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In Central America whatsapp also _is_ basically the Internet along with facebook. There is a person on the other end taking your order and payments are always d

by rauljordan2020 6y ago

In Central America whatsapp also _is_ basically the Internet along with facebook. There is a person on the other end taking your order and payments are always done in cash, although some advanced delivery drivers now carry a credit card swipe machine. Everything is done through whatsapp: bills, ordering food, govt services, parent teacher communications for children in schools, business introductions (dont know anyone who uses email for this over there). The Internet is whatsapp for these people, there is no such thing as "most online services and apps"

tobib 6y ago
Thank you all for shining a light on this. I didn't know this was so bad. I'm simply annoyed that some social groups use Facebook to organize, our neighborhood group, the parenting class, so I just can't be a part of that and try to move individual people, like my immediate neighbors, onto other platforms. But "bills, ordering food, govt services, parent teacher communications", that's extreme. At least for bills and govt services I wonder, who approves something like that?
- logifail 6y ago
  > parent teacher communications Where we are (EU) schools have been told not to touch WhatsApp, so official school-parent communication goes via other channels. However parents still end up creating WhatsApp groups for each class to exchange messages and chase lost bits of homework and so on. Feels like it's almost like like a virus ... <sigh>
  - rodolphoarruda 6y ago
    > parent teacher communications Yes, that one is another good example. My kids' school has 3 different learning management systems (not integrated, BTW) to which students need to submit their homework/assignments. Well, at least in theory. In practice, parents take photos of homework and send them to teachers via Whatsapp completely ignoring a formal system maintained for that purpose. Poor teachers have to save the time to upload files from their phones/computers to the system later and keep things organized from school's internal perspective. I thought about proposing to school's IT that they changed the process, allowing parents to email files to a certain inbox, which an app would collect the files later and push them into the system automatically. I ended up not going ahead with the proposal because I already knew their reaction to me: "Whatsapp makes the process simpler".
el-salvador 6y ago
I've worked in technical support in Central America and there's something I noticed with some users. Like those younger than 25 y/o users or older than 65 y/o. For them, their phone is their first computer and they never really used e-mail. Some of them can't recall their e-mail addresses or less their e-mail passwords. This happens even if Android is the most popular phone and requires a GMail account to be properly set up. They just create a new GMail account when they get a new phone or somtimes just keep using the GMail account from the previous owner instead.
skapadia 6y ago
> "whatsapp also _is_ basically the Internet" this is the best description I've read so far.
- texasbigdata 6y ago
  So bots exist or no? Honestly in that rare instance sheds you need to chat with an Intercom website, would much rather do it in WhatsAppWeb or via cell
  - el-salvador 6y ago
    As an end user I keep WhatsApp open on my computer, because it makes it very easy to copy and paste text, screenshots or files. From the business side. Big companies use bots and ticketing systems based on the WhatsApp API. Smaller stores can handle with WhatsApp for phone or Web.

tobib 6y ago

Thank you all for shining a light on this. I didn't know this was so bad. I'm simply annoyed that some social groups use Facebook to organize, our neighborhood group, the parenting class, so I just can't be a part of that and try to move individual people, like my immediate neighbors, onto other platforms. But "bills, ordering food, govt services, parent teacher communications", that's extreme. At least for bills and govt services I wonder, who approves something like that?

logifail 6y ago
> parent teacher communications Where we are (EU) schools have been told not to touch WhatsApp, so official school-parent communication goes via other channels. However parents still end up creating WhatsApp groups for each class to exchange messages and chase lost bits of homework and so on. Feels like it's almost like like a virus ... <sigh>
- rodolphoarruda 6y ago
  > parent teacher communications Yes, that one is another good example. My kids' school has 3 different learning management systems (not integrated, BTW) to which students need to submit their homework/assignments. Well, at least in theory. In practice, parents take photos of homework and send them to teachers via Whatsapp completely ignoring a formal system maintained for that purpose. Poor teachers have to save the time to upload files from their phones/computers to the system later and keep things organized from school's internal perspective. I thought about proposing to school's IT that they changed the process, allowing parents to email files to a certain inbox, which an app would collect the files later and push them into the system automatically. I ended up not going ahead with the proposal because I already knew their reaction to me: "Whatsapp makes the process simpler".

el-salvador 6y ago

I've worked in technical support in Central America and there's something I noticed with some users. Like those younger than 25 y/o users or older than 65 y/o. For them, their phone is their first computer and they never really used e-mail. Some of them can't recall their e-mail addresses or less their e-mail passwords. This happens even if Android is the most popular phone and requires a GMail account to be properly set up. They just create a new GMail account when they get a new phone or somtimes just keep using the GMail account from the previous owner instead.

skapadia 6y ago

> "whatsapp also _is_ basically the Internet" this is the best description I've read so far.

texasbigdata 6y ago
So bots exist or no? Honestly in that rare instance sheds you need to chat with an Intercom website, would much rather do it in WhatsAppWeb or via cell
- el-salvador 6y ago
  As an end user I keep WhatsApp open on my computer, because it makes it very easy to copy and paste text, screenshots or files. From the business side. Big companies use bots and ticketing systems based on the WhatsApp API. Smaller stores can handle with WhatsApp for phone or Web.