by WhatsApp Inc. (v2.1 reviewed)
Category: Social Networking
Price: $0.99
The story so far:
There are two schools of thought in app development. One believes that being first is more important. The other believes in being the best. The 'First' camp aims to capture a large user base in a short time, locking them in so that when the 'Best' app eventually appears, most users won't switch. This is similar to that Stephen King novel, "Misery", but without the car crash or creepy fat woman, just iPhone users lying in bed all day, unable to move. A familiar picture, you'll agree.
Once out the door and an established brand name, the First app is free to improve itself. From there, it's a downhill battle. Nowhere is this strategy more effective than in social networking, where the technologically-impaired burden their brighter and arguably more attractive geeky friends and keep them tied to inferior services *cough*twitter*. Unfortunately for the First camp, the App Store is a cruel frontierland where logic gets shot to pieces while sleeping in bed, with his wife and several heads of cattle taken at the pleasure of fart-happy bandits.
Consider the tale of WhatsApp Messenger, an iPhone-to-iPhone hybrid SMS/chat app not unlike RIM's Blackberry Messenger. It arrived before its recently-popular challenger, Ping!, but failed to get traction. Ping arrived later, but did the smart thing: it was free for a few precious days. Like chlamydia, it spread within groups of close friends almost instantly. So when it started charging 99c, it was an easy buy for anyone who already knew a few people using it.
And yet today, barely a week since we recommended Ping! to an adoring readership of my mother and the girl I kidnapped from a playground 18 years ago, WhatsApp Messenger is king and everyone's using it. Not Ping.
How this happened:
In layman's terms, WhatsApp fought fire with Satanic worship. They turned out a 2.0 version that was clearly the Best app, and made it free for a few days – straight out of the Ping playbook. The cost of switching for most people who'd gotten Ping for free was zero. Say what you will about the stupidity of the general population and their propensity for doing shots of single malt whisky and driving SUVs in the city, but they know a good deal (and better chat app) when they see one.
Here's what WhatsApp Messenger does better than Ping:
- Contacts are added automatically; if their numbers are in your address book, they're on your list.
- There's a goddamned contact list. Ping is like trying to dial in the dark with your nose.
- Status messages. (I'm home, sick!)
- If you're offline when a message is sent, you get it when you're back. There's nothing like getting a booty call the next afternoon when your girlfriend's playing Cooking Dash.
- Messages don't get cut off for being too long. What's too long? Ask Gary Fung.
- It's made by a registered company, not some dude named Gary Fung.
- Anonymous sexy chat without giving out your phone number.
- Pervert.
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Positives: Highly polished, does more than messaging, finds your friends.
Unpositives: Still a proprietary messaging network, so our earlier criticisms apply.
Final Rating: 4 / 5
Buy WhatsApp Messenger in the iTunes App Store.
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