Signal Is WhatsApp But Without Your Friends And Family

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When the world's richest person suggested using Signal over WhatsApp due to the updated privacy policy, every tech-savvy in my friend circle got on board with the idea, including me. According to a plethora of articles and reports, Signal is a much secure cross-platform messaging service, and here is my take on the same.

 
Signal Is WhatsApp But Without Your Friends And Family

I used Signal over this weekend, and I was surprised by the fact that it almost resembles WhatsApp when it comes to the overall UI design, at least on iPhones. In fact, one of the co-founders of Singal -- Brian Acton is also a co-founder of WhatsApp.

 

Using Signal Is Pretty Easy

If you have been using WhatsApp, then, there is no learning curve while Using Signal. Both apps look almost the same and also offer similar options. Just like WhatsApp, it also gives options to create new groups. Just like WhatsApp, you need your phone number to join Signal, and it also wants to access your contact list to show the Signal users who are on that list.

Just like WhatsApp, you can also make voice and video calls with fellow Signal users for free of cost. Chats on Signal are also two-factor enabled just like WhatsApp, offering better privacy. WhatsApp also confirmed that the company does not share head chats with Facebook, so, Signal is on the same level as WhatsApp when it comes to personal chat encryption, at least on paper.

Signal is said to be a much private messaging service when compared to WhatsApp. Given it has a similar UI, it seems like a compelling alternative to WhatsApp. However, there is one issue with Signal, which is stopping me from replacing WhatsApp with Signal.

I have more than 200 known contacts on WhatsApp, which includes friends, family, and colleagues. The contact list on Signal is much narrower, and it hardly has 15 contacts. Hence, I won't be able to stay connected with the people on Signal, unlike WhatsApp.

As I stated earlier, my tech-savvy contacts are already onboard to Signal, and I can't say the same about the remaining connections that I have on WhatsApp, which makes it difficult to completely move from WhatsApp to Signal. I could also bet that most of these people, who have installed Signal are still using WhatsApp, including me.

And I also doubt Signal's business model. Currently, it is a free app with no ads, and it doesn't collect any data. How will Signal manage to offer this service for free, especially if it onboard over 100 million users in the next free month? How will the company be going to pay for the engineers and other services it uses? Will it become a paid app to keep up with the privacy-centric model?

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