picture I had deleted and when I clicked it it said the media didn't exist on my SD card. Now, if I log into the web version that picture is fully visible. This suggests to me that they keep at least the pictures on their server. So is it only the text portion they don't keep?

whitenoise• 12 years ago

Adding my own anecdotal experience here.

Recently my Z10 got bricked. The only backup available was from April 2014. I bought a new Z10 and restored the backup on that phone. I was expecting that all WhatsApp messages and pictures received between April 2014 and the restoration date would not be available. But, WhatsApp did somehow pull the messages and pictures from recent months. So, where did it restore the messages/pictures from? From other contacts' phones?

thegeomaster• 12 years ago

Yes, the photos are indeed stored on the server for some amount of time. If you dig into the obfuscated messages.db file from WhatsApp (I don't know about now, but it used to be encrypted with a known key, and there are tools for decryption available), you'll see that it stores a tiny JPEG thumbnail and an HTTPS URL on their servers where the photo can be retrieved. Though if you try to get to older pics you are just presented an error message that it's no longer available.

halviti• 12 years ago

They may not store messages within the Whatsapp system, but facebook is a data mining company first and foremost and an advertising company second.

I think it would be short-sighted to assume they aren't storing your messages somewhere.

pjmlp2• 12 years ago

Its like SMS.

SMS are stored while awaiting delivery during a certain period.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_message_service_technical...

azmenak• 12 years ago

This reminds me of how weChat/weixing implements their web client, minus the ridiculousness of chrome only `requestFileSystem()`.

Scan a QR code from the client on your phone, and re-authentiate every time the connection is interrupted.

If you don't use a supported platform, like a Blackberry, you pretty much have no way of communicating with anyone in China, since you can't login to the web client.

pshin• 12 years ago

Heliosmaster• 12 years ago

I don't get all the complaints. We are already talking about a modified version of XMPP that only works within their network. We should not complain about the crappyness of their web-client, but rather on the fact that they are not using an open-protocol like XMPP for which the plenty of clients, that suit everyone needs, already exist!

ce4• 12 years ago

This one is missing on the list:

https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=web.whatsapp....

Are they serious???

  - Vulnerable to POODLE
  - too short HSTS value
  - RC4
  - SSL3

"maybe they need to support ancient broken browsers"

EDIT: As only Chrome is supported, RC4 & SSL3 are moot.

niklas_a• 12 years ago

I love the web client. Works great for me!

newbington• 12 years ago

Sorry but after reading your post and your bio, I got a few points.

1st your career is too short to fully understand the web and be able to judge a company like facebook.

2nd you haven't realized that whatsapp might be its own company but its owned by facebook, and after the buyout facebook did a clear up on devs and hired / assigned their own devs to that.

3rd you haven't realized that the power of the web is fading over the power of mobile web!

I understand that that's a blog and you are free to express your thoughts, but I am really repulsed by the fact that this post has so many upvotes. It makes me think that people reading and upvoting on this site have no idea of technology.

mataug• 12 years ago

I disagree with most of the things in this blog post. The web UI works and quite well that too. Whatsapp has been known to build things that work and that too fast.

I don't care if it works only on chrome and doesn't work on the iPhone. They'll most probably fix it soon.

I can think of one good reason why not having official APIs has been in whatsapp's favour. Almost no spam.

duckson• 12 years ago

Their site seems to be down, here's a Google cache link: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2VSoNL8...

yummyfajitas• 12 years ago

I'd love to say this will make me drop whatsapp. But their lack of a web client didn't, neither did the terrible search or the invasion of privacy (not letting me turn off the blue double check mark). Sadly, whatsapp can do whatever they want and I'm stuck with it.

No whatsapp, no women. I really like women.

mercer• 12 years ago

Is there a good reason to not switch to Telegram (or another alternative), which has a web client and native desktop clients? Especially on mobile it's almost no trouble to use two chat apps side by side, as most of the interaction happens through notifications (which send you straight to relevant app).

I switched initially because I was a bit uncomfortable with having long, personal conversations on a Facebook-owned property with no export capabilities, but I've been getting more and more of my friends to switch simply because of the very solid web and desktop apps. And even though they complain initially about installing 'yet another app', in practice it's no trouble (since they only have to use the two apps on mobile, where using both is not really an issue).

The main thing I'm wondering, I guess, is: is it mostly perception that keeps people within one mobile chat ecosystem, or am I underestimating how difficult it is for the average user to use more than one app, and/or slowly move to another app?

WhatsApp doesn't understand the web

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