We're bigger than Twitter: WhatsApp CEO

Look who's trying to upstage Twitter. Surprise, surprise, it's WhatsApp! The CEO of the cross-platform messaging app service has boasted that WhatsApp has a bigger user base than Twitter.

On stage at the D: Dive Into Mobile, WhatsApp’s CEO Jan Koum said that the messaging service had more monthly active users than Twitter. While he did not reveal the exact number, but he confirmed they are far more than Twitter's figure. This means the figure is somewhere north of 200 million.

Koum said that WhatsApp processes eight billion inbound messages and 12 billion outbound missives daily, making it one of the most successful cross platform messaging app. The app has a great impact on messaging, with millions of smartphone users all over the world using WhatsApp to communicate with each other.

Bigger than Twitter?

WhatsApp has been in the news recently for being a lucrative acquisition. According to reports, rumours have been rife about Google aspiring to acquire WhatsApp for a figure of $1 billion for the longest time now.

t's been rumoured for quite some time now that a mobile messaging service would be the next big buy in the mobile space. It was rumoured in December last year that Facebook was in talks to acquire WhatsApp. However, multiple sources soon refuted the talk. WhatsApp also said that the article was a rumour and not factually accurate.

At the conference, Kuom denied the rumours vehemently again. WhatsApp has slowly been slowly trying to introduce the $0.99 subscription based model. Surprisingly, it has not affected a drop-off in the service. Monetisation is not an issue currently.

“We’re looking forward to a world with billions of phones,” Koum said. “And once that happens it’s going to be extremely easy to monetize. But a lot more people need to join the smartphone revolution and a lot more people need to buy more goods on their phones.”

There is definitely no scope for advertising within WhatsApp, says Koum. “We do have a manifesto opposing advertising,” he said. “We’re proud of that. Who likes advertising? We’re so bombarded with ads so much in our daily lives and we felt that smartphones aren’t the place for that. Our phones are so intimately connected to us, to our lives. Putting advertising on a device like that is a bad idea. You don’t want to be interrupted by ads when you’re chatting with your loved ones…Our monetization strategy is simple. One dollar a year. If we did something besides that, it would just get in the way. … We want a great product and great user experience.”

WhatsApp for WP8 gets lockscreen alerts, better UI

Windows Phone 8 users now have reason to be even happier with their devices. Cross-platform messaging application WhatsApp has received an update and is now actually quite useable on Windows Phone 8. The update brings along quite a few handy features Windows Phone users will be glad to find, considering how shaky the app has been on the platform in the past, and brings the application almost at par with its iOS and Android counterparts. Most importantly, the UI is now looking slightly better suited to Windows Phone.

For notifications and alerts, WhatsApp has finally adapted itself to the Metro UI design and has ditched the green, blob-like design that looked like a complete misfit on the home screen. Notifications will now appear on locked screens too.

The new update is bound to make a lot of Windows Phone 8 users happy

We wonder why it took this long to bring this particular feature, but you can now hit "Enter" to send a message across. To activate this feature, you need to head to the Settings tab and change how your messages are sent.

The attachment screen has also had a facelift and you can now share screenshots from within the application.

Bringing the Windows Phone 8 version of WhatsApp on par with the Android and iOS versions has been somewhat of an agenda on the company’s plate. Windows Phone 8 users will now be able to send out broadcast messages, which is a relatively new feature even on the other two platforms.

Last but not the least, WhatsApp will finally let you back-up your messages manually. This is a pretty important feature this version of the app sorely lacked.

WhatsApp has had a sort of problematic relationship with the Windows Phone platform. After the app was pulled several times off the store and uploaded again, users and critics alike wrote off WhatsApp for Windows Phone.

Most notably, there were discrepancies even between the Windows 7 and Windows 8 versions of WhatsApp. The app was finally back up for Windows Phone 8 users in December, but was still not up to the mark. The app's developers have since started sending out a stream of regular updates with the aim of bringing it up to Android and iOS levels.

Earlier in December, WhatsApp had promised that the Windows Phone 8 version of the application was to be six times faster than the previous one. In reply to a query about the new update, the developers said that they were aiming to make the new app work faster.

The developers also mentioned that they were going to continue using the background audio API; however, they were looking forward to Microsoft devising a way of keeping the system running in the background, and for this to happen, they said Microsoft would need to lift its restrictions on third-party apps.

You can download WhatsApp for Windows Phone 8 here.

Whatsapp gets new look, fonts via update

A new update for Whatsapp has been released that brings a new interface for the popular messenger application.
The new update, according to reports, brings new fonts and colour schemes that enhances the applications' overall look. "Subtle colours for the app and the speech bubbles are what make this new UI look really exciting. Your smiley drawer has shifted homes and can be found to the left of your text line. Image previews too are now larger and the image window itself looks non-intrusive," a technology focused website further added.

However, the update has not been released over any application store like Google Play or iTunes, rather it is available from Whatsapp's own website. The free APK will update your Whatsapp account. Remember that Whatsapp service is free for a year after which one has to pay $0.99 or Rs 50 approximately for a year to use the service.
Whatsapp has been very poupular with the users and is available on iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry and even for Symbian platforms.