The European Union has set the stage for a crackdown on big tech companies with an agreement on landmark digital rules to rein in online “gatekeepers” such as Google and Facebook parent Meta. EU officials agreed late on Thursday on wording for the bloc’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), part of a long-awaited overhaul of its […]
Tag Archives | WhatsApp
WhatsApp Turns On End To End Encryption
Earlier today WhatsApp did something pretty interesting. They turned on “end-to-end encryption” for all their users. As far as users of WhatsApp are concerned the interface and user experience hasn’t changed, though you now have the option to get “security notifications”. You can turn on this new feature via the WhatsApp mobile app by going […]
Facebook Messenger Reaches 500m Users
Facebook has announced that the Facebook Messenger standalone app has reached 500m users. That’s fairly impressive, it’s true. But it’s less impressive compared to over a billion users who access the social network every month from mobile devices. They’re using Facebook, but they’re not all using Messenger. There’s been a vocal pushback against the unbundling of Messenger […]
Social Messaging Apps Thriving, Latest Irish Survey Shows
Yesterday we published the Ipsos MRBI’s infographic of their latest Social Networking Quarterly Survey of Ireland. They also published the Social Messaging Quarterly Survey, with similarly interesting results. Of 1000 people aged 15 and over, 50% have a Skype account; yet only 7% of them use it daily. Viber, Whatsapp and Snapchat have all shown steady growth over the past […]
WhatsApp Acquisition In Perspective
While the announced acquisition price for WhatsApp is significant (ok, let’s just say “huge”), how does it compare to other tech industry acquisitions? Here’s a nice chart from Statista that puts it in context