Popular smartphone app WhatsApp, which allows you to message other users on different platforms running the same app at the fraction of the cost of an SMS, has denied sending out any messages stating that it is about to start charging users.

The message reads as follows:

WhatsApp is going to cost us money soon. The only way that it will stay free is if you are a frequent user i.e. you have at least 10 people you are chatting with. To become a frequent user send this message to 10 people who receive it (2 ticks) and your WhatsApp logo should turn Red to indicate a frequent user.

WhatsApp has responded on their blog after they got numerous emails from users of the smartphone app about hoax message doing the round on the instant message application, stating that this is a hoax and there is no truth to it.

Another hoax message has now also started doing the rounds, this time stating that WhatsApp will be shutting down on 28 Jan and if you do not forward the message to your contacts you will be deemed inactive and your account will be deleted withing 48 hours.

WhatsApp will not be shutting down any time soon, nor will they start charging you if you do not forwards messages to your contacts, if they really wanted to contact other WhatsApp users don’t you think they can just simply message you directly?

So everybody has been going on about this Google Chrome extension you can install that basically scrapes your Facebook friends data from Facebook and exports it to you in CSV format, however now Facebook has blocked the scraping techniques and the extension is useless, luckily there is a legal way of getting your Facebook friends contact information.

Yahoo may not be the search giant it used to be back in the day, but it has some awesome tools, and one such tool is its address book. See, Yahoo is a Facebook partner and because of that they get access to certain info users apps using the normal Facebook API can not get hold of, like the email address of your friend.

Exporting your Facebook friends to Google+ is a fairly easy operation, but it does involve a few sites.

1. Create a Yahoo! Address Book account.
2. Log into Yahoo! Address Book and click the Facebook Import Contacts button.
3. Authorise Yahoo! to access your Facebook data.
4. You should now have gotten a message saying x amount of contacts was imported.
5. Log into Google+ and head to the Circles section.
6. Click on the Find and Invite tab and then click on the Find Friends: Yahoo! link.
7. Authorise Google+ to access your Yahoo! contacts and they should now appear in the list.
8. Add them to a new circle called Facebook Friends and then post an update to that circle.

As easy as that and you will have all you Facebook friends in Google+, however they may not receive an invite as Google only opens invites every now and then, but atleast when they join Google+ one day you will be following them already.

If you are on Google+ you can follow me here.