For those of you who haven’t heard, Facebook bought WhatsApp for 19 billion dollars and things look awesome for Mark Zuckerberg, who is now controlling 79 percent of the IM market with both applications which will continue to co-exist. Half a billion of people are using WhatsApp for messaging purposes and 70 percent of them are accessing the application every day.
Many asked themselves why Zuckerberg would invest 19 billion dollars in another messaging application since the company already released a mobile version for Facebook, which can be used on Android and iOS devices. Now that Microsoft owns Skype, and other companies such as Google, Apple and Blackberry have their own IM offerings, Zuckerberg wants to be in top of the competition and intends to make WhatsApp an application that supports phone calls as well. Anyway, in this article, our intention is to compare the two services: WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, and see which one has better features.
Costs
Facebook Messenger can be downloaded from the App Store and Google Play and it’s free to use. All you need is a Facebook account to log it, but the application might ask you for your phone number, just like Whatsapp does. But the application will let you access both your phone and Facebook contacts. Using Whatsapp, you won’t see adverts, but since the company has to earn money to pay the employees, the only way to generate revenue on mobile is to charge its users. Therefore, in the first of use, the application is free, but after that, the users will pay an annual subscription of 0.99 dollars. You can pay in advance for an additional year of service, and since it’s an insignificant amount, the users won’t feel extorted.
Interface
One of the complaints against Whatsapp is regarding its design, which looks outdated, the fans saying that it needs an urgent overhaul in terms of UI, to get rid of the cheap looks. In its early years, the application was ok, but times have changed and a redesign is required. Facebook Messenger is modern, having an intuitive user interface and uses a blue and white styling. There are three sections for Chat Logs, which has a clock symbol, the Contacts are recognized after the head symbol and the Settings are assigned to a cog symbol. There are two options inside Contacts: Messenger (with people use Facebook app) and Active (with online users from the Facebook website).
Features
Whatsapp comes allows you to send images, videos audio files, to share your location and to send contact details to other Whatsapp contacts. With Facebook Messenger you cans end audio files and images, and you can search images on Bing to share them in chat.
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