Items tagged with instant messaging
Worried about those secret recipes, sultry photos, or other confidential messages you have been sending on your Android phone? Well, good news. Google feels it has sufficiently tested its end-to-end encryption feature that arrived in beta last year, and is now rolling it out to the masses. However, there are some things you should know. For one, end-to-end encryption can only be enabled when chatting with one other person. It does not work for group chats, so keep that in mind. Also be aware that end-to-end encryption is not available for SMS (short message service) and MMS (multimedia messaging service) texts, and instead you have to be taking advantage of RCS (rich communications service)....
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Facebook does not exactly have a squeaky clean record when it comes user privacy (remember the Cambridge Analytica scandal?), so naturally an ambiguous update to its WhatsApp privacy policy concerned many people. Millions of them, actually, who have decided to leave WhatsApp behind and seek out alternative services for their secure instant messaging needs. Let's back up a moment, for context on the current mass exodus. Earlier this month, Facebook tweaked the privacy policy for WhatsApp, which suggested that effective February 8, the app would automatically send some data to Facebook. In essence, WhatsApp users would effectively be forced to share certain data with Facebook. This caught the attention...
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Back when I was in high school, beepers (or pagers, i you prefer) were all the rage. I'd venture a guess that relatively few of my classmates went on to become doctors, but in an era before smartphones, beepers were an easy way to ping friends and family members. Fast forward what feels like 100 years and an app called Beeper aims to make a similar impact on communication, by wrangling more than a dozen instant messaging protocols into one. And yes, that includes Apple's iMessage. According to the developer, Eric Migicovsky, Beeper offers up a unified inbox for 15 different chat platforms, and they are "adding new chat networks every few weeks." Twitter DMs, Skype, Discord, WhatsApp, and several...
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It is not always to easy to discern bogus news stories from legitimate ones, partly because this is a crazy world we live in. Regardless of the reason, the advent of 'fake news' presents a problem for social media sites and other service. Helping to do its part, WhatsApp recently imposed a limit on message forwards and is seeing big results. WhatsApp introduced the added restrictions in the first week of April. It is part of an ongoing effort to curb the potential spread of misinformation. It started with WhatsApp adding double arrows to messages that had been forwarded many times, a measure it put in place in 2018. It followed this up limiting users from forwarding a message to more than five...
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Google and Samsung are partnering to make text messaging on Android a similar experience to Apple's iMessages on iPhone devices, the company's announced. The two tech giants will do this by embracing RCS (Rich Communication Services) messaging, which enables advanced features like the ability to chat over Wi-Fi. "By furthering our robust partnership with Google, we will bring a richer messaging experience to our customers, letting them seamlessly chat with their friends and family across messaging platforms. This collaboration will help further the industry’s momentum toward advanced messaging and global RCS coverage," said Patrick Chomet, EVP and Head of Product & Services Innovation...
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You can easily tell if someone is ore has recently been active in Messenger, just look for the little dot underneath your contacts. Now Facebook is adding a similar feature to Instagram. The standalone photo-sharing app announced in a blog post that it is adding status indicators to contacts, which appear next a user's profile picture. "DMing friends and connecting over the content you love is more fun when you know your friends are there to see it. This update gives you the ability to have more of those realtime conversations while giving you the control to hide your status altogether," Instagram states. Whenever one of your contacts is active on Instagram, you will see a green dot next to their...
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Soon it will be illegal to fire off a text message or look down at your phone while crossing the street in Honolulu, the largest city in Hawaii. The ban will take effect towards the end of October, at which point Honolulu will become the first major city in the United States to effectively ban distracted walking, a growing problem as pedestrians become consumed by their mobile devices.Image Source: Flickr (Alan Levine) Laws against distracted driving are on the books all over the place, though distracted walking has largely been ignored when it comes to legislation. Honolulu is leading the charge as more cities consider ways to protect so-called "smartphone zombies" from themselves. It sounds...
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It seemed like a crazy when a little over years ago Facebook announced it was purchasing WhatsApp for $19 billion. But the reason Facebook was wiling to pony up such an obscene sum is partly because of how wildly popular WhatsApp was at the time. It's only grown since then, and according to its developers WhatsApp users make over 100 million calls per day. "Today, more than 100 million voice calls are made every day on WhatsApp - that's over 1,100 calls a second! We're humbled that so many people have found this feature useful, and we're committed to making it even better in the months to come," WhatsApp stated in a blog post announcing the 100 million calls per day milestone. WhatsApp is primarily...
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Do you want to know why Facebook will avoid the same fate as MySpace? It's because Mark Zuckerberg and company have an uncanny ability to recognize big things in the making. This is underscored today by WhatsApp CEO and co-founder Jan Koum announcing on Facebook (where else?) that his instant messaging app now boasts 900 million users.That's up from around 450 million users when Facebook acquired the service last year for a whopping $19 billion, including $4 billion in cash, $12 billion in Facebook shares, and another $3 billion in restricted stock units doled out to WhatsApp's staff members.It seemed like a crazy sum at the time, and there are those who will still argue that Facebook overpaid....
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You can't win them all, and in the ultra competitive mobile app segment, Samsung has decided its ChatON application doesn't have what it takes to win out against a plethora of more popular programs. As such, Samsung is turning off its ChatON service for good in all markets in the first quarter of 2015 so that it can instead focus on "health, mobile commerce, and other platforms."The shutoff date has been set for February 1, 2015, so if you're a fan of ChatON, you have until then to get your fix, save for U.S. users -- Samsung will shutter the service domestically by the end of March, thus ending a three-year run.Samsung had big plans for ChatON, announcing the app in August 2011. One thing that...
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A million dollars isn't cool, do you know what's cool? A billion dollars. Or so we were told by Justin Timberlake's portrayal of Sean Parker in the movie The Social Network, a docu-drama about Facebook. Ironically enough, Facebook reportedly offered $1 billion to acquire Snapchat, and then $3 billion after its initial bid was rebuked. It was pretty gutsy of Snapchat to turn down both offers without having any real revenue stream to speak of, along with a $4 billion offer from Google, though the lack of revenue is about to change with the introduction of ads. Beginning this weekend, Snapchat will place an advertisement in "Recent Updates" for users who live in the U.S. In an effort to make sure...
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After Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion back in February of this year, the popular messaging service has gone on to surpass 600 million monthly active users, company founder and Chief Executive Officer Jan Koum announced in a Twitter post today. At the time of acquisition, WhatsApp was nearing half a billion active users. By April, WhatsApp had crossed over the 500 million mark along with a new daily record of 64 billion messages handed in 24 hours, 20 billion of which were sent (inbound) and 44 billion received (outbound) by users. What that boils down to is an additional 100 million members in the course of four months. Now serving 600,000,000 monthly active users. Yes, active and...
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Facebook isn't afraid to make a splash, hence the decision back in February of this year to scoop up WhatsApp for $19 billion in cash and stock options. It remains Facebook's largest transaction to date, though it could prove a brilliant move in the long run, especially as WhatsApp keeps attracting more users. As of right now, WhatsApp is home to 500 million active users. "Thanks to all of you, half a billion people around the world are now regular, active WhatsApp users. In the last few months, we've grown fastest in countries like Brazil, India, Mexico, and Russia, and our users are also sharing more than 700 million photos and 100 million videos every single day," WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum...
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WhatsApp just refuses to work with pedestrian numbers. Take for example its sale price to Facebook, which is snatching up the instant messaging service for $19 billion. That's a pretty big number, though not as high as the new record the service set in daily messages sent and received, which totaled 64 billion messages combined. "New daily record: 20 billion messages (inbound) and 44 billion messages received (outbound) by our users equals 64 billion messages handled in just 24 hours," WhatsApp announced in a Twitter post. Image Source: Flickr (Sam Azgor) To be clear, WhatsApp had to play with the numbers a bit to come to that figure. WhatsApp counts single messages sent to a group as separate...
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Facebook surprised a lot of people when Mark Zuckerberg announced his social network was acquiring WhatsApp, an instant messaging application for smartphones, for $19 billion, representing the company's biggest acquisition to date. When asked about the valuation, BlackBerry's CEO, John Chen, said he would take $19 billion for his company's messaging service in a heartbeat. "I work for the shareholder. Standard answer. If somebody comes to me with $19 billion, I would definitely sell it. I would recommend to the board to take it," Chen told CNBC. Chen also said he doesn't view BlackBerry Messenger in the same way. He says he knows there's significant value in the messaging business, and the way...
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Security researchers at Gibson Security handed Snapchat what amounts to a lump of a coal on Christmas morning by exposing a security flaw that, when exploited, would grant hackers access to users' phone numbers without their permission. It's essentially a how-to guide for hackers with detailed instructions, and the reason Gibson Security made the information public is because the company claims Snapchat has known about the flaw for several months and has done nothing about it. Gibson Security says it first made Snapchat aware of the issue in August, nothing that none of the exploits revealed have been addressed in past four months. "Seeing that nothing had been really been improved upon (although,...
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Budding entrepreneurs take note, word of mouth advertising still plays a significant role in growth, provided you build solid product or offer a stellar service. Just have a look at WhatsApp, a cross-platform instant messaging service that allows users to send free texts, videos, photos, and audio messages to one another with ZERO ads to distract from the experience. The caveat is that it costs $0.99 per year (after a 1-year free trial), but that nominal charge hasn't stopped WhatsApp from becoming the largest cross-platform messaging service around. WhatsApp has seen a sudden surge of interest in the past few months. The company announced in a blog post that it now has 400 million monthly active...
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Want to get rich relatively quick? Develop an app around a simple concept and wait for the ridiculous valuations to come rolling in, and then sell to the highest bidder. It's a formula that worked for Instagram, a photo (and now video, too) sharing app that Facebook purchased for $1 billion, and it appears Snapchat is headed in the same direction. Word all over the web is that Snapchat raised $60 million during its latest round of funding, and did so at an $800 million pre-money valuation. Like Instagram, Snapchat is well on its way to becoming a billion dollar company, which is a little mind boggling for an app that doesn't yet generate any revenue. The potential to make big money is there,...
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Microsoft's theme for the year might as well be "Out with the old and in with the new." That philosophy accurately describes the launch of Windows 8, which dispenses with the old way of doing things (like with a dedicated Start menu, for example) in favor of a touch-friendly future, and it also applies to Microsoft's instant messaging strategy. According to reports, Microsoft is taking Windows Live Messenger out of the instant messaging game and inserting Skype into the starting lineup. "Several sources" tell The Verge that Windows Live Messenger will ultimately end up integrated into Skype within the coming months, and will make an official announcement soon. This is the company's latest attempt...
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If you're having trouble using Google Talk, don't waste time messing around with your network and/or router settings. Chances are the problem has nothing to do with you, Joe User, with the culprit being something on Google's end. The sultan of search began investigating "reports of an issue with Google Talk" early this morning, and within 10 minutes, determined that whatever it is that's causing the problem is affecting the majority of Google Talk users. Google began investigating the issue at 6:40AM. At 6:50AM, Google said it was "seeing error messages and/or other unexpected behavior" and promised to provide a ETA by 7:50AM on when the service would be restored. When 7:50AM rolled around, Google...
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It's never pretty watching two nerds duke it out, and as is often the case, a would-be battle turns into a lot of awkward posturing. That's currently what's going on between Fring, who last week released an updated iPhone app allowing iPhone 4 owners to make 2-way video calling over Wi-Fi or 3G, and Skype, who may rank as Fring's least biggest fan. So what's the big deal? According to Fring, Skype is playing dirty by refusing to allow connections with Fring, thus ending 4 years of Skype interconnectivity. "We are disappointed that Skype, who once championed the cause of openness, is now attempting to muzzle competition, even to the detriment of its own users," said Avi Shecter, Fring's Co-Founder...
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The results of a recently published study of workers' instant messaging (IM) use shows that IM can actually improve workplace productivity. This contradicts a widely held belief that IM in the workplace is a hindrance to productivity. IM is often perceived as an interruption, and as such, "it can significantly hinder productivity by disrupting thought processes and work flows, causing individuals to take longer to complete tasks."Researchers at Ohio State University and the University of California, Irvine conducted a telephone study by randomly surveying individuals employed full-time who use computers in an office environment at least five hours per week. They netted 912 respondents, of which...
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