Go for Telegram. Now.
Don’t even bother to read anymore. Or do so, if you must consider more options.
It’s been a while after the Facebook-Whatsapp deal materialized. Reading along the buzz, some interesting thoughts about what FB might do with WhatsApp were encountered by me. One such crazy idea is what the author names “stalker alert”. So this feature would show you who is on your chat window for the last 120 secs without chatting.
Yeah if you get what that can do, your inner stalker should try and stay away from checking out that “last seen on” every now and then or prepare to get blocked.
You should be worried about the fact that WhatsApp has your number and contacts. Facebook owns them now, there can be different ways to use that data and don’t look surprised if you see such things in future. In any case, don’t get disheartened as of now.
Here are WhatsApp alternatives for the paranoid self in you…
Telegram: The only choice you SHOULD consider
If you are looking for something that does exactly what you expect as an alternative, it’s even more. You might ask, why do I sound so enthusiastic about it? It’s because you should be too. Hold your breath, here are some reasons to switch.
1. It’s just WhatsApp. Yeah that’s it. With a little extras here and there.
2. It’s ad free too with a guarantee of never to get sold to anyone. You read it right, it will never get sold to anyone. Never. So how will they make money? For now, they have a donation to thrive on. Once they run out of money, they will go for non-essential payments. They will never build for revenue, think of it more like, Wikipedia for mobile messaging.
3. It is cloud based and claims to have a better encryption, which for now, is a good thing to consider with so many snooping around. And there are secret chats(with end-to-end encryption, noone knows anything except you and the person you sent it to, not even the Telegram guys) even if you have something really secret to share.
4. It is available for all devices, officially for Android and iOS, unofficially for everything else.
5. More than a million people has flocked to this app after the announcement of the Facebook-WhatsApp deal. So your are friends too will start landing on it soon, be the early bird and spread the news, accelerate the process.
Although, if you are still hesitant and consider a few more choices, here are a few more choices.
Kik Messenger, Line, Group Me, WeChat etc. And if you are someone who just hate Facebook, go for Microsoft Skype (I’m an avid user, although an annoyance at work, I like the mute option), Google hangout or Apple iMessage which is something that ships with an iOS device.
Whatever this post or others around the web preach, it won’t be easy or for some, even possible to live without the Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram. I’m not a fan of WhatsApp, and my Facebook addiction had kinda faded with time, however, can’t just live without Instagram. And I used to be prolific Lightbox app user who just got shot in the head by another such Facebook acquisition. I know the trouble.
In any case, it is definitely not the apocalypse and certainly not a reason to ditch a wonderful app like WhatsApp, but having alternatives is always good…right?