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It's not as hard you might think. Other messaging services like Telegram and Signal also use phone numbers as the identifiers so it would be relatively easy to

by 2sk21 8y ago

It's not as hard you might think. Other messaging services like Telegram and Signal also use phone numbers as the identifiers so it would be relatively easy to switch.

typon 8y ago
I tried my friends to switch to Signal and it failed miserably. Their friends and family are on WhatsApp, so why would they switch? It's very annoying for people to deal with multiple chat apps for multiple groups, especially if some members of those groups are overlapping. I've personally settled with chatting with my SO on Signal and everyone else deleted Signal and moved back to WhatsApp
- mytherin 8y ago
  Of course, there’s no large reason for them to switch from whatsapp. It’s reliable, free, has no ads and it’s encrypted. Yes, privacy is an issue, but most people don’t care about that all that much. What they do care about is being annoyed or paying. If they give people a reason to move by making the app significantly worse through ads then people will move, and once people start moving it will be fast. Sure, people will need to keep two apps around for a while to deal with stragglers, but that is a minor inconvenience that will become unnecessary fast. A free chat app does not have much lock in. Just look at what happened to e.g. MSN.
- visarga 8y ago
  Maybe we need laws against abusing the network effect, which is akin to monopoly. The networks should be split in multiple segments and they should be forced to implement a public protocol to communicate between them, and with other networks. Moving from one network to another should be like porting your cell phone number to a different operator. It's ridiculous that we imposed such strict rules on phone networks when people use SMS and voice calls less and less by the day, but not on internet based services that offer similar functionality (communication). It's a public interest issue, just like in the case of net neutrality and eminent domain.
- rchaud 8y ago
  I had the same issue, and I believe it's tied to UI/UX. Signal, at least on Android, looks like a stock SMS text app. That turns "normal" people off because it looks and feels different from a "messaging" app like Slack/Messenger/Whatsapp etc where doing stuff like group chats, attaching video/audio/images is easy. When people see a standard SMS text interface, they feel it's for one-to-one communication only with limited multimedia capabilities (remember MMS?).

by 2sk21 8y ago

It's not as hard you might think. Other messaging services like Telegram and Signal also use phone numbers as the identifiers so it would be relatively easy to switch.

typon 8y ago

I tried my friends to switch to Signal and it failed miserably. Their friends and family are on WhatsApp, so why would they switch? It's very annoying for people to deal with multiple chat apps for multiple groups, especially if some members of those groups are overlapping. I've personally settled with chatting with my SO on Signal and everyone else deleted Signal and moved back to WhatsApp

mytherin 8y ago
Of course, there’s no large reason for them to switch from whatsapp. It’s reliable, free, has no ads and it’s encrypted. Yes, privacy is an issue, but most people don’t care about that all that much. What they do care about is being annoyed or paying. If they give people a reason to move by making the app significantly worse through ads then people will move, and once people start moving it will be fast. Sure, people will need to keep two apps around for a while to deal with stragglers, but that is a minor inconvenience that will become unnecessary fast. A free chat app does not have much lock in. Just look at what happened to e.g. MSN.
visarga 8y ago
Maybe we need laws against abusing the network effect, which is akin to monopoly. The networks should be split in multiple segments and they should be forced to implement a public protocol to communicate between them, and with other networks. Moving from one network to another should be like porting your cell phone number to a different operator. It's ridiculous that we imposed such strict rules on phone networks when people use SMS and voice calls less and less by the day, but not on internet based services that offer similar functionality (communication). It's a public interest issue, just like in the case of net neutrality and eminent domain.
rchaud 8y ago
I had the same issue, and I believe it's tied to UI/UX. Signal, at least on Android, looks like a stock SMS text app. That turns "normal" people off because it looks and feels different from a "messaging" app like Slack/Messenger/Whatsapp etc where doing stuff like group chats, attaching video/audio/images is easy. When people see a standard SMS text interface, they feel it's for one-to-one communication only with limited multimedia capabilities (remember MMS?).