Disconnected? These Are Some Alternatives To WhatsApp

With the fall of the Facebook platforms, many companies are rethinking the ways in which they can socialize with their workers and customers. Learn about these new alternatives to WhatsApp so that your company and your social life are not cut off again .

On October 4, Facebook Inc. experienced one of the worst shutdowns in its history, after its servers presented widespread failures in the world. Thus, applications such as WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, or Oculus, in addition to the official blogs of each of these, collapsed in an unprecedented way; in a shutdown that lasted more than seven hours and that affected a large part of the planet's population.

As explained by Facebook through an official statement, the failure of its servers occurred when there was an interruption in "the system that manages the capacity of our global backbone", specifically during routine maintenance that, when out of control, caused a disconnection. between the Facebook control centers and the Internet as such.

“During one of these routine maintenance jobs, a command was issued with the intention of evaluating the availability of global backbone capacity, which accidentally cut off all connections on our network, effectively disconnecting data centers from Facebook to the world ” explained Santosh Janardhan, Vice President of Infrastructure at Facebook.

Now, this situation is much more serious than it seems, because beyond not being able to enjoy social networks, this fall became a mini-crisis within the internet that represented millionaire damages in the world economy. According to NetBlock, an internet watchdog organization, in the first 24 hours alone, a total of $ 160 million in losses were reported for businesses across the globe.

Over the years, WhatsApp has become one of the most important tools for communication between micro, small and medium-sized companies with their customers. As it did not “exist” for a few hours, the conversation channels were almost nil, which forced several businessmen to ask people to leave their cell phone number on an internet form for businesses to return the call. .

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Taking into account this reality, which of course also affected the internal communication of many companies, the conclusion was reached that companies should have a plan B, and even a C, with which to support the communication channels in case that Facebook's social networks collapse again.

Among the candidates are of course Telegram, which with the fall of WhatsApp received more than 70 million new users, according to its founder Pável Dúrov; as well as Slack, Discord, and even Hangouts.

Telegram

The application founded by Dúrov is undoubtedly one of the most important that exists today in the world. One of the great advantages of this service is that it is almost a mirror of the Facebook messaging application, so it can also make video calls (even with more people), send texts, stickers, attachments , among other options. It also has other separate functions such as the creation of audio rooms.

Among its cons is the indiscriminate presence of bots and that the encryption of messages from point to point, that is to say from device to device, is only available in the secret chats of the application; for the rest of the messages, the encryption is between the client and the direct Telegram server.

Slack

Although it is not as well known yet (it only has three million users), this application was conceived as an alternative for 100% business use and that is one of its great advantages. Slack also allows the sending of videos, music, documents and images, which can be seen in a preview without having to enter the app.

With a simple but functional interface, this platform is a revelation in the middle of the business sector that little by little has begun to move to it, although it does not yet have a point-to-point message encryption system like WhatsApp.

Discord

This platform has also been seen as a revolution, especially in the midst of conversations between gamers. However, thanks to the simplicity in the personalization of their chats, as well as the ease that exists to automate the sending of messages, Discord has also begun to be used by several companies that recognize that their communication channels should not be just software that allows you to talk from point A to point B, but design and socialization are key points to raise the spirit of your employees.

Designed for the gamer world, many companies in this industry have already begun to adapt it for themselves. Even several internet giants such as EpicGames (Fortnite producer), Amazon or Microsoft have already offered up to more than 10 billion dollars to get this software.

Hangouts

Finally, there's Google's star messaging application. Since Hangouts was created in 2013, it has revolutionized the world of business communications by literally communicating with Gmail users without the need to send an email to chat with a contact on this platform.

The most positive thing about this alternative is that its web version is nothing other than Gmail and is located in the left sidebar of the page. However, it also has an app in case it is necessary to communicate through a mobile device.

One of its disadvantages is perhaps its design and interface, being a bit more minimalist than what a normal user is used to seeing in other apps.