{"id":1604,"date":"2014-03-10T13:29:21","date_gmt":"2014-03-10T07:59:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/puinquirer.edu.in\/?p=1604"},"modified":"2014-03-10T13:29:21","modified_gmt":"2014-03-10T07:59:21","slug":"facebook-takes-whatsapp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/puinquirer.edu.in\/?p=1604","title":{"rendered":"Facebook takes over WhatsApp"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently in a surprising deal, Facebook acquired WhatsApp for 19 billion dollars! It is said to be Facebook\u2019s biggest acquisition till date. With its ever growing users, WhatsApp was seen as a rival and there had been rumours that it\u2019ll be acquired by Facebook before it actually was.<\/span><\/p>\n

To those who don\u2019t know what WhatsApp is, let\u2019s take a look.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\"WhatsApp\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

WhatsApp is a cross platform application for Windows, Blackberry, Android and iOS. It is also available for S40 and S60 series though the layout and features differ. On first look, it\u2019s a messaging app but then it also allows you to share photos and videos, voice recordings and locations. Worried of the file size of the audio or video and the time it\u2019ll take to upload? WhatApp takes care to decompress the files that are heavy and only then it uploads them. It also puts thumbnails for videos if it\u2019s available. The only thing WA requires is that you must have an unlimited data plan. It\u2019s free for one year and its 0.99$ for a year after that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Not enough features?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Well the net is always full with mods of the original apps and one such is WhatsApp+ which promises all that WhatsApp doesn\u2019t do. It doesn\u2019t compress images or videos and lets you share them in their original file size. It lets you have customizable themes, lets you shape icons and also change colours of chat bubbles and most of all, it promises an option to hide your \u2018last seen\u2019 status. But the mod is unofficial and is also reported to crash very often.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\"WhatsApp-Plus-4.75\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

So what after Facebook acquires WhatsApp?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

We are still not sure of what Facebook intends to do with WhatsApp. Jan Koum, CEO and co-founder of WhatsApp, will soon be joining Facebook\u2019s board but he will be operating WhatsApp independently for the next three years.<\/span><\/p>\n

The present subscribers to WhatsApp are afraid that FB would make a change in the privacy policies of WhatsApp. WhatsApp has always allowed only those who are in your contact list and those who use WhatsApp of it to be in touch with you. You may have many unknown people on FB but WhatsApp stood for privacy where you had your close set of friends and could form groups too. It never got revenues from advertising and that is what made it famous among youngsters.<\/span><\/p>\n

If FB decides to change the privacy policies then it\u2019s possible that those annoying, over-friendly strangers would be on WhatsApp too. And it seems the acquisition has already made WhatsApp lose a good number of subscribers with Telegram and Line claiming 8 million and 2 million new users respectively.<\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe Facebook is now on the go to buy out its rivals instead of improving on its features to attract more users and make them remain active. Looks like the acquisition is getting rave reviews and it also shows that youngsters are more into private messaging apps which lets them share media without charges than social media sites.<\/span><\/p>\n

Photos courtesy: Internet<\/span><\/p>\n

Sunitha Devi S<\/span><\/p>\n

1st M.A. Mass Communication<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/span><\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently in a surprising deal, Facebook acquired WhatsApp for 19 billion dollars! It is said to be Facebook\u2019s biggest acquisition till date. With its ever growing users, WhatsApp was seen as a rival and...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1606,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-s14-tech-savvy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/puinquirer.edu.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/puinquirer.edu.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/puinquirer.edu.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/puinquirer.edu.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/puinquirer.edu.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1604"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/puinquirer.edu.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1613,"href":"https:\/\/puinquirer.edu.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1604\/revisions\/1613"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/puinquirer.edu.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/puinquirer.edu.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/puinquirer.edu.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/puinquirer.edu.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}