WhatsApp, that app… I have a love-hate relationship with WhatsApp. On the one hand, I find it essential in my daily life as it is the app I use to talk to my friends and family, share photos and make occasional video calls. On the other hand, I feel you bother me. I feel like it’s an app that aspires to be anything and it’s filled with things that eventually complicate the experience.

And it is a rare week that a novelty tested in the beta version is not released and reaches the stable version in the long run. It is a rare month that WhatsApp does not receive any news. In other words, it is an application whose ultimate purpose is to provide fast communication between people. became more and more complex.

Messages to Communities and States

Of course, few people know that WhatsApp was designed as an app for posting updates to the mobile Contacts app. Typical “I’m in” or “I’m at work”. Shortly after, in June 2009, with the introduction of push notifications on iOS (WhatsApp was created because one of its co-founders Jan Koum bought an iPhone), and after realizing that users were using the app to send simple notifications to your contacts, the app finally came to a messaging system. transformed.

This resulted in a rapid increase in the download of the application and it was possible to obtain funding to launch the application on other operating systems such as Symbian, Android, Windows Phone or BlackBerry. In 2011, WhatsApp was one of the 20 most popular apps in the US App Store. As of December 2013, it already had 400 million users. It was a simple, simple messaging app and that made it popular. People bring more people, and the rest, as they say, is history. Today, WhatsApp is the most used app to communicate with the permission of certain native apps in certain countries, such as WeChat in China.

The truth is, ever since it was acquired by Facebook, which is now Meta, WhatsApp is moving towards a more social platform. Voice calls, video calls, the ability to share files, web platforms have arrived, but also States (following the success of Instagram stories and the Snapchat format), macro groups, version for companies (as WhatsApp monetizes), group video calls, and Communities (group groups).

What used to be a simple app for sending messages and communicating has changed today. a social app where we can send messages, yes, but also upload temporary photos of our holidays, be in a community of our neighborhood blog with different thematic groups, join large groups, order an empanada from the neighborhood store, and in some countries even send money.

Gradually, WhatsApp has become more and more complete and complex, both at once. It is true that there are some welcome news such as surveys (good luck for now) or the possibility of having the same WhatsApp account on several mobile phones (announced just a few days ago), but there are also some things. while it can enrich the experience for some users, it is overly complex for others. And there is no other option.

Let’s say you want to use WhatsApp only to send messages and photos to your friends. Well, you’ll also need to see a blue dot because someone you’ve saved on your calendar and haven’t seen in years has a new status. Also, as you scroll through your chats, you will see a blue halo around their profile photo because that person has uploaded a Status. And don’t forget to check out the “Paddle tennis players” group from the “Urbanization X” Community with five other groups.

And is it used? It’s something WhatsApp knows better than anyone, but I personally don’t know anyone who uses communities. Likewise, I have 851 contacts on the calendar and only eight who have posted Status in the last 24 hours. I also did not have the opportunity to use the disappearing chats, join a group of 500 people, make a video call with 32 people, or send a 2GB file. Because? Because There are already other alternatives for this..

If I want to join thematic communities, there are few better options than Discord. If I want to share a photo with my friends, I have Instagram (on paper, I don’t actually use it). It is not necessary for an application to have everything, because in the end the application becomes unnecessarily complicatedand if you haven’t told Facebook, the aforementioned Instagram or Twitter (a bit chaotic right now). Sometimes the simple is the best.

on Xataka | WhatsApp wants to be the most secure messaging app. And on the right track

Pictures | Own and WhatsApp