WHATSAPP — Technology Stack
We use Whatsapp every day in our my life. It’s been a part of our life style. We use to improve my business contacts list, to make marketing advertise, to chat with clients, and to other simple works things of my business days. I use Whatsapp to talk with my family, doing video calls, send instant messages, share links, and pictures every day. Whatsapp is a great partner and an essential app for every people around the world to stay online with your family.
I like the simplicity and utility of the Whatsapp. With this incredible tool, We can make business and personal transactions with pictures, videos, links, and documents in the same app. The best thing about Whataspp you can have a great chat experience with your family because the app is simple too. Whatsapp is an essential tool for all business people and families around the World.
Let’s know more about it:
WhatsApp Messenger, or simply WhatsApp, is an American freeware, cross-platform messaging and Voice over IP service owned by Facebook, Inc. It allows users to send text messages and voice messages, make voice and video calls, and share images, documents, user locations, and other media.
The History Of WhatsApp
Whatsapp’s history needs to be heard as it is not like any usual startup story where the founders had an idea which made them drop out from their colleges, build a team, and get pre-seed funding from a giant like Facebook or Google. WhatsApp was conceptualized not by college students but by people who were in their thirties and had a stable job with a renowned company.
WhatsApp was founded by Brian Acton and Jan Koum in 2009 after they left their job at Yahoo!.
The startup story began when they left their job to travel around the world. But soon their savings started to sink and they had to apply for a job on Facebook, which didn’t work out as planned as well. They were quite disappointed, but this failure led them to start a new journey of their life — WhatsApp.
Features of Whatsapp
. Reliable Messaging
. Group Chat
. Photos and videos
. Documents
. Voice messages
. Search
. Video and Voice Calls
. WhatsApp Web
. Security
. Platform independent
. Adding people
. Live location
. Message back-up
. No log-in
WhatsApp Programming language?
The Technical Stack used to develop Whatsapp includes Erlang, FreeBSD, Yaws, PHP, and XMPP.
- Erlang— A general purpose, a concurrent, functional programming language used to script the real-time chat app system. It has built-in support for concurrency, distribution and fault tolerance.
- FreeBSD — FreeBSD is an open-source Unix similar operating system used to power modern servers, desktops, and embedded platforms.
- Yaws — An Erlang-based web server particularly well suited for dynamic-content web applications, that can run Whatsapp as a standalone web server.
- PHP — Open-source general-purpose scripting language mainly used for Web Development. It is a free and efficient alternative to Microsoft’s ASP.
- XMPP — XMPP is the core of Whatsapp that makes it possible to send real-time messages, XML routing features, and much more. XMPP is a communication protocol for message-oriented middleware based on XML.
Backend
Firstly, Mnesia DB and MySQL (or PostgreSQL) and cloud media storages can be used as database frameworks. XMPP application server, again, is perfectly suitable for implementing and maintaining voice calls, video calls, messaging. A Rest API to send requests from user interface to the app to get, post or delete data. For notifications within the app, developers may use cloud services like Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) or Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM).
Why Facebook Acquired WhatsApp
1. Mobile Connectivity
Facebook focuses a lot on mobile communication and WhatsApp is the right partner to achieve its ambitious goals. According to their press release, WhatsApp will facilitate their plans by bringing “connectivity and utility to the world”. Facebook is already in the process of creating its own mobile apps, and since their own Messenger didn’t turn out the way they wanted, they are turning to WhatsApp to take mobile communication a step further.
2. User Growth
What is impressive about WhatsApp is its rapidly increasing user growth. WhatsApp is the fastest growing company in terms of users, since it managed to reach 419 million users in just 4 years, while Facebook only had 145 million users at its first 4 years. It is estimated that almost 1 million users join WhatsApp every day, which will soon lead to an even bigger user growth.
3. Young Audience
Many articles indicated that Facebook is turning old, with many users replacing it with Snapchat, Instagram, and WhatsApp, depending on the use they prefer. WhatsApp is the primary way of communication for many users and it seems appealing to even the younger ones, which was the latest challenge for Facebook. If it managed to maintain its ‘younger spirit’, by also taking mobile communication to the next level, then a big bet would be won.
4. Engagement
Except for its impressive user growth, WhatsApp is also known for its high rates of engagement. It is estimated that 70% of its 450 millions of active users monthly use WhatsApp every day, while an average user sends more than 1200 messages each month. It is almost replacing SMS messaging and this potential cannot be overlooked. According to Mark Zuckerberg, WhatsApp is the only widely used app we’ve ever seen that has more engagement and a higher percent of people using it daily than Facebook itself.
5. Mobile Advertising
We are in the middle of a mobile explosion, which makes mobile advertising more valuable than ever. Facebook focuses a lot on its mobile aspect, which leads to an increased chance of a higher monetization. Although the co-founder and CEO of WhatsApp Jan Koum made clear that:Monetization is not going to be a prioritization for us. We are excited by where we are going to be five to 10 years from now. We are focused on growth.
8 factors that brought success to WhatsApp
1 Pioneering the mobile-first approach
Unlike its competitors still relying on desktop versions, WhatsApp was the first to step onto a mobile path.
2 Cost-efficient substitute for SMS
While other chat apps, like Skype, were disrupting the international calls market, WhatsApp’s primary target was SMS communication. Even its paid model, which the app had used until 2016, was more affordable than the conventional short-message rates of telephony providers.
3 Next-to-nothing user acquisition cost
You might be surprised to hear that, but it’s true! Customer acquisition eats a lion’s share of the budget for consumer mobile companies. But WhatsApp literally sold like hot cakes. After onboarding via the contact list in their possession, which was smart, it was merely word-of-mouth marketing — it takes at least two to converse, and groups add value even faster. The insane popularity of the then paid app promptly created the network effect.
4 Multi-platform availability
The initial release of the app on iOS was closely followed by the development on other platforms — Blackberry, Symbian, Android, Windows Phone, including older versions of the devices running on them, such as Nokia N95. Later, they added web and desktop versions as well. WhatsApp has done a terrific job on the market coverage. All the more so, given that various versions of WhatsApp look and feel completely different. Its UX/UI designers did a great job on the multi-platform adaptation.
5 Advertisement-free user experience
Both the co-founders knew what makes users tick. For Jan Koum, born back in Soviet Ukraine, where advertising was an oddity, ad-free user experience was the only option. And that was a win-win. This no-ads-no-games-no-gimmicks approach was the actual proof of the concept — the app’s creators could tell, users are paying for their product and not for some tweaks or 3rd-party add-ons.
6 Consistent product upgrades
Assuming that the app’s audience grew fairly large — 250 million MAU in 2013 — the paid business model provided sufficient operational costs for the company’s stable growth. Since its start as a mere texting app, the product has added multi-format file transfer, voice and video calls, encryption and other attractive features. It may have less functionality than other chat apps, but whatever the company undertakes to implement, is seen through until top-notch.
7 Lean development & smart DevOps
The company’s highest ratio of engineers to users is clearly indicative of the team’s incredible efficiency and talent. They managed to set up a system to sustain the fast-growing messaging traffic that exceeded the world’s SMS traffic by 50%. With only 50 people to-date (of which 25 are engineers and 20 customer support), it’s been running smoothly and providing an excellent service. Tools customization, smart efficiency metrics, and horizontal scaling also have saved the company tons of money.
8 Narrow focus
WhatsApp has carefully evaded the all-encompassing portal approach. It focused on quality messaging and has never taken the eye off the ball.
Conclusion
We won’t stop until every single person on the planet has an affordable and reliable way to communicate with their friends and loved ones. — Jan Koum
We use it daily but never learnt about its working and Backend.It was indeed beneficial to learn about Whatsapp .
