This is the age of the “Family” Whatsapp group. WhatsApp has built a community of more than 1.2 billion monthly active users worldwide by allowing them to message friends for free. The service has become much more than a no-cost chatting app. The description of the social bonding and peer pressure sounds similar to the theme of the 2017 movie “The Circle”. Whatsapp is idle chatter that gets consumed without too many defences, and without having to test it against any form of external reality. It’s interesting that, depending on content and context, everything that’s a positive can just as easily be the worst aspect of whatsapp as well. It lives in a self reinforcing bubble, a vicious circle of affirmations between people just like us with no tolerance of dissent or discussion. Families feels warm and dysfunctional at the same time. Every argument inevitably becomes acquiesce or a new whatsapp group.
What does WhatsApp offer today? What is its personality?
A service multiuse:
- You can message someone you know (Conversation with someone of whom the phone number is in your contacts list).
- You can message a group of people you know (Conversation with two or more people of whom the phone number is in your contacts list ).
- In recent years, the authorities have caught on to WhatsApp’s potential for engaging more directly with the Pakistani public, especially in some of the country’s megacities.
- Increasing women’s safety
- Reporting offences
- Holding politicians to account
- Helping terror victims
In a country where education and psychological support are limited, whatsapp can be an important tool to spread knowledge. Whatsapp does set itself apart in the intimacy and homogeneity that it provides with its own unwritten membership rules.
Messaging domain is moving backwards
There seem to be gazillion messaging apps out there that are all about creating little walled gardens where you are not allowed to talk to anyone outside the garden with mostly questionable business models along the lines of get: millions of users, ????, Facebook buys you. So Whatsapp social media technology users don’t talk to Facebook Messenger users who don’t talk to google IM, etc. People are keeping a long WhatsApp list to show their powerful social network. It’s a very visible network. Very useful though and used extensively for Business in the Middle East and South East Asia.
Give an insight story where we can connect emotions
Whatsapp $16+ billion acquisition, destroying the Telecom Industry is one of its major effects as well. It got us more involved in the Digital World that’s for sure. It takes great discipline not to let social media consume your life and identity! Whatsapp has effectively turned into a tracking tool. WhatsApp chose convenience over privacy and security, but here’s how you can fix this. By the way, an “attempt to intercept messages” is only detectable if you activate “show security notification” (In WhatsApp, go to: Settings > Account > Security > show security notifications: on).
What’s That? WhatsApp Goes Full Encryption. Future possibile features:
- Messaging with someone we don’t know (Conversation with two or more people of whom the phone number is NOT in your contacts list but that are part of our #Channel or a #Channel we are part of).
- Personal use (Following interesting #Channels ).