

WhatsApp doesn't understand the web - NietTim
http://andregarzia.com/posts/en/whatsappdoesntunderstandtheweb

======
shadeless
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8926644](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8926644)

~~~
smackfu
And it's not considered a duplicate submission because one has a trailing
slash and the other doesn't.

~~~
dang
Of course it is a duplicate. The software doesn't catch all of those; that's
on purpose, to allow good stories multiple cracks at the bat (edit: i.e.
multiple chances to get attention). We rely on users to search before posting
and on moderators to bury the dupes that sneak through. User comments pointing
out the duplication are helpful.

This isn't a perfect system but it's much better than being too strict about
reposts. We're going to work on a more effective dupe detection system as soon
as we can get to it.

------
Smirnoff
WhatsApp went from being a poster child to an ugly donkey in my country
(Uzbekistan & other countries in Central Asia). Just two years ago everyone I
knew was using WhatsApp, and what happened now? Most people use either Viber
or Telegram, because uploading/downloading pics on WhatsApp takes forever.

WhatsApp had a POTENTIALLY massive commercial use here and they blew it with
paid subscriptions (which people in my country can't pay through Apple/Google
stores). So people started switching their mobile numbers to get back into
WhatsApp, which actually was really bad for WhatsApp but they blindly saw that
as success. Their growth team probably said: "We are killing it because more
and more people are signing up!" Yeah, but what's the churn rate? It's
probably huge as well. These unique mobile users that they counted were
actually the same people who couldn't find a way to pay.

Ok, so if anyone from Whatsapp happened to read my post, here is how you can
make (or could have made) money: \- Charge businesses to communicate with
their clients through WhatsApp. This is very straightforward -- businesses
need A MAC/PC CLIENT for their team to talk to customers. I know our tech
company wanted it, but you wouldn't let third party clients exist. So we
sticked with Viber and Telegram. Luckily regular users also ditched WhatsApp.

And look, we were not the only ones who needed it. The guy selling
shoes/clothes would show products through WhatsApp. The local florist would
show what he had available on particular day through pics on WhatsApp. Then he
got tired of sending these pics to everyone, so he wanted to have these pics
in his profile page. So who offered multiple pics in the profile? Telegram
did. As much as I hated their deceptive claim about "being the most secure
app", they actually managed to listen to users.

~~~
wjnc
It's awesome to read about use cases in countries I know little about. Viber,
Telegram for direct marketing? Wow. How do people decide to join? How do you
do ad's?

Just like in Argentina in '11 I was amazed that all SME had Facebooks, and
were just skipping the website-part I was used to.

Funny how local circumstances (might your Whatsapp problem just be an upload-
to-US problem?) create different business environments. It reminds me that
country-specific network and adoption effect exist and matter.

~~~
Smirnoff
Doing business in countries like Uzbekistan is tough because of inability to
get payments. But there is a solution to that and it's called MIDDLE MAN.

For example, Facebook ads are really picking up here. Of course, most small
businesses cannot pay to Facebook directly due to tight payment regulations.
So what happens? A middle man comes in. He signs up as a Facebook partner (or
regular user), finds small local businesses that pay him extra and then he
pays Facebook through his internationally accepted cards to show ads belonging
to others.

I have no doubt that if American companies came here and tried a little, they
would quickly realize that Uzbeks are entrepreneurs, who can be good partners
and can make lots of money.

Even the ideas that I see pop up in the United States have been implemented
here long time ago. For instance, we had car-sharing service in Uzbekistan
since I was a child -- we just didn't have GPS and mobile phones to make an
Uber, so we had middle men finding riders and putting them into one car. Then
the driver would pay a fee for that.

Same thing with delivery -- we had delivery services, which you could call, so
they could find the closest person to you (or the store/pharmacy) and deliver
the items quickly. You would just pay cash to the driver (which of course had
to be trustworthy-- otherwise delivery service wouldn't work with them)

~~~
roymurdock
What you call a "Middle Man" is also known as a "Market Maker" or a "Liquidity
Provider". He takes on the risk of connecting supply and demand in order to
profit from the bid/ask spread.

The "Middle Man" has been replaced with technology because it's more efficient
and enables more liquidity than an actual man or a network of men could.

If you see solutions popping up in Uzbekistan for basic logistical problems
such as transportation and delivery, perhaps you should try to implement them
elsewhere? I would be interested to hear more examples that could be
implemented elsewhere in the world.

------
ce4
This one is missing on the list:

[https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=web.whatsapp....](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=web.whatsapp.com&s=158.85.40.234)

Are they serious???

    
    
      - Vulnerable to POODLE
      - too short HSTS value
      - RC4
      - SSL3
    

"maybe they need to support ancient broken browsers"

EDIT: As only Chrome is supported, RC4 & SSL3 are moot.

------
TeeWEE
While i agree whatsapp web should work in every browser the auther is
forgetting one IMPORTANT gotcha:

Whatsapp, is a messaging-routing platform. It doesnt store any messages. Thats
what makes whatsapp strong. Its a feature. Thats why you need your phone. Its
like SMS. They are not storing all your sensitive message.

If you dont care about storing sensitive messages on servers. Use
Telegram/Facebook Messaging, etc...

I think its really a feature, that its not storing your messages.

~~~
blcArmadillo
Perhaps someone can answer this for me. I've seen several comments here saying
WhatsApp doesn't store conversations. The other day someone sent me a picture
on WhatsApp. Before looking at the message I was going through my photo
gallery and noticed a random picture I didn't take so I deleted it. When I
went to look at the message it was just a blurred out photo of the picture I
had deleted and when I clicked it it said the media didn't exist on my SD
card. Now, if I log into the web version that picture is fully visible. This
suggests to me that they keep at least the pictures on their server. So is it
only the text portion they don't keep?

~~~
whitenoise
Adding my own anecdotal experience here.

Recently my Z10 got bricked. The only backup available was from April 2014. I
bought a new Z10 and restored the backup on that phone. I was expecting that
all WhatsApp messages and pictures received between April 2014 and the
restoration date would not be available. But, WhatsApp did somehow pull the
messages and pictures from recent months. So, where did it restore the
messages/pictures from? From other contacts' phones?

~~~
thefreeman
WhatsApp definitely stores your messages on their server. They have to. If you
send a WhatsApp message to someone and their phone is off, does it bounce? If
not, they are storing your messages at some point.

Just because they say they don't store them forever really doesn't mean much,
and I am pretty surprised by how many people on HN keep repeating it.

------
P4u1
Don't you get it? It's a mobile app, which performs really well(hence no cloud
storage I guess) and is associated with your phone, your phone is and will be
the most important thing for whatsapp, the web thing is just a convenience for
while you're at your laptop or desktop, like working and stuff, I find it
awesome, it's a lot more productive then picking up the phone. I don't mind it
requires having my phone connected to the web, it is all times, that's the
point o whatsapp.

~~~
alimbada
It's the one missing feature of WhatsApp that I personally have been wanting
for a very long time so they have at least one happy customer with this... or
they would if they'd hurry up and update the iOS client to to work with this.
:)

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iagooar
I just don't get it. What is so difficult about providing a one-time
authentication through the user's phone? Just open Whatsapp on the smartphone,
get a token, put your phone number and token and voilà!

I mean, there have been web chats for decades now, so I don't understand why
they invented such a messed up set of constraints.

Besides, am I the only one who suspects that Whatsapp is boycotting Apple?
They needed almost 2 months to get an iOS 8 update out, now they are limiting
the "web" application to non-Apple users...

~~~
ddeck
I believe the issue is that unlike web chats and apps like Telegram, Whatsapp
doesn't store conversations on their servers beyond what is required to
deliver messages to the required destination device(s).

This presents obvious problems with having not just a web client, but any
client other than the main device, since the main device is the only store of
the existing conversations. New messages sent also need to be synchronized
across devices, which I presume is why it's required to keep your phone
connected to the Internet. Otherwise Whatsapp would need keep conversations on
their servers until they could be synced, which is very much not their model.

Details on their architecture:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c12cYAUTXXs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c12cYAUTXXs)

[http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/2/26/the-whatsapp-
archi...](http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/2/26/the-whatsapp-architecture-
facebook-bought-for-19-billion.html)

~~~
72deluxe
Doesn't that sound like a poor architecture then?

If the system is reliant on the main device, what happens if that gets run
over or destroyed? WhatsApp have no control over the fate of the device. Why
wouldn't they store the messages on the server and sync from that? WhatsApp
have control of the fate of their own servers, which is far more reliable,
SURELY.

If I send a new message from a device, either the other devices can poll
periodically for messages that I have sent, or they can use WebSockets and be
notified when a new message is sent, or when the app opens it can fetch all
the recent messages that I have sent from other devices. It isn't difficult
with a fine grained timestamp, surely? That's what Google Talk does.

You'd only need to order my messages by timestamp to get all messages that I
had sent.

It's a bit of a daft architecture if it is incapable of this basic mechanism,
isn't it?

~~~
Igglyboo
It's actually a feature, not poor architecture. They're putting security and
privacy above UX. This is especially important in this day and age with all of
the NSA and related revelations.

If you want a better UX there are hundreds of other options available.

------
duckson
Their site seems to be down, here's a Google cache link:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2VSoNL8...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2VSoNL8SUcEJ:andregarzia.com/posts/en/whatsappdoesntunderstandtheweb/+&cd=1&hl=nl&ct=clnk&gl=nl)

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buremba
The web client requires my phone to be online and doesn't support offline
notifications so that it has to be open all the time. I guess it's very much
like Pushbullet for WhatsApp, not a desktop app for WhatsApp.

------
mercer
Is there a good reason to not switch to Telegram (or another alternative),
which has a web client _and_ native desktop clients? Especially on mobile it's
almost no trouble to use two chat apps side by side, as most of the
interaction happens through notifications (which send you straight to relevant
app).

I switched initially because I was a bit uncomfortable with having long,
personal conversations on a Facebook-owned property with no export
capabilities, but I've been getting more and more of my friends to switch
simply because of the very solid web and desktop apps. And even though they
complain initially about installing 'yet another app', in practice it's no
trouble (since they only have to use the two apps on mobile, where using both
is not really an issue).

The main thing I'm wondering, I guess, is: is it mostly _perception_ that
keeps people within one mobile chat ecosystem, or am I underestimating how
difficult it is for the average user to use more than one app, and/or slowly
move to another app?

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frabcus
I'd love a technical explanation of how this works.

Are all the messages kept on the phone?

How does it relate to the Whisper Systems end to end encryption on the Android
to Android version of WhatsApp?

Is there some relationship between the two - is this very bizarre web
interface there because of constraints relating to privacy and encryption?

i.e. WhatsApp don't have your messages.

[Edit] Is it peer to peer in some fancy way - is it only for Chrome because it
uses WebRTC or something?

~~~
calgoo
What i remember from the Erlang discussions around Whatsapp, they dont keep
the messages on the server, only temporary until it has been delivered. So Im
guessing that is the reason why they need your phone to be connected.

Might have been in this video [1]... Not sure at the moment (will check later
when im out of the office).

[1] [http://vimeo.com/44312354](http://vimeo.com/44312354)

~~~
calgoo
OK found an explanation here: [1]

"What protocol is used in Whatsapp app? SSL socket to the WhatsApp server
pools. All messages are queued on the server until the client reconnects to
retrieve the messages. The successful retrieval of a message is sent back to
the whatsapp server which forwards this status back to the original sender
(which will see that as a "checkmark" icon next to the message). Messages are
wiped from the server memory as soon as the client has accepted the message"

[1] [http://www.quora.com/What-is-WhatsApps-server-
architecture](http://www.quora.com/What-is-WhatsApps-server-architecture)

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ComputerGuru
...and it seems you can't use this feature with an iPhone (yet?).

From their "web client": Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, BlackBerry 10,
and Nokia S60.

(In all fairness, my guess is it's pending acceptance of a newer version by
the iOS/iTunes review team, but I really hope that's the case.)

EDIT: Scratch that. They're not providing it on iOS because of how convoluted
their approach to a web client is. What they have to say: "Unfortunately for
now, we will not be able to provide web client to our iOS users due to Apple
platform limitations."

[http://blog.whatsapp.com/614/WhatsApp-
Web](http://blog.whatsapp.com/614/WhatsApp-Web)

Yeah, right.

------
azmenak
This reminds me of how weChat/weixing implements their web client, minus the
ridiculousness of chrome only `requestFileSystem()`.

Scan a QR code from the client on your phone, and re-authentiate every time
the connection is interrupted.

If you don't use a supported platform, like a Blackberry, you pretty much have
no way of communicating with anyone in China, since you can't login to the web
client.

------
yummyfajitas
I'd love to say this will make me drop whatsapp. But their lack of a web
client didn't, neither did the terrible search or the invasion of privacy (not
letting me turn off the blue double check mark). Sadly, whatsapp can do
whatever they want and I'm stuck with it.

No whatsapp, no women. I really like women.

------
vertex-four
Umm. Obviously the web client is supposed to be used on the desktop, not on a
phone. They have apps for phones.

Doesn't excuse the Chrome-only-ness, though.

~~~
Joona
I have a Jolla (Sailfish) phone. I can not use the web client, because I need
an Android, Windows or Blackberry phone. WhatsApp does however work fine on my
phone (via Alien Dalvik).

This "web client" is not actually a web client - it's just an app for your
phone that you can display on your computer monitor.

~~~
zeroDivisible
A bit of an off-topic question - how would you rate Sailfish and it's interop
with Android stuff?

~~~
Joona
Sailfish itself is much better than anything I have ever used - it's clearly
designed for touchscreens. For hackers it's awesome because it's actually a
Linux, and you can access shell (as a root, too).

Android support is a bit buggy though - for example Skype sometimes breaks
(can not send messages), but Spotify and WhatsApp have worked perfectly fine.

If you are interested in it, they dropped the price a while back (down to
250eur).

------
Heliosmaster
I don't get all the complaints. We are already talking about a modified
version of XMPP that only works within their network. We should not complain
about the crappyness of their web-client, but rather on the fact that they are
not using an open-protocol like XMPP for which the plenty of clients, that
suit everyone needs, already exist!

------
mmsimanga
Whilst the developer in me appreciates the sentiments expressed in the article
I have to point out that to build and app that is used by over 700 millions
users you have to be focussed on a fairly narrow set of features. You need to
execute those features very well and WhatsApp delivers.

~~~
shawabawa3
Their original client works very well and was certainly the best im client at
the time.

Now all that's keeping people there is network effect. Telegram is just better
at this point, and it works on almost every platform with no weird
restrictions

~~~
plextoria
Does Telegram have an app for J2ME?

~~~
soapdog
No it doesn't but it does have a public API, libraries and is friendly to
third-party developers so nothing is stopping someone from creating a J2ME
based client.

You can fetch source code from
[https://telegram.org/apps](https://telegram.org/apps)

------
sravfeyn
This is basically a Continuity feature that is PR-ed as Client.

------
eatonphil
To be fair, the WeChat desktop client also requires that you scan a QR code
from your smartphone to log in. I'm not defending WeChat, but it doesn't seem
like the author knows WhatsApp is not alone there.

~~~
soapdog
author here. I didn't knew about WeChat since it is not popular here in
Brazil.

Using a QR to facilitate login is not a bad decision. Having this as the only
method to authenticate makes it a bad client because it can't work as a
standalone offering.

I don't like when "web clients" are not full featured in the sense of allowing
registration and login. Look at Evernotes, you can register and use thru the
web client interface, there is no need for the app if you're on a platform
that is not supported.

~~~
tempodox
Hi, author, I like your article but those animated GIFs are driving me nuts.
Please don't make readers also watch a movie at the same time. Thanks.

~~~
pferde
Seconded. Please stop writing articles that look like they're aimed at 14 year
olds.

EDIT: If you feel the need to use cutesy graphics to get your point across, at
least make them static. Animated gifs are incredibly distracting when trying
to read anything more involved than a tweet, or a silly meme macro.

------
waxjar
I don't really see what purpose a WhatsApp web client serves to be honest. I
was under the impression WhatsApp replaces SMS. It's linked to a phone number,
so linked to a phone.

------
ramonck
Heck, let's just go back to Skype! :)

~~~
giancarlostoro
Skype has some security issues that have yet to be resolved and knowing
Microsoft's history with MSN Messenger, issues that will likely never be
resolved. Also it is plenty unstable under Linux, sadly. I've found Viber to
be easiest, only gotcha is you need it on your phone first before you use it
elsewhere. Otherwise it's pretty spot on. It also looks and feels the same
across platforms.

~~~
ramonck
I'm a Viber user but I still prefer Skype, it's the easiest platform to talk
to people besides Whatsapp, and I think it's the best mobile video platform
there's here today is Skype at least on Windows and iOS.

------
CmonDev
Does it matter? They are sold now, so anything regarding them is yesterday
news.

------
niklas_a
I love the web client. Works great for me!

------
pshin
o

------
manion
The web app gets approval from Snowden
([http://www.bestvpnservice.com/blog/why-you-should-use-
whatsa...](http://www.bestvpnservice.com/blog/why-you-should-use-whatsapp-for-
web/))

Great marketing!

~~~
lumberjack
It's proprietary and owned by Facebook. If that doesn't scare you away,
nothing will.

------
mataug
I disagree with most of the things in this blog post. The web UI works and
quite well that too. Whatsapp has been known to build things that work and
that too fast.

I don't care if it works only on chrome and doesn't work on the iPhone.
They'll most probably fix it soon.

I can think of one good reason why not having official APIs has been in
whatsapp's favour. Almost no spam.

------
newbington
Sorry but after reading your post and your bio, I got a few points.

1st your career is too short to fully understand the web and be able to judge
a company like facebook.

2nd you haven't realized that whatsapp might be its own company but its owned
by facebook, and after the buyout facebook did a clear up on devs and hired /
assigned their own devs to that.

3rd you haven't realized that the power of the web is fading over the power of
mobile web!

I understand that that's a blog and you are free to express your thoughts, but
I am really repulsed by the fact that this post has so many upvotes. It makes
me think that people reading and upvoting on this site have no idea of
technology.

