WHATS APP MASSENGER

1. ABSTRACT

A big reason for the popularity of such apps is that they allow their users to message one another without paying high fees for text messages (Rolfe, 2013). Users take advantage of WhatsApp to text their friends in other countries without paying the exorbitant international texting costs that come with traditional communications.

Hartoyo (2009) also stated that Laptop, netbook, and iPad are now commonly used both by studetns as well as teachers. There are also mobile gadgets such as cellphone and smart phone are within this group. Using those gadget and internet connection, anyone could chat, browse, or discuss with each other. The application of WhatsApp which combine the smartphone and internet connection offers many advantages for language learning.

Many students that have whatsApp running on their mobile always think about its capacity as a social networking and chatting platform and less people are thinking about how this mobile application can be effectively use for education collaboration and learning. It is also very few people use it for language learning. In fact, we can use whatsApp hidden features for education and learning, including English language learning. Based on these ideas, the writer would like to focus on English language learning using WhatsApp application.

2. INTRODUCTION

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has a great impact to human life. People, from children, adults up to parents, especially in big cities are used to watching television, to communicate via mobilephone, social networking, texting via the internet, as well as visiting various portals or web without limits As we know that recently, there has been a new trend in the ICT world which is called the social network. Social network has been defined by many and generally view as referring to networked tools that allow people to meet, interact and share ideas, artifacts and interests with each other. (T. Aderson, 2010). This social network has opened up new opportunities of interaction and collaboration between teachers and learners. The use of social network has become a popular in everyday communication. It is even used for collaborative learning especially in language learning. Social network applications such as facebook, twitter, LinkedIn and many others alike have been phenomenally popular in the communcation world.The most recent popular social network is WhatsApp application

in June 2009, Apple launched push notifications, letting developers ping users when they were not using an app. Koam updated WhatsAppso that each time the user changed their statuses, it would ping everyone in the user's network. WhatsApp 2.0 was released with a messaging component and the active users suddenly swelled to 250,000. Koum visited Brian Acton, who was still unemployed while managingthe unsuccessful startupand decided to join the companyIn October Acton persuaded five ex-Yahoo friends to invest $250,000 in seed funding, and as a result was granted co-founder status and a stake. He officially joined on November.After months at beta stage, the application eventually launched in November 2009 exclusively on the App Store for the iPhone. Koum then hired an old friend who lived in Los Angeles, Chris Peiffer, to make the BlackBerry version, which arrived two months later. 

WhatsApp was switched from a free to paid service to avoid growing too fast, mainly because the primary cost was sending verification texts to users. In December 2009 WhatsApp for the iPhone was updated to send photos. By early 2011, WhatsApp was in the top 20 of all apps in the U.S. App Store. The founders agreed to take $7 million from Sequoia Capital on top of their $250,000 seed funding, after months of negotiation with Sequoia partner Jim Goetz

By February 2013, WhatsApp's user base had swelled to about 200 million active users and its staff to 50. Sequoia invested another $50 million, valuing WhatsApp at $1.5 billionIn a December 2013 blog post, WhatsApp claimed that 400 million active users use the service each month. As of 22 April 2014, WhatsApp had over 500 million monthly active users, 700 million photos and 100 million videos are shared each day, and the messaging system handles more than 10 billion messages each day. On August 24, 2014, Jan Koum announced on his Twitter account that Whatsapp had over 600 million active users worldwide. WhatsApp added about 25 million new users every month or 833,000 active users per dayWith 65 million active users, accounting roughly about 10% of the total worldwide users, India is the largest single country in terms of number of users

3. DEFINITION

a. WhatsApp is a Smartphone application that operates on nearly all current types of devices and operating systems. The application has been on he market since 2010; the declared purpose of the developers was to replace the existing SMS platform for a system that is free of charge in an ad-free environ-ment. As a means of sending and receiving messages to and from individuals or groups, WhatsApp includes a variety of functions, such as text messages, at-ached images, audio files, video files, and links to web addresses

b. WhatsApp Messenger is a proprietary, cross-platform instant messaging application for smartphones. In addition to text messaging, users can send each other images, video, and audio media messages (Wikipedia, 2013). WhatsApp allows its users to use their Internet connection to send messages to each other. WhatsApp is like a chat program for mobile phones. Smart phones are becoming increasingly popular and WhatsApp is available for almost all Smartphone. Founded in 2009 by two ex-Yahoo employees Brian Acton and Jan Koum, it is said that Cross-platform messaging app WhatsApp continues to grow in popularity, with the revelation Thursday that its user base has crossed the 250-million mark (Trevor, 2013). 

c. WhatsApp Messenger is a smartphone messenger available for Android and other smartphones. WhatsApp uses your 3G or WiFi (when available) to message with friends and family. Switch from SMS to WhatsApp to send and receive messages, pictures, audio notes, and video messages.

4. SPESIFICATION FEATURES

NO HIDDEN COST: Once you and your friends download the application, you can use it to chat as much as you want. Send a million messages a day to your friends for free! WhatsApp uses your Internet connection: 3G/EDGE or Wi-Fi when available. 

MULTIMEDIA: Send Video, Images, and Voice notes to your friends and contacts. 

GROUP CHAT: Enjoy group conversations with your contacts. 

NO INTERNATIONAL CHARGES: Just like there is no added cost to send an international email, there is no cost to send WhatsApp messages internationally. Chat with your friends all over the world as long as they have WhatsApp Messenger installed and avoid those pesky international SMS costs. 

SAY NO TO PINS AND USERNAMES: Why even bother having to remember yet another PIN or username? WhatsApp works with your phone number, just like SMS would, and integrates flawlessly with your existing phone address book. 

NO NEED TO LOG IN/OUT: No more confusion about getting logged off from another computer or device. With push notifications WhatsApp is ALWAYS ON and ALWAYS CONNECTED. 

NO NEED TO ADD BUDDIES: Your Address Book is used to automatically connect you with your contacts. Your contacts who already have WhatsApp Messenger will be automatically displayed.

OFFLINE MESSAGES: Even if you miss your push notifications or turn off your phone, WhatsApp will save your messages offline until you retrieve them during the next application use. 

Share location, Exchange contacts, Custom wallpaper, Custom notification sounds, Landscape mode, Precise message time stamps, Email chat history, Broadcast messages and MMS to many contacts at once and much more

How to install and manage the program

WhatsApp uses a customized version of the open standard Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) Upon installation, it creates a user account using one's phone number as the username.WhatsApp software automatically compares all the phone numbers from the device's address book with its central database of WhatsApp users to automatically add contacts to the user's WhatsApp contact list. Previously the Android and S40 versions, reversed-version of the phone's IMEI as password, while the iOS version used the phone's Wi-Fi MAC address instead of IMEI. 

WhatsApp is supported on most Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, and Nokia smartphones. All Android phones running the Android 2.1 and above, all BlackBerry devices running OS 4.7 and later, including BlackBerry 10, and all iPhones running iOS 4.3 and later. However, some Dual SIM devices may not be compatible with WhatsApp, though there are some workarounds for this.Multimedia messages are sent by uploading the image, audio or video to be sent to an HTTP server and then sending a link to the content