Everyone knows it and uses it, even the generations less used to technology: elderly parents and grandparents who keep in touch with children and grandchildren. After the phone call, messages arrive, no longer SMS, but those of WhatsApp. The notoriety of this App is comparable in terms of Facebook's global success among social networks. The reason for this success? Quickly said: it's easy to use and reliable. Today one and a half billion people worldwide communicate in this way. And they can't do without it. Emojis instead of descriptions of feelings, abbreviations instead of long sentences: What has already developed into a superficial way of communicating has also become even more banal. But for good reason, according to one expert. Businesses are relying on it, as schools, families, social friends and more. It has revolutionalized the communication world. However, what would happen if it suddenly disappeared from all gadgets or stopped working? Well, such an incident happened this week on Tuesday October 25 when WhatsApp went through a two-hour outage. This affected over 1.5 billion users who rely on the app for communication and caused traffic on other social media platforms. In Rwanda, it was not until a social media influencer Fiona Kamikazi tweeted about WhatsApp being down, for thousands of its users in the country to stop restarting their phones as well as blaming telecom companies for poor internet. “I was buying something and the vendor sent WhatsApp to the boss. Spent 30 minutes and was here dissing their internet” reads a reply to Kamikazi’s tweet that announced Whatsapp’s outage. This, like in many other countries, indicates how the Meta-owned app revolutionised how people communicate globally. Reports indicate that when the outage happened, about 69 per cent of its users reported that messages were not going through, while others reported server disconnection and the app crashing within less than an hour. The two-hour outage left millions of people complaining and stopped thousands of businesses that run online. According to Herve Rwivunabigwi, co-founder of Celtics services electronic Ltd, without the green app, most online businesses in Kigali can’t run. “With the choice of social media, especially WhatsApp, retailers now have new leads. We have found a space to nurture our community and keep them engaged,” he said, adding, “WhatsApp facilitates interactions between businesses and clients. It offers tools to automate conversations, and also enables you to provide your customers with quick responses”. Rwivunabigwi further noted that many people in the electronics business buy products in China and Dubai using WhatsApp, another factor that shows how WhatsApp plays a significant role in E-commerce. “WhatsApp also facilitates us to communicate with our wholesalers based in different cities like Dubai and China. We use WhatsApp calls to communicate on a daily basis. We also use it to send pictures of products we want. This app is a necessity in today’s world,” he added For Yvette Teta, who owns an online business dubbed 'Five Seconds to Shine’, the App is very useful when it comes to marketing and advertising. This, she said, is done through various ways such as posting one’s products on WhatsApp statuses as well as sharing pictures in different groups. “WhatsApp is still a very affordable marketing channel, which makes this platform enticing for small businesses. All you need to get the ball rolling is to install an app and connect to the Internet,” Teta told The New Times. According to Business Chat, 5 million small businesses have adopted WhatsApp Business App. The app which has 1.5 billion global users is not only friendly to businesses, but also to social lives and communications within different companies and schools. Speaking to The New Times, Alpa Bugingo, a student at Mount Kenya University Kigali campus, said that WhatsApp eased communication in schools and facilitated interactions between teachers and students. He said that during the pandemic, WhatsApp did not only keep everyone connected at Mount Kenya but also facilitated students to learn in groups at a time when meeting was prohibited everywhere. “With WhatsApp, we can know if a class or test is canceled without necessarily traveling miles to realize it. Teachers and educational institutions can now conduct online classes through WhatsApp. They can also share learning materials, communicate with learners, and nurture a positive, collaborative social atmosphere that enhances learning for all kinds of students,” said Bugingo. According to him, the app also facilitates internal communication in workplaces by keeping employees updated about what’s happening at work with the use of WhatsApp groups. “Most of the meetings during the pandemic were held on WhatsApp. The app was really a good way for team members to stay in touch particularly if they are working remotely to network and to share ideas,” said Bugingo who is also a customer service agent at Bboxx Rwanda. The app is also a medium of making communication easier and faster by enhancing effective flow of information, idea sharing and connecting people easier, he added. The messaging app is particularly popular in parts of Africa, Europe and South America, where it is used by more than 96 percent of messaging app users in some countries.
