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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 conta

by 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.
    - chrischen 9y ago
      Also North Korea, Taiwan, Canada.
- mereo 9y ago
  > If they were so great it would have caught on in the US, but it didn’t. The US is not at the centre of the world.
  - Markoff 9y ago
    but China is, they have it literally in their name Zhongguo (Middle earth/country), although Whatsapp didnt caught there for other reasons, since it's very skewed market
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
Ndymium 9y ago
Funnily enough, the WhatsApp protocol started as XMPP and is now a heavily customized binary version of it I believe.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

by avip 9y ago

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.
  - chrischen 9y ago
    Also North Korea, Taiwan, Canada.
mereo 9y ago
> If they were so great it would have caught on in the US, but it didn’t. The US is not at the centre of the world.
- Markoff 9y ago
  but China is, they have it literally in their name Zhongguo (Middle earth/country), although Whatsapp didnt caught there for other reasons, since it's very skewed market
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

Ndymium 9y ago

Funnily enough, the WhatsApp protocol started as XMPP and is now a heavily customized binary version of it I believe.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]