In the competitive social-media space Facebook commands a healthy 1 billion plus users, and dominates as the market leader. However as per a recent five-country survey, the instant messaging app, Whatsapp has replaced the former in terms of popularity when it comes to use of social media messaging on mobiles. Boasting a global 350 million plus active users with 25 million users in India alone, Whatsapp has completely taken over the mobile messaging space. Whatsapp, founded in the heart of Silicon Valley in 2009 by two co-founders has today left behind giants like Apple's iMessage, Google's Hangouts, BBM Messenger, Snapchat, Skype and more in this virtual race.
Its success is attributed to its easy-to-use, highly customizable user interface and the ability to share photos, audio clips, etc making Whatsapp an effective SMS alternative.
With constant dynamism and updates, Whatsapp had not long ago updated its iPhone app by adding an external network support in the form of the iCloud (Apple's cloud service) chat history backup. With this iCloud backup functionality, users are now able to have the option to back-up their message history to iCloud.
Holding firm its helm of expansion, Whatsapp has recently launched an altogether redesigned update for the iOS 7 application. This brings various welcoming features and options to the Apple users. Apart from a makeover in its user-face the new update (2.11.5) brings improved location sharing using the 3D maps which also allow you to hide places and search places as per your need.
Source: gagets.ndtv.com
Some of the other new features introduced in this iPhone version of Whatsapp include a new broadcast list, which allows users to send a message to a group of friends at once (However, these friends have to have your phone number in their contact lists for this feature to work). It also brings an overhauled interface for managing blocked contacts and sports larger thumbnails view. Sharing photos too has received an update with the crop image feature being enabled before sending. The updated app allows new notifications alerts and sounds, and the default use of device's text size as per the iOS 7 settings. To withstand the growing competition the iPhone, Whatsapp update has also introduced a new set of icons and chat bubbles to bring novelty into the entire messaging experience.
With these update, Whatsapp has also changed its monetization model for the service on iPhones which is now offered as a free download to new users and would be charged $0.99 every year after getting one year of free access to the service, similar to how the service is offered on other platforms. Source: news.softpedia.com
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