Whisper have both features and drawbacks. Some are related to the design of Whisper, others to the concept of peer-to-peer.
Features
- You own and store your own information. No corporation or other third part deciding what to do with your data. No one can compile/sell the information stored in the Whisper net, since it is not stored at any single point.
- Highly redundant. Since all your friends help you store and transport your data, no single point of failure exists. You can even format your hard drive and still gain access to all your data, as long you have your key and password.
- High availability. You can even ready new posts and write messages offline. Everything will be synchronized again when online. This way Whisper is usable even with a sporadic access to Internet.
- No censorship. You yourself are responsible for what you are publishing. There exists no means for anybody else to censor your information. Of course, if your friends do not like what your are publishing, they are free to end your friendship, hence not assisting you in the distribution of your information, but no third part can suppress what you are publishing.
- Fast. Since all updates are pushed in the background, you already got the data locally when using Whisper, so you do not have to wait for the network. You never have to fetch the same data twice, compared to web based services. No central server bottleneck, but total computing capacity increases with the numbers of users, since all computing is done locally.
- Secure. Since both password and key file (certificate) needed to login, it is impossible for an intruder to try cracking your password without possessing your key file as well. This also implies non-deniability - you self are responsible for your own posts.
Drawbacks
- If you lose your key or password, there is no way restoring it, since no central server or organization exists, but you have to start all over again by register a new login identity. Backup your key, write down your password and store them at a safe place.
- Requires disk space on your local computer. Since no central server storing all the data, you will need to grant some disk space for your and your friends information.
- Not suitable for sharing large files, like videos, large images or MP3′s. Due to the redundant storage, Whisper is primary designed for blogs, news, texts, chat messages, small images etc. This may be solved in a later release.
- Not web based, but requires you to download a software.