I am an active user of WhatsApp and their service is much more reliable than Skype or Hangouts. There's a reason why 800 million people are using it and it's not only because of network effects, it's because the base product and service is rock solid.

Their innovation is evolution of WhatsApp past text messages. And in the end, nothing is a true innovation -- most things build on past ideas.

"Reliable" is a relative term for WA. Everybody I know has a random delay in messages, the browser "thing" is mostly not usable, no desktop app, etc. You can not use WA for productivity.

but productivity never was it's intended target - skype was killed on mobile because of shitty notification requiring the app to be on for the longest time, call dropping, software block to 3g calls.

basically they shot themselves in the foot on the mobile market with an half assed implementation, and even today the notification system on skype mobile apps is dumb, especially how they handles balloons (the only app that could do worse on notification balloons is facebook)

whatsapp may not be a cornerstone of reliability, but it has an incredibly frictionless mobile user experience.

I bought an Ubuntu phone, and here its the netwok effect that stops my friends switching to Telegram or anything else.

Phone numbers as ID is actually a really important innovation. I worked in Kenya for quite a while, and found that many people had email accounts they had no idea how to actually access. Email-based authentication doesn't work for a considerable proportion of the world's population. But cell phones are pretty ubiquitous: This ease of authentication is a big part of why whatsapp is kicking ass in the developing world.

"email accounts"

The plural is an important side issue. I only have one phone and one public phone number. I'm not sure how many email addresses I have, its definitely more than five but less than two dozen? I do know my broadband provider theoretically gave me an email address about a decade ago that I've never used. I hope no one is sending email to that address...

Interesting. If you think from the UX point of view the cell number is much more convenient than email as people generally have multiple email ids but 1/2 phone ids. Also obviously the fake account issue is much much lower in phone's case compared to email ids.

> they had no idea how to actually access.

My mom back in India finds email address and passwords confusing but she immediately understood watsapp and how to send messages to her sister in US.

Watsapp works for me without any issues and its so simple, even my mom could understand it pretty fast.

Skype sometimes hangs on my pc and on the phone. Both my pc and phone have a good configuration yet Skype does not play nice.

Innovation = How reliable their calling system is. Even with proper networks it works very well. I call my family back in india and it works so well without any disturbances.

Innovation for whatsapp = Simplicity + Reliability