FireChat App Sees Surge In Popularity In Hong Kong In wake Of Protests

Given China’s strict censorship, it was actually surprising that Instagram had been allowed to be used in the country for quite a while, despite the fact that its parent company Facebook had been banned. Well that was until recently where China decided to ban Instagram from mainland China following the protests in Hong Kong.

Well now it seems that if China will ever decide to ban the use of cellphones in Hong Kong to attempt to quell protesters, it could be a fruitless exercise, thanks to the use of FireChat. According to a report from The New York Times, FireChat has actually seen a surge in popularity over in Hong Kong where it has been downloaded several hundred thousand times recently.

For those unfamiliar, FireChat is a messaging app that allows users to send messages to one another via Bluetooth or through the WiFi radios in their phones. This is handy in places where internet connections might be unavailable or unstable, or where cellular service might has been disrupted or is experiencing heavy traffic.

Speaking from a Skype chat, Micha Benoliel, the CEO of Open Garden which created FireChat was quoted as saying, “This application is mainly a tool for communication, it is not our intent to support revolution. We are very grateful to the people in Hong Kong for what they enabled us to do with this application.”

Admittedly FireChat was not designed for revolutions, as Benoliel has put it. Instead some of the uses that was imagined for FireChat included embedding it into video games so that in the event the player loses their connection, it will be able to piggyback on the connection of someone else. It has also been suggested in the use for the Internet of Things and connected objects.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Apps, firechat