No Need To Worry About Whatsapp Down, These Are A Number Of Messaging Applications That Become Alternatives

There are many messaging applications that can be a replacement for Whatsapp. (photo: Doc. Pixabay)

JAKARTA - About 2 billion WhatsApp users were forced to get confused without service on Tuesday, October 25, because the world's largest messaging app was offline. Meta, the owner of Facebook and WhatsApp, has not clarified what caused the blackout, in addition to simply mentioning there was a technical error.

Users take to social media platforms like Twitter to share funny memes about outages, with many flocking to alternative platforms to find out if they are alone in the lack of service. A similar situation occurred in October 2021 when Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp were down for more than 24 hours due to a "server configuration change."

This time, the blackout lasted quite briefly, as WhatsApp was able to restore messaging services within hours of the initial outage. However, questions about alternative messaging applications reappear.

Google Trends data highlights a surge in searches related to WhatsApp worldwide on October 25 as users try to figure out what's going on in the world's most popular messaging app. Indonesia, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, Italy, the Netherlands, Pakistan and South Africa are among the countries with the highest number of questions regarding WhatsApp after blackout.

According to a Cointelegraph report, the cryptocurrency community has also long upheld privacy and encryption, and thus, a number of competitors to the WhatsApp messaging application are now increasingly supported as other messaging alternatives.

Telegram has been developing its user base steadily over the past few years, as founder and CEO Pavel Durov said the platform's user base was 700 million users in October 2022.

Telegram also allows users to send end-to-end encrypted messages, photos and videos; file sharing; and create large groups or channels of up to 200,000 people for broadcasting purposes.

In addition, Signal also controls the user base in messaging apps, reaching around 40 million people worldwide. Even the privacy features are touted as the leading in this industry. The open and end-to-end source encryption is applied to Signal and third parties cannot read or listen to users' messages or conversations.

While Discord is an application that is also developing in instant messaging app space, it is already popular among gamers as the main voice-over-IP service. This platform is said to serve more than 140 million users using voice and video calls, text messages, media sharing and file sharing capabilities, and server hosting.

Ada pula, Line, layanan pesan alternatif lain yang digunakan oleh sekitar 178 juta pengguna di seluruh Asia Timur. Aplikasi integrasikan pesantext dan panggilan suara dan video dengan rangkaian layanan, termasuk aplikasi dompet, game, dan layanan streaming musik.

There is also the Diet app, which is developed by a development company supported by Bitfinex and Tether, Holepunch. Keet offers a desktop-based peer-to-peer messaging app for text and video calls.