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WhatsApp doesn't understand the web

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Re: WhatsApp doesn't understand the web

#111

Post by juliangregorian »

danellis wrote: post #89
benihana wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's not reddit (stop acting like it's reddit - the communities and conventions are quite different) and if you want to participate in a discussion, stay in the thread. Did you come from /r/programming? There have been a few comment threads talking about hacker news recently.

You're making excuses for poor UX in a way that makes you sound elitist. Not alerting you that you have replies is ridiculous. "Stay in the thread"? No, thanks, I'm not going to keep checking my comments for replies. Thankfully there's hnnotify. HN just has a poorly designed interface.

It really does, but the anti-Javascript crowd here is very vocal and would likely inspire some sort of Digg-like exodus if the UI were ever brought into the 21st century.

Re: WhatsApp doesn't understand the web

#112

Post by thegeomaster »

blcArmadillo wrote: post #87
TeeWEE wrote: post #63

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...…

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 sa…

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.

Re: WhatsApp doesn't understand the web

#113

Post by thefreeman »

whitenoise wrote: post #100
blcArmadillo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sa…

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 messag…

WhatsApp definitely stores your messages on their server. They have to. If you send a WhatsApp message to someone and their phone is off, does it bounce? If not, they are storing your messages at some point.

Just because they say they don't store them forever really doesn't mean much, and I am pretty surprised by how many people on HN keep repeating it.

Re: WhatsApp doesn't understand the web

#114

Post by halviti »

TeeWEE wrote: post #63

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...…

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.

Re: WhatsApp doesn't understand the web

#115

Post by k__ »

Smirnoff wrote: post #57

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 co…

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.

Re: WhatsApp doesn't understand the web

#116

Post by icebraining »

Kurtz79 wrote: post #96
icebraining wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android and iOS have more than 95% market share of the smartphones market . Plenty of people access the web with feature phones. In fact, that's why Whatsapp has clients for Nokia S60 and S40.

My argument still stands. Would be commercially sound to support these "plenty of people" ?

Apparently it is, since Whatsapp does write clients for them. You can't tell me that writing a J2ME app from scratch is easier than adapting a web client to work on a somewhat more limited browser.

Re: WhatsApp doesn't understand the web

#117

Post by josteink »

P4u1 wrote: post #61

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 connec…

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.

Re: WhatsApp doesn't understand the web

#118

Post by saiya-jin »

rikkus wrote: post #81
Smirnoff wrote: post #57

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 co…

"uploading/downloading pics on WhatsApp takes forever" I haven't seen this, but I'm on Windows Phone, so perhaps it's platform-specific?

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 :))

Re: WhatsApp doesn't understand the web

#119

Post by Igglyboo »

easytiger wrote: post #106
Igglyboo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> extremely fast In what way is, for example, Hangouts slow?

It's slower than WhatsApp in almost all aspects. I can send a WhatsApp message to someone who is 500 miles away on wifi and get a response from them in less than 2 seconds. It takes 2 more than 2 seconds for them to RECIEVE a message on hangouts. I've personally timed this and heard similar experiences with a few other people.

Re: WhatsApp doesn't understand the web

#120

Post by dang »

smackfu wrote: post #104
shadeless wrote: post #8

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

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

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.

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