We’re so bombarded with ads so much in our daily lives and we felt that smartphones aren’t the place for that. Our phones are so intimately connected to us, to our lives.” In August WhatsApp, which is used by 300 million people worldwide every month, launched an update to offer voice messaging services. The smartphone messaging service, which is used by 300 million people worldwide every month, has until now only offered the possibility of text-based chat. It is hoped the move will help the smartphone app compete with chat rivals BBM, Facebook Messenger and WeChat, which already offer voice messaging services. The new function could also make the software more popular in countries with harder-to-type languages – such as Russia, where the 33 letters in the Cyrillic alphabet are often crammed onto narrow touchscreen buttons – or in areas with lower rates of literacy. The add-on, which has been in development for six months, will not place a limit on the length of voice messages sent. Users can record messages in a single tap, holding down on their screen for as long as they are speaking. “The number of taps matters. People want to send a message and be on their way,” said Jan Koum, the California-based company’s CEO. Messages will automatically be played through the phone’s earpiece if it is being held to the user’s ear, or speakerphone if the device is being held away. As with the application’s text messages – an estimated 11 billion of which are sent every day – the sender of the voice messages will be able to see when they have been listened to. There is currently no possibility of making real-time voice or video calls in the app, as there is with the Blackberry BBM or Microsoft’s Skype. The option of sending voice messages has been added to the Whatsapp application for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone and Nokia S40. The service has attracted more monthly users than the 200 million claimed by Twitter, Jan Koum told a technology conference on Tuesday. He did not release an exact figure, however. He also said WhatsApp carries as many as 20 billion messages per day, double Facebook’s daily message competitior to social networks; the figures represent major milestones for a service that was only traffic. Although WhatsApp is seen as more of an internet-based threat to text messaging than as a introduced in 2009.Koum said WhatsApp, based in Silicon Valley, will not follow Facebook and Twitter in carrying advertising, however. The app charges a 99- cent annual subscription on Android and other smartphone operating systems.
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