Whatsapp is easily the most popular messaging client on the planet right now. Don’t believe this? Check the smartphones of the next 3 people around you. I’d be damned if at least 2 of them don’t have the Whatsapp application installed and actively using it. It was a darling of many countries outside the US where it is just starting to gain prominence after the publicity it gained from being acquired by Facebook . In the process, Whatsapp has gained over 700 million active users monthly. Like Twitter and Snapchat have done, such growth is usually accompanied by tightening your grip on your users and almost entirely being responsible for the end user experience as can be seen from the statement captured above from its FAQ page. Whatsapp is doing that by cracking the whip on third party clients like the popular Whatsapp+ and WhatsappMD.
Some Whatsapp+ users have been ambushed by “temporary ban” alerts over the last two days. This is because Whatsapp is actively identifying everyone using third party clients and blocking them even though at the moment not every user of those third party applications is affected.
Users of Whatsapp+ are the most affected and as per a post on its Google+ community page, those users who have received their 24 hour ban are being advised to uninstall the application and install the official one so that they can continue using Whatsapp after their temporary ban is lifted. Note that uninstalling Whatsapp+ and installing the official app won’t “unban” you. You have to wait till the 24 hour window elapses. The developer behind Whatsapp+ is promising a fix soon. On the other hand, users of another third party Whatsapp application, WhatsappMD, can breathe easy as the developer has already bypassed the recent restrictions imposed by Whatsapp and according to him everything should be fine.
Here are few fun facts about Whatsapp as of this month as shared by the BBC:
- 700 million users monthly. That is akin to the population of the US, the UK, Germany, France, Russia, New Zealand and Australia combined.
- 30 billion messages sent per day. That is at least 4 messages for every single person on the planet or about 350,000 messages per second
Photo 2: Facebook
