WhatsApp opens up movie calling to everyone

WhatsApp is rolling out movie calling today to its billion-plus monthly users. That’s basically the entire story — if you’d like to use it, update the app, open a talk, and tap the familiar movie camera icon in the top-right corner. The movie talk results look like the movie talking you’ve done before on FaceTime, Skype, Facebook Messenger, or Google Duo: two faces, one in a smaller window, with a handful of puny features for switching the position of the talk windows or turning the camera around.

That movie calls took until November two thousand sixteen to arrive on WhatsApp reflects the app’s cautious — some might say glacial — treatment to product development. WhatsApp launched in 2009, but group talks didn’t come until two years later, and voice calls didn’t come until four years after that.

But two thousand sixteen has been unusually productive for WhatsApp, which Facebook bought in two thousand fourteen for $22 billion. This year the company introduced a desktop client, end-to-end encryption, and features for writing and drawing on top of photos. The company also wants to mix up its data with Facebook’s, so as to eventually make money from businesses talking with you on WhatsApp, but Europe is having none of it.

An unusually productive year for WhatsApp

That it took seven years for WhatsApp to add movie calling likely reflects both the expense of doing so and the fact that many of its users around the world don’t have access to the high-bandwidth connections or data plans that would support it. And if version 1.0 looks basic, the company says it will evolve. “We will attempt to be the best movie calling platform out there,” Manpreet Singh, WhatsApp’s lead mobile engineer, told me.

Last month at The Wall Street Journal’s tech conference I asked WhatsApp’s co-founders whether they felt pressure to make an app renowned for its plainness more complicated to permit for the features that make competitors like Snapchat more expressive. CEO Jan Koum told me he’s attempting to strike a balance — but that lately the balance has tipped toward adding fresh avenues for expression. If nothing else, the arrival of movie calling shows that those avenues are now under construction.

WhatsApp opens up movie calling to everyone – The Edge

WhatsApp opens up movie calling to everyone

WhatsApp is rolling out movie calling today to its billion-plus monthly users. That’s basically the entire story — if you’d like to use it, update the app, open a talk, and tap the familiar movie camera icon in the top-right corner. The movie talk results look like the movie talking you’ve done before on FaceTime, Skype, Facebook Messenger, or Google Duo: two faces, one in a smaller window, with a handful of puny features for switching the position of the talk windows or turning the camera around.

That movie calls took until November two thousand sixteen to arrive on WhatsApp reflects the app’s cautious — some might say glacial — treatment to product development. WhatsApp launched in 2009, but group talks didn’t come until two years later, and voice calls didn’t come until four years after that.

But two thousand sixteen has been unusually productive for WhatsApp, which Facebook bought in two thousand fourteen for $22 billion. This year the company introduced a desktop client, end-to-end encryption, and features for writing and drawing on top of photos. The company also wants to mix its data with Facebook’s, so as to eventually make money from businesses talking with you on WhatsApp, but Europe is having none of it.

An unusually productive year for WhatsApp

That it took seven years for WhatsApp to add movie calling likely reflects both the expense of doing so and the fact that many of its users around the world don’t have access to the high-bandwidth connections or data plans that would support it. And if version 1.0 looks basic, the company says it will evolve. “We will attempt to be the best movie calling platform out there,” Manpreet Singh, WhatsApp’s lead mobile engineer, told me.

Last month at The Wall Street Journal’s tech conference I asked WhatsApp’s co-founders whether they felt pressure to make an app renowned for its plainness more elaborate to permit for the features that make competitors like Snapchat more expressive. CEO Jan Koum told me he’s attempting to strike a balance — but that lately the balance has tipped toward adding fresh avenues for expression. If nothing else, the arrival of movie calling shows that those avenues are now under construction.

WhatsApp opens up movie calling to everyone – The Edge

WhatsApp opens up movie calling to everyone

WhatsApp is rolling out movie calling today to its billion-plus monthly users. That’s basically the entire story — if you’d like to use it, update the app, open a talk, and tap the familiar movie camera icon in the top-right corner. The movie talk results look like the movie talking you’ve done before on FaceTime, Skype, Facebook Messenger, or Google Duo: two faces, one in a smaller window, with a handful of puny features for switching the position of the talk windows or turning the camera around.

That movie calls took until November two thousand sixteen to arrive on WhatsApp reflects the app’s cautious — some might say glacial — treatment to product development. WhatsApp launched in 2009, but group talks didn’t come until two years later, and voice calls didn’t come until four years after that.

But two thousand sixteen has been unusually productive for WhatsApp, which Facebook bought in two thousand fourteen for $22 billion. This year the company introduced a desktop client, end-to-end encryption, and features for writing and drawing on top of photos. The company also wants to mix up its data with Facebook’s, so as to eventually make money from businesses talking with you on WhatsApp, but Europe is having none of it.

An unusually productive year for WhatsApp

That it took seven years for WhatsApp to add movie calling likely reflects both the expense of doing so and the fact that many of its users around the world don’t have access to the high-bandwidth connections or data plans that would support it. And if version 1.0 looks basic, the company says it will evolve. “We will attempt to be the best movie calling platform out there,” Manpreet Singh, WhatsApp’s lead mobile engineer, told me.

Last month at The Wall Street Journal’s tech conference I asked WhatsApp’s co-founders whether they felt pressure to make an app renowned for its simpleness more complicated to permit for the features that make competitors like Snapchat more expressive. CEO Jan Koum told me he’s attempting to strike a balance — but that lately the balance has tipped toward adding fresh avenues for expression. If nothing else, the arrival of movie calling shows that those avenues are now under construction.

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