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Completely agree. > WhatsApp because it meant that international SMS was now free Not sure the exact meaning of "international" here. In Brazil SMS was not fr

by soneca 7y ago

Completely agree. > WhatsApp because it meant that international SMS was now free Not sure the exact meaning of "international" here. In Brazil SMS was not free at all, so Whatsapp became a free SMS for all, with bonus of a nice chat UI that made easy to be in conversations (contrary to any phone's SMS UI at the time), groups, images (becoming a MMS for free too). So, a 100x better SMS for free. No wonder it exploded. But the use case was mostly for local messages, not international messages.

kristianc 7y ago
Agree - I put international SMS as in some countries (such as the UK) providers were beginning to bundle ‘free’ SMS before WhatsApp came along - in these markets international SMS / Voice / MMS for expats, students etc was a big deal. You’re right to point out though that in many countries, WhatsApp was the first cross platform free SMS of any kind.
- melling 7y ago
  This conversation has not been very productive. Basically it’s a pedantic discussion about the meaning of marketing. I recommend this [updated] 10-year-old article about finding your first 1000 customers: https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/ https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/ Much has been written about the idea: https://seths.blog/2009/12/first-organize-1000/ https://seths.blog/2009/12/first-organize-1000/ https://nowspeed.com/seth-godins-latest-book-tribes/ https://nowspeed.com/seth-godins-latest-book-tribes/ http://jumpcut.com/blog/kevin-kelly-1000-true-fans/ http://jumpcut.com/blog/kevin-kelly-1000-true-fans/
  - tmartty 7y ago
    Thanks for the links!
  - redis_mlc 7y ago
    FYI: Patreon is the realization of 1000 True Fans, at least for musicians. Except only 50 - 250 patrons are needed to subsist full-time, much less than 1,000.