this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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because it gained popularity in countries where sending SMS used to cost money at the time, years before Facebook has purchased it, became the main means of communication, and it turns out that moving an entire country's (or even continent's) population away from a messaging app has proven to be difficult.
Ironically, it got popular when it still tried to get users to subscribe to a monthly payment. And as it was one of the few messaging platforms to be (in the future) paid at all, I cannot understand why it ever got popular...
Well, sure, Meta cancelled the subscription plans later but to me it sounded a red flag in the first place.
Whatsapp became popular because it was the only app that ran on everything in 2010, it ran on the newly appeared smartphones as well as on featurephones. Nokia, Blackberry, Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, you name it, it was supported.
Okay, that is a very good point that I did not realize.
Whatsapp was a paid service in some areas, but only $1 per year.
Because that way people thought they were directly paying for the service they were using, instead of being the product of said platform, having their personal data harvested and sold to the highest bidder?
The red flag is to look at a free meal and not wonder what the catch might be. Especially to this day, with all we learned about what the tech majors do with all the data.
Are you saying that people perceived WhatsApp as better than SMS or better than Facebook?
That's not my point. My point is why would the majority of the world do this when they knew it was going to be paid.
I can't think of other product examples where people would so gladly accept trial versions of otherwise free feature-equivalent services. Maybe WinRAR, but that could be replaced with any other product instantly anyway (no network effect), should it ever get enforce its trial.
As it happened, both.
Back then, the norm was to pay for a service. When it's good and the price is fair, people use it, especially when the alternative was feature-limited SMS paid by the message at inadequately high cost. And Facebook isn't free: you trade privacy and exposure to customized ads in exchange for access to the service, so your comparison is biased.
Also because MMS was/is dogshit and sending photos etc through WhatsApp was much better
Yep. It’s like that here and it sucks ass. Every person and business uses it. I think even the Gemente does in some cases.
Pretty much, I use Telegram always I can (I know it is not Signal, but there are tons of custom ROMs groups and channels and I use it to chat with closest friends), and oh boy it is just better than WhatsApp in any aspect since... Since I don't remember when I started to use it... It just got updated with an enhanced reply system (quotes) and it is awesome.
Meanwhile family, companies and pretty much everyone else is at WhatsApp... I mean it could be worse, it could be Messenger LMAO.
I was shocked when I read around here in Lemmy that people chat with SMS on Android those haven't been used here since 2012 at least!
Be the difference!
It's not that difficult. During the pandemic there was a privacy scare when Whatsapp was rumored to plan on breaking encryption. There was an upsurge in Signal installations and I actually got a small group to use it for a few weeks before the scare died down and we returned to Whatsapp.
If Meta really thinks people won't switch it may have an unpleasant surprise.