Juliano Andrade Spyer wrote an article for the UCL on January 9th about the new popular app called "Whatsapp". Last June and July there was false news about the government in Brazil trying to close down the internet and Facebook users were the majority of people to stand up and protest. This year, working class teens are starting to migrate away from Facebook to join Whatsapp.
Spyer said in his article, "Among my working class informants, Whatsapp is more useful because it works better on their mobile phones, and the mobile phone tends to be more important
for them than the PC." Spyer also explained how a PC is usually shared within a family compared to a moble phone which Juliano explains to be "one person’s exclusive possession".
Before Whatsapp became popular, a moble phone with a camera and a memory card to store music was enough. People are now purchasing new moble smart phones (such as the Android OS) because it is "perceived as the best platform to have Whatsapp running".
Whatsapp is said to run better on an unsteady internet connection and not very powerful smart phones. It loads faster and sends and recieves messages almost instantly, unlike Facebook. Spyer said it is "understood as a sort of Bluetooth solution where people didn’t have to be near each other to exchange files." Music, video clips, voice clips and pictures are what is most commonly exchanged.
Whatsapp is more of a private app where you are either talking to one person, or a specific group. Whatsapp also does not have a "timeline" like Facbook. People are said to feel more at ease to "be themselves" when it comes to sharing private information because they know other people do not have access to their conversations.
People are starting to use Whatsapp for business and work, bizzare humor and sex, entrepreneurship, maintaining a virtual presence, and exchange local information.