5 ms·

Here are some numbers i can't find. The number of users chatting on yahoo, aim, facebook, msn messenger, and all the random others combined when it was a thing

Here are some numbers i can't find. The number of users chatting on yahoo, aim, facebook, msn messenger, and all the random others combined when it was a thing not to care which people were using. At my job in 2011, every single member of my team was on using a different client, i was on ubuntu using Empathy. The point is, chat was already resolved, and it didn't require some sort of "quiet room or distraction free office" to get it where it was. Kudos to the WhatsApp team for having this many users, but let's not forget that we had no problem chatting until the facebook, yahoo, googles broke the old protocol in favor of restricting users to their own systems.

blowski 9y ago
Talking with non-technical family members was hard in 2007. Partly this was because the most portable solution was a big chunky laptop and most people didn't even have that. But we can't totally separate the mobile computing devices that have appeared since then from the apps installed on them. I'd love a world where open source protocols and clients dominated, but it wasn't quite the utopia you remember.
- frozenport 9y ago
  Skype
  - posguy 9y ago
    Total PITA to use, didn't work well on even decently spec'ed machines at the time, and required extra hardware that was of varying quality.
    - tinus_hn 9y ago
      And that's before Microsoft sprinkled their 'special sauce' on it. Now it's even worse.
  - sumedh 9y ago
    Well, my mother can use watsapp, she could not use skype even with patient handholding.
enraged_camel 9y ago
WhatsApp didn't replace internet chatting. It replaced (or maybe I should say "disrupted") SMS, and perhaps more importantly, MMS. There are two reasons: it's free, and the UX is far superior in that it mimicks how humans, especially groups of humans, communicate.
- lou1306 9y ago
  Even though it was not free until some years ago, the price was so ridicolous that people were happy to pay for the service.
  - fgonzag 9y ago
    They never actually charged it though, you didn't actually have to pay it.
    - tim333 9y ago
      I recall being annoyed at having to pay 79c for the iPhone app some years ago.
    - endless1234 9y ago
      The iOS app cost 1 euro for a perpetual license and there was at least an option of charging 1e/year for the android one -- don't know if it was ever tried out, though
    - shawabawa3 9y ago
      I paid $1 at some point. Maybe they would have let me keep using it for free, but it did ask for payment and i paid
- knodi123 9y ago
  > There are two reasons Three. For some reason, two of the people I text most will not receive any subsequent group texts as soon as any member of the group includes an image. And two different members of my text circle cannot do group SMS, so group SMS conversations wind up being super confusing. This appears to vary by phone and provider. Whatsapp works exactly the same for everyone I know, on every device, all the time.
avip 9y ago
We hear this rant on every chat-related thread. WhatsApp brought the amazing innovation of using your phone number for "login" (and later on - your native contacts as its contacts list). This enabled zero-BS onboarding, and that's why they have so many users. Thanks WA for helping humanity deprecate that horrible XMPP. I don't miss it.
- posguy 9y ago
  WhatsApp mainly displaced SMS and MMS, some users of other chat protocols slowly migrated, but by and large WhatsApp mainly ate cellular carrier's lunch. Hence why most carriers offer unlimited calling and texting, discouraging use is just pushing their customers to these OTT apps.
- chrischen 9y ago
  People wanted free text messaging, so they used whatsapp. If they were so great it would have caught on in the US, but it didn’t.
  - paganel 9y ago
    It caught on in almost all the rest of the world but because it didn't catch on in the US it means that it is shit. Yeah, talk about living in a bubble... Back on topic, I've avoided using WhatsApp for about a year, even though everyone around me was using it. When I've finally gave in I found out that it was really, really easy to use, even on my relatively crappy iPhone4 (I'm talking about ~2014-2015, at which point that type of phone was seen as a museum artifact; I'm still using it). Sending photos was damn easy, notifications were always "right" (not the crappy shit that Skype calls "notifications") and the "last seen" future was the central point of many personal relationships (still is). Unfortunately WhatsApp stopped functioning for me about one year and a half ago (after the FB acquisition), but you can't dismiss it just because it hasn't caught up in the States.
    - nihonde 9y ago
      You can add Japan, South Korea, and China to the list of places that don’t use WhatsApp.
stephengillie 9y ago
> At my job in 2011, every single member of my team was on using a different client... This persists today - every single person I communicate with uses a completely different app, including SMS and email. I only know one person who uses WhatsApp, but serval have dumbphones. Coordinating with more than one person involves at least 2 chat programs and a website. "Group chats" are impossible because in 2017 we still can't group chat between 1 person on Skype, 1 SMS, and a Facebook.
- giancarlostoro 9y ago
  At my job in our division we use Slack, anyone outside uses company email to get a hold of us. I'm of course speaking of work. Out in the real world with friends and family, everyone has Facebook, so it's as easy as that. I can also just text / call them. I think Discord is probably the best way to create "Group chats" everyone can just join without even having an account, and you can use voice chat or text. I've never had issues making a new Discord and linking someone to one, they always just join and it rarely dies out.

blowski 9y ago

Talking with non-technical family members was hard in 2007. Partly this was because the most portable solution was a big chunky laptop and most people didn't even have that. But we can't totally separate the mobile computing devices that have appeared since then from the apps installed on them. I'd love a world where open source protocols and clients dominated, but it wasn't quite the utopia you remember.

frozenport 9y ago
Skype
- posguy 9y ago
  Total PITA to use, didn't work well on even decently spec'ed machines at the time, and required extra hardware that was of varying quality.
  - tinus_hn 9y ago
    And that's before Microsoft sprinkled their 'special sauce' on it. Now it's even worse.
- sumedh 9y ago
  Well, my mother can use watsapp, she could not use skype even with patient handholding.

enraged_camel 9y ago

WhatsApp didn't replace internet chatting. It replaced (or maybe I should say "disrupted") SMS, and perhaps more importantly, MMS. There are two reasons: it's free, and the UX is far superior in that it mimicks how humans, especially groups of humans, communicate.

lou1306 9y ago
Even though it was not free until some years ago, the price was so ridicolous that people were happy to pay for the service.
- fgonzag 9y ago
  They never actually charged it though, you didn't actually have to pay it.
  - tim333 9y ago
    I recall being annoyed at having to pay 79c for the iPhone app some years ago.
  - endless1234 9y ago
    The iOS app cost 1 euro for a perpetual license and there was at least an option of charging 1e/year for the android one -- don't know if it was ever tried out, though
  - shawabawa3 9y ago
    I paid $1 at some point. Maybe they would have let me keep using it for free, but it did ask for payment and i paid
knodi123 9y ago
> There are two reasons Three. For some reason, two of the people I text most will not receive any subsequent group texts as soon as any member of the group includes an image. And two different members of my text circle cannot do group SMS, so group SMS conversations wind up being super confusing. This appears to vary by phone and provider. Whatsapp works exactly the same for everyone I know, on every device, all the time.

avip 9y ago

We hear this rant on every chat-related thread. WhatsApp brought the amazing innovation of using your phone number for "login" (and later on - your native contacts as its contacts list). This enabled zero-BS onboarding, and that's why they have so many users. Thanks WA for helping humanity deprecate that horrible XMPP. I don't miss it.

posguy 9y ago
WhatsApp mainly displaced SMS and MMS, some users of other chat protocols slowly migrated, but by and large WhatsApp mainly ate cellular carrier's lunch. Hence why most carriers offer unlimited calling and texting, discouraging use is just pushing their customers to these OTT apps.
chrischen 9y ago
People wanted free text messaging, so they used whatsapp. If they were so great it would have caught on in the US, but it didn’t.
- paganel 9y ago
  It caught on in almost all the rest of the world but because it didn't catch on in the US it means that it is shit. Yeah, talk about living in a bubble... Back on topic, I've avoided using WhatsApp for about a year, even though everyone around me was using it. When I've finally gave in I found out that it was really, really easy to use, even on my relatively crappy iPhone4 (I'm talking about ~2014-2015, at which point that type of phone was seen as a museum artifact; I'm still using it). Sending photos was damn easy, notifications were always "right" (not the crappy shit that Skype calls "notifications") and the "last seen" future was the central point of many personal relationships (still is). Unfortunately WhatsApp stopped functioning for me about one year and a half ago (after the FB acquisition), but you can't dismiss it just because it hasn't caught up in the States.
  - nihonde 9y ago
    You can add Japan, South Korea, and China to the list of places that don’t use WhatsApp.

stephengillie 9y ago

> At my job in 2011, every single member of my team was on using a different client... This persists today - every single person I communicate with uses a completely different app, including SMS and email. I only know one person who uses WhatsApp, but serval have dumbphones. Coordinating with more than one person involves at least 2 chat programs and a website. "Group chats" are impossible because in 2017 we still can't group chat between 1 person on Skype, 1 SMS, and a Facebook.

giancarlostoro 9y ago
At my job in our division we use Slack, anyone outside uses company email to get a hold of us. I'm of course speaking of work. Out in the real world with friends and family, everyone has Facebook, so it's as easy as that. I can also just text / call them. I think Discord is probably the best way to create "Group chats" everyone can just join without even having an account, and you can use voice chat or text. I've never had issues making a new Discord and linking someone to one, they always just join and it rarely dies out.