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WhatsApp worldwide usage is estimated to be more than 2B+ users. Even if this article is accurate, it doesn’t really mean much. In the HN bubble lots of people

by outime 6y ago

WhatsApp worldwide usage is estimated to be more than 2B+ users. Even if this article is accurate, it doesn’t really mean much. In the HN bubble lots of people have migrated to Signal with all of their contacts but outside of that bubble nothing much seems to be happening. Note that I’m not agreeing with these changes, I’m just observing reality. To put things into perspective, let’s assume that 25M users (as stated in the article) actually moved to Telegram - which I use and like by the way. Let’s assume they fully moved and stopped using WhatsApp (very unlikely). That means less than 1.25% users moved to another platform - and this means assuming many things that aren’t probably real. It reminds me a bit of the articles about DuckDuckGo vs Google where many people think big changes in usage are happening while ignoring that the average Joe will keep using whatever it’s using unless there’s way too much trouble to continue using it.

calvinmorrison 6y ago
The extremely positive side of this is that you can be a 'competitor' to Google, or other megaservices and steal enough customers to run a 10M+ user company and they woudln't even register you as a competitor. The internet market is HUGE.
emptyparadise 6y ago
Perception matters. You can't get to two billion without getting to 25 million first.
- outime 6y ago
  We could also say 1M and still be a valid statement. I don’t know if that tells anything though. Perception does matter a lot, and that’s why I used the 1% figure. It means one percent of WhatsApp users are investigating a competitor (not even deleting their account in WhatsApp, but I guess few did) and here people seem to see it as a clear tipping point to which I disagree - raw numbers don’t mean much if you have nothing to compare with.
addicted 6y ago
The problem is that what makes Whatsapp sticky is the network effect. People use Whatsapp because everyone has Whatsapp. But if you now have several millions of people who will not use Whatsapp at all, all the groups that they are in will need to migrate to the alternative (which is pretty much Signal/Telegram at this point). So those few million become few tens of millions. And once they migrate and start liking it, they may avoid Whatsapp as well, because it's far easier to just use one app, and then their groups need to migrate, and so on. Edit 1: Added Telegram as an alternative.
- outime 6y ago
  Totally agree. I had a couple groups which were moved from WhatsApp to Telegram and they work great. So I’m aware (and happy) this happens but also I’m that kind of special early-adopter user who cares about things that non-tech users don’t. This is something I want to highlight. I know we’re not all product managers but as people working in tech we should be able to take different perspectives and understand that what matters to us doesn’t matter at all for the 99% of the people outside our tech world.
  - cutitout 6y ago
    Freedom from being surveilled, fucked with, controlled and ultimately murdered in an industrial fashion that will make Hitler seem like a little girl with pigtails skipping across a meadow matters to everyone, some people just don't know it yet.
- est31 6y ago
  The network effect only acts if enough people in your network use it. It is subject to a threshold with a sigmoid activation. If only three people in a group of ten want to use Signal, it's different than if 7 want to switch. So right now, as most folks use Whatsapp, it favours Whatsapp far more than it favours Signal. It also depends on your level of seniority in that group. If you are a junior member, they likely won't switch, but if you have the social clout, you might be able to get them to switch. For the same reason, Facebook was initially open to only Harvard, then to a few other ivies, until it opened to all colleges in the USA and Canada. If your high school friend who made it to the the highly esteemed college uses the service you are more likely to switch than if it were the reverse situation. Later these people get into important positions of society and if you want to network with them, you too can use FB.
TacticalCoder 6y ago
> I’m just observing reality. Well me too and... Even before this recent WhatsApp fiasco I noticed that some parents are using Telegram at the school where my kid goes. Out of 24 kids in my kid's class, there are 3 families which I know for sure have Telegram (I don't have contact with all of the parents so I don't know). And I think Telegram is reporting more than, what, 500M users by now? If it's true, it's definitely a sizeable dent in WhatsApp's market share. It may not be 2B+, but 500M is quite something. The thing is: users are not loyal at all. Telegram or Signal or others are a click or two away: it's neither hard to find/install nor to use. I really wouldn't be surprised to see a bigger shift some day once more people begin to realize that "WhatsApp = FB" (many don't like FB but have no idea WhatsApp belongs to FB).
- jpalomaki 6y ago
  There's quite likely a lot of overlap. For example I'm using all of them (Signal, Telegram, whatsApp, iMessage and whatnot).
- kelnos 6y ago
  > The thing is: users are not loyal at all. Telegram or Signal or others are a click or two away: it's neither hard to find/install nor to use. Users aren't loyal, true, and installing another app is easy, but getting your friends and family to switch often is not.
  - pilif 6y ago
    the ToS hubbub going through mainstream media has made it much easier to get people to switch though. In my case, I was one of those people really not wanting to use WhatsApp but being forced by group pressure. But now that I can even just vaguely reference the ToS issue with WhatsApp, I find people are willing to at least try and install Signal.
- thekyle 6y ago
  > many don't like FB but have no idea WhatsApp belongs to FB When you start WhatsApp the splash screen says "WhatsApp from Facebook" so I would be surprised if people really didn't know that the two companies were related. Instagram is the same, it says "Instagram from Facebook". WhatsApp: https://i.imgur.com/JS20lGJ.png https://i.imgur.com/JS20lGJ.png Instagram: https://i.imgur.com/1SWybdu.png https://i.imgur.com/1SWybdu.png
MertsA 6y ago
>let’s assume that 25M users (as stated in the article) actually moved to Telegram Oh the irony of a knee jerk reaction fleeing an end-to-end encrypted messaging service to a messaging service that only offers opt-in encryption that more often than not doesn't get used. There was never any proposal to remove encryption anywhere, only add a new feature that, by the very nature of it, didn't lend itself to practical end-to-end encryption.
- bastawhiz 6y ago
  People choose their messaging apps for reasons other than privacy. And there's nothing wrong with that.
  - mshroyer 6y ago
    There's nothing wrong with it if, and only if, people understand that's the choice they're making. Here we have an exodus driven by *privacy* concerns surrounding the new policy. Users fled from WhatsApp to other services with the intent of keeping their conversations more private. The subset of those who switched to Telegram made their conversations strictly *less* private, achieving the opposite of their goals. There is something wrong with that.
    - xrisk 6y ago
      I wouldn't conflate privacy with encryption necessarily.
      - Normille 6y ago
        ^^ This. There's "I'm plotting criminal activities or planning to overthrow my government" messaging which requires secure encryption. And there's "I don't particularly want to be followed round the intarwebs by adverts for piles ointment, because I mentioned my itchy arse in a message to someone" which requires respect for your privacy. I reckon most of us are happy enough with the latter in daily use. And, when we do need to plot an overthrow of the government, we can always flick the big "secret chat" switch. I think Telegram just about gets the balance right; sacrificing some default secrecy for ease of use, seamless sync across all your devices and 'fun' things which are likely to lead to wider adoption --whilst also allowing you to switch on the more secure stuff, as and when you need it.
rtsil 6y ago
I shared the same opinion, before I saw all of my acquaintances (which are as removed from the HN bubble as you can find) install Signal en masse in a matter of two weeks. It's purely anecdotal of course, but I never expected this type of reaction to happen so massively and so fast.
- Leherenn 6y ago
  I think there was a lot of miscommunication/misinformation shared around. Honestly, even now I'm not entirely sure what the whole thing entails. It's a change of policy that was already in effect, but you have to accept it now? What exactly is now being shared? Being in Europe, there was a lot of talk about how it didn't apply, and yet we still have the message? I'd not be surprised if a lot of people got "FB (evil!) wants to read everything or they will close your account". Given how often I have received "share this message 10 times or WhatsApp will delete your account" from relatives, I think it also plays into this fear of losing access to your contacts. And it was all over the mainstream news, with the alternatives readily available (and their own shortcomings often not described).
  - donpott 6y ago
    It's funny to me how misinformation can be used to combat (further) misinformation. Food for thought.
- etrautmann 6y ago
  This was my experience as well. The signups extend far beyond the tech bubble in the circles I’ve seen adopting signal.
- stingraycharles 6y ago
  Yes, I’ve seen this over here in The Netherlands as well. Just about every day I log in and can see another non-tech acquaintance having joined signal. It’s been at least 50 over the past few weeks, it’s really weird.
- dmje 6y ago
  Agree. This has been the interesting thing to me: that so many non-nerd friends have popped up on Signal. Totally fascinating that the shift is happening to a group who are typically not that bothered about the presence of FB. I'll have to ask them about their motivations in more detail...
Nightshaxx 6y ago
You are looking at it merely from a percentage point of view. 1.24% at Facebook's scale is _massive_. It is not a drop in the bucket, and Facebook is especially worried because it could be a trend. Today it's 1.24% but how many people would switch tommorow?
oraphalous 6y ago
Gotta start somewhere...
hahla 6y ago
You would be surprised.. I have had two family groups switch to Signal, I never once mentioned switching over because I thought no one would agree. The switch was suggested by people not technologically savvy.
- sumanthvepa 6y ago
  This is so funny. That is what happened to me. I’ve been on Signal for a while and suddenly the whole extended family switched over. The switch to signal is real.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
onekorg 6y ago
> In the HN bubble lots of people have migrated to Signal with all of their contacts but outside of that bubble nothing much seems to be happening. I live in Mexico, most things happen through WhatsApp. I was surprised by how many of my non-technical friends migrated to Signal and Telegram. Non-techies were sharing fake information about the new policy. The word around was that the new policy would allow facebook to spy on all your messages and photos. This scared off a lot of people and many of my friends at least download Signal or Telegram.
guerrilla 6y ago
> In the HN bubble lots of people have migrated to Signal with all of their contacts but outside of that bubble nothing much seems to be happening. HN can't represent all of the 50 million new users to Signal.
lawnchair_larry 6y ago
> In the HN bubble lots of people have migrated to Signal with all of their contacts but outside of that bubble nothing much seems to be happening. I’ve had a ton of non-tech people show up on Signal suddenly. I asked one of them why everyone is signing up, and he said because he doesn’t trsut WhatsApp.
Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
> loses millions of users Did millions of users uninstall WhatsApp? I don't think so. The most downloaded app figures by App Annie shows exactly what it says, which app was downloaded the most during that period. So as long as WhatsApp stays in the phone and if it receives a single message from hundreds of contacts a user has; WhatsApp didn't loose that user. So the correct title IMO is 'Signal, Telegram gained millions of users'.
- kalyanganjam 6y ago
  > So as long as WhatsApp stays in the phone and if it receives a single message from hundreds of contacts a user has; WhatsApp didn't loose that user. Agree - WhatsApp didn't lose the user. whatsApp lost the usage. That's still a loss. Not a total loss but a loss never the less
  - Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
    > Not a total loss but a loss never the less This is the first time I have seen about dozen new Signal contacts; but the question is how many of those dozen contacts are initiating messages through Signal and receiving messages in Signal from the newly signed-up users? I have sandboxed WhatsApp in a separate machine and receive its messages through email[1] and I still receive WhatsApp messages from the aforementioned contacts. Things would have changed if WhatsApp locked out the profiles(incl. me) who didn't accept the T&C on Feb 8; but now with that gone I don't think there's really going to be any change. [1]https://abishekmuthian.com/send-and-receive-whatsapp-messages-through-email/ https://abishekmuthian.com/send-and-receive-whatsapp-message...
- jorangreef 6y ago
  Did Skype lose millions of users only when those users uninstalled Skype on their desktop, or long before that when those users started installing WhatsApp on their phone? Most people probably can't remember the exact moment that Skype was no longer relevant.
  - Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
eloisant 6y ago
Well, it means a lot for me. Until now I had to use WhatsApp because of a few groups I had there, now I was able to remove it because all my groups migrated to Signal. For most of those, I didn't even have to initiate it, it was proposed by a less techy member than me.
_zamorano_ 6y ago
My own experience: I've seen a few new Telegram users. I don't think I've seen a single Whatsapp user leave.
- eloisant 6y ago
  That's how it starts. Then one day you realize you haven't used WhatsApp in months, or you get an new phone and don't think about installing it... I'm not saying this will happen soon, but it happened in the past several times with products with a strong network effect. Think about AIM, MSN, Friendster, MySpace...
ramraj07 6y ago
It's actually possible the real drop in users (or usage) might be more. Facebook took the front page (the whole effing page) of every news paper in India last week to alleviate fears. It's only comparable to DDG articles if Google also similarly had to put ads about how Google respects privacy because of an Exodus.
- tweetle_beetle 6y ago
  That sounds pretty desperate. Is there a precedent for companies communicating like this in India?
  - umanghere 6y ago
    They (Facebook) have done this before too. I recall that they bought full-page ads in all major newspapers to promote their "Free Basics" initiative. There are also other examples, but I consider this level of advertising by them to be very desperate.
  - dartharva 6y ago
    Facebook was already pushing out long video ads on Indian TV, even before this fiasco. Indian consumers are seemingly more valuable; there are a significant number of users who use WhatsApp for business (customer support & sales). WhatsApp has also started a mobile payments platform in the country.
- hliyan 6y ago
  Sri Lankan here (that island under India). You would assume that this would go right over our heads, but a lot of people here are concerned and when I finally installed Signal, I noticed many people already there. Some of them, I never expected to see outside of WhatsApp or Viber.
dustinmoris 6y ago
Every big snowball starts as a single snowflake. A few million users does _mean much_ if you give it enough time to develop.
frereubu 6y ago
While in general I agree this is small, you could add “so far” to the end of the title and it changes the tone somewhat. These not-inconsiderable losses are continuing, and the question is whether it will get to a tipping point where network effects kick in or not. Every large change had to start somewhere. But I think we’re in agreement that we need to see more evidence to say with any certainty that the tipping point is going to be reached.
graeme 6y ago
Might be a bit more than you think. I’ve been using signal for some work chats, as it is a fully functional app no one I knew was using, so it made for a nice silo. Since the term change, I’d say maybe 10-20% of the contacts on my phone have installed signal. It notifies you of new contacts. I don’t know if they’re chatting, and no one has actually used it to message me, but the group I’m seeing is far beyond some technical niche. Whether it dents whatsapp is another question.
cycomanic 6y ago
I suspect these effects might also be very regional. Some anecdotal evidence from my end is that with the change of terms nontechnical friends are much more open to use other messengers if I say I don't want to use WhatsApp. Previously I was sort of regarded as the guys who was making a fuzz out of nothing, now people just say OK let's try. I suspect this is because it made it to mainstream media, so there is more general awareness. It seems also that the people moving now are more the nontechnical audience. For example my partner who is completely nontechnical and using what others are using, just told me last week that suddenly all her acquaintances are popping up on signal.
m000 6y ago
> It reminds me a bit of the articles about DuckDuckGo vs Google where many people think big changes in usage are happening while ignoring that the average Joe will keep using whatever it’s using unless there’s way too much trouble to continue using it. I don't think that this is an apt comparison. The functionality of IM is virtually unchanged for the past 20 years or so, and can easily be replicated. This makes jumping between different IM much more frictionless than switching a search engine.
GuB-42 6y ago
There is not much of a network effect on search engines. Nothing is stopping you from using DuckDuckGo instead of Google, it doesn't matter what the "average Joe" uses. But this is different. If all your friends use WhatsApp, you have no choice but to use WhatsApp. An chat network where you are the only one is useless.
bicepjai 6y ago
A message I received from telegram on Jan 12 2021 says it has more than 500 million active users. “Telegram surpassed 500 million active users. In the past 72 hours alone, more than 25 million new users from around the world joined Telegram. Thank you! These milestones were made possible by users like you who invite their friends to Telegram. ”
dikaio 6y ago
“Even if this article is accurate, it doesn’t really mean much” millions of users (to start) moving away from a platform does matter; it matters for those users and could evolve into a larger movement in time. “Let’s assume they fully moved and stopped using WhatsApp (very unlikely)” why is this “very unlikely”, I’ve uninstalled WhatsApp, I will never install WhatsApp again, ever. I guess I’m part of the “very unlikely” group.

by outime 6y ago

calvinmorrison 6y ago

The extremely positive side of this is that you can be a 'competitor' to Google, or other megaservices and steal enough customers to run a 10M+ user company and they woudln't even register you as a competitor. The internet market is HUGE.

emptyparadise 6y ago

Perception matters. You can't get to two billion without getting to 25 million first.

outime 6y ago
We could also say 1M and still be a valid statement. I don’t know if that tells anything though. Perception does matter a lot, and that’s why I used the 1% figure. It means one percent of WhatsApp users are investigating a competitor (not even deleting their account in WhatsApp, but I guess few did) and here people seem to see it as a clear tipping point to which I disagree - raw numbers don’t mean much if you have nothing to compare with.

addicted 6y ago

The problem is that what makes Whatsapp sticky is the network effect. People use Whatsapp because everyone has Whatsapp. But if you now have several millions of people who will not use Whatsapp at all, all the groups that they are in will need to migrate to the alternative (which is pretty much Signal/Telegram at this point). So those few million become few tens of millions. And once they migrate and start liking it, they may avoid Whatsapp as well, because it's far easier to just use one app, and then their groups need to migrate, and so on. Edit 1: Added Telegram as an alternative.

outime 6y ago
Totally agree. I had a couple groups which were moved from WhatsApp to Telegram and they work great. So I’m aware (and happy) this happens but also I’m that kind of special early-adopter user who cares about things that non-tech users don’t. This is something I want to highlight. I know we’re not all product managers but as people working in tech we should be able to take different perspectives and understand that what matters to us doesn’t matter at all for the 99% of the people outside our tech world.
- cutitout 6y ago
  Freedom from being surveilled, fucked with, controlled and ultimately murdered in an industrial fashion that will make Hitler seem like a little girl with pigtails skipping across a meadow matters to everyone, some people just don't know it yet.
est31 6y ago
The network effect only acts if enough people in your network use it. It is subject to a threshold with a sigmoid activation. If only three people in a group of ten want to use Signal, it's different than if 7 want to switch. So right now, as most folks use Whatsapp, it favours Whatsapp far more than it favours Signal. It also depends on your level of seniority in that group. If you are a junior member, they likely won't switch, but if you have the social clout, you might be able to get them to switch. For the same reason, Facebook was initially open to only Harvard, then to a few other ivies, until it opened to all colleges in the USA and Canada. If your high school friend who made it to the the highly esteemed college uses the service you are more likely to switch than if it were the reverse situation. Later these people get into important positions of society and if you want to network with them, you too can use FB.

TacticalCoder 6y ago

> I’m just observing reality. Well me too and... Even before this recent WhatsApp fiasco I noticed that some parents are using Telegram at the school where my kid goes. Out of 24 kids in my kid's class, there are 3 families which I know for sure have Telegram (I don't have contact with all of the parents so I don't know). And I think Telegram is reporting more than, what, 500M users by now? If it's true, it's definitely a sizeable dent in WhatsApp's market share. It may not be 2B+, but 500M is quite something. The thing is: users are not loyal at all. Telegram or Signal or others are a click or two away: it's neither hard to find/install nor to use. I really wouldn't be surprised to see a bigger shift some day once more people begin to realize that "WhatsApp = FB" (many don't like FB but have no idea WhatsApp belongs to FB).

jpalomaki 6y ago
There's quite likely a lot of overlap. For example I'm using all of them (Signal, Telegram, whatsApp, iMessage and whatnot).
kelnos 6y ago
> The thing is: users are not loyal at all. Telegram or Signal or others are a click or two away: it's neither hard to find/install nor to use. Users aren't loyal, true, and installing another app is easy, but getting your friends and family to switch often is not.
- pilif 6y ago
  the ToS hubbub going through mainstream media has made it much easier to get people to switch though. In my case, I was one of those people really not wanting to use WhatsApp but being forced by group pressure. But now that I can even just vaguely reference the ToS issue with WhatsApp, I find people are willing to at least try and install Signal.
thekyle 6y ago
> many don't like FB but have no idea WhatsApp belongs to FB When you start WhatsApp the splash screen says "WhatsApp from Facebook" so I would be surprised if people really didn't know that the two companies were related. Instagram is the same, it says "Instagram from Facebook". WhatsApp: https://i.imgur.com/JS20lGJ.png https://i.imgur.com/JS20lGJ.png Instagram: https://i.imgur.com/1SWybdu.png https://i.imgur.com/1SWybdu.png

MertsA 6y ago

>let’s assume that 25M users (as stated in the article) actually moved to Telegram Oh the irony of a knee jerk reaction fleeing an end-to-end encrypted messaging service to a messaging service that only offers opt-in encryption that more often than not doesn't get used. There was never any proposal to remove encryption anywhere, only add a new feature that, by the very nature of it, didn't lend itself to practical end-to-end encryption.

bastawhiz 6y ago
People choose their messaging apps for reasons other than privacy. And there's nothing wrong with that.
- mshroyer 6y ago
  There's nothing wrong with it if, and only if, people understand that's the choice they're making. Here we have an exodus driven by *privacy* concerns surrounding the new policy. Users fled from WhatsApp to other services with the intent of keeping their conversations more private. The subset of those who switched to Telegram made their conversations strictly *less* private, achieving the opposite of their goals. There is something wrong with that.
  - xrisk 6y ago
    I wouldn't conflate privacy with encryption necessarily.
    - Normille 6y ago
      ^^ This. There's "I'm plotting criminal activities or planning to overthrow my government" messaging which requires secure encryption. And there's "I don't particularly want to be followed round the intarwebs by adverts for piles ointment, because I mentioned my itchy arse in a message to someone" which requires respect for your privacy. I reckon most of us are happy enough with the latter in daily use. And, when we do need to plot an overthrow of the government, we can always flick the big "secret chat" switch. I think Telegram just about gets the balance right; sacrificing some default secrecy for ease of use, seamless sync across all your devices and 'fun' things which are likely to lead to wider adoption --whilst also allowing you to switch on the more secure stuff, as and when you need it.

rtsil 6y ago

I shared the same opinion, before I saw all of my acquaintances (which are as removed from the HN bubble as you can find) install Signal en masse in a matter of two weeks. It's purely anecdotal of course, but I never expected this type of reaction to happen so massively and so fast.

Leherenn 6y ago
I think there was a lot of miscommunication/misinformation shared around. Honestly, even now I'm not entirely sure what the whole thing entails. It's a change of policy that was already in effect, but you have to accept it now? What exactly is now being shared? Being in Europe, there was a lot of talk about how it didn't apply, and yet we still have the message? I'd not be surprised if a lot of people got "FB (evil!) wants to read everything or they will close your account". Given how often I have received "share this message 10 times or WhatsApp will delete your account" from relatives, I think it also plays into this fear of losing access to your contacts. And it was all over the mainstream news, with the alternatives readily available (and their own shortcomings often not described).
- donpott 6y ago
  It's funny to me how misinformation can be used to combat (further) misinformation. Food for thought.
etrautmann 6y ago
This was my experience as well. The signups extend far beyond the tech bubble in the circles I’ve seen adopting signal.
stingraycharles 6y ago
Yes, I’ve seen this over here in The Netherlands as well. Just about every day I log in and can see another non-tech acquaintance having joined signal. It’s been at least 50 over the past few weeks, it’s really weird.
dmje 6y ago
Agree. This has been the interesting thing to me: that so many non-nerd friends have popped up on Signal. Totally fascinating that the shift is happening to a group who are typically not that bothered about the presence of FB. I'll have to ask them about their motivations in more detail...

Nightshaxx 6y ago

You are looking at it merely from a percentage point of view. 1.24% at Facebook's scale is _massive_. It is not a drop in the bucket, and Facebook is especially worried because it could be a trend. Today it's 1.24% but how many people would switch tommorow?

oraphalous 6y ago

Gotta start somewhere...

hahla 6y ago

You would be surprised.. I have had two family groups switch to Signal, I never once mentioned switching over because I thought no one would agree. The switch was suggested by people not technologically savvy.

sumanthvepa 6y ago
This is so funny. That is what happened to me. I’ve been on Signal for a while and suddenly the whole extended family switched over. The switch to signal is real.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

onekorg 6y ago

> In the HN bubble lots of people have migrated to Signal with all of their contacts but outside of that bubble nothing much seems to be happening. I live in Mexico, most things happen through WhatsApp. I was surprised by how many of my non-technical friends migrated to Signal and Telegram. Non-techies were sharing fake information about the new policy. The word around was that the new policy would allow facebook to spy on all your messages and photos. This scared off a lot of people and many of my friends at least download Signal or Telegram.

guerrilla 6y ago

> In the HN bubble lots of people have migrated to Signal with all of their contacts but outside of that bubble nothing much seems to be happening. HN can't represent all of the 50 million new users to Signal.

lawnchair_larry 6y ago

> In the HN bubble lots of people have migrated to Signal with all of their contacts but outside of that bubble nothing much seems to be happening. I’ve had a ton of non-tech people show up on Signal suddenly. I asked one of them why everyone is signing up, and he said because he doesn’t trsut WhatsApp.

Abishek_Muthian 6y ago

> loses millions of users Did millions of users uninstall WhatsApp? I don't think so. The most downloaded app figures by App Annie shows exactly what it says, which app was downloaded the most during that period. So as long as WhatsApp stays in the phone and if it receives a single message from hundreds of contacts a user has; WhatsApp didn't loose that user. So the correct title IMO is 'Signal, Telegram gained millions of users'.

kalyanganjam 6y ago
> So as long as WhatsApp stays in the phone and if it receives a single message from hundreds of contacts a user has; WhatsApp didn't loose that user. Agree - WhatsApp didn't lose the user. whatsApp lost the usage. That's still a loss. Not a total loss but a loss never the less
- Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
  > Not a total loss but a loss never the less This is the first time I have seen about dozen new Signal contacts; but the question is how many of those dozen contacts are initiating messages through Signal and receiving messages in Signal from the newly signed-up users? I have sandboxed WhatsApp in a separate machine and receive its messages through email[1] and I still receive WhatsApp messages from the aforementioned contacts. Things would have changed if WhatsApp locked out the profiles(incl. me) who didn't accept the T&C on Feb 8; but now with that gone I don't think there's really going to be any change. [1]https://abishekmuthian.com/send-and-receive-whatsapp-messages-through-email/ https://abishekmuthian.com/send-and-receive-whatsapp-message...
jorangreef 6y ago
Did Skype lose millions of users only when those users uninstalled Skype on their desktop, or long before that when those users started installing WhatsApp on their phone? Most people probably can't remember the exact moment that Skype was no longer relevant.
- Abishek_Muthian 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

eloisant 6y ago

Well, it means a lot for me. Until now I had to use WhatsApp because of a few groups I had there, now I was able to remove it because all my groups migrated to Signal. For most of those, I didn't even have to initiate it, it was proposed by a less techy member than me.

_zamorano_ 6y ago

My own experience: I've seen a few new Telegram users. I don't think I've seen a single Whatsapp user leave.

eloisant 6y ago
That's how it starts. Then one day you realize you haven't used WhatsApp in months, or you get an new phone and don't think about installing it... I'm not saying this will happen soon, but it happened in the past several times with products with a strong network effect. Think about AIM, MSN, Friendster, MySpace...

ramraj07 6y ago

It's actually possible the real drop in users (or usage) might be more. Facebook took the front page (the whole effing page) of every news paper in India last week to alleviate fears. It's only comparable to DDG articles if Google also similarly had to put ads about how Google respects privacy because of an Exodus.

tweetle_beetle 6y ago
That sounds pretty desperate. Is there a precedent for companies communicating like this in India?
- umanghere 6y ago
  They (Facebook) have done this before too. I recall that they bought full-page ads in all major newspapers to promote their "Free Basics" initiative. There are also other examples, but I consider this level of advertising by them to be very desperate.
- dartharva 6y ago
  Facebook was already pushing out long video ads on Indian TV, even before this fiasco. Indian consumers are seemingly more valuable; there are a significant number of users who use WhatsApp for business (customer support & sales). WhatsApp has also started a mobile payments platform in the country.
hliyan 6y ago
Sri Lankan here (that island under India). You would assume that this would go right over our heads, but a lot of people here are concerned and when I finally installed Signal, I noticed many people already there. Some of them, I never expected to see outside of WhatsApp or Viber.

dustinmoris 6y ago

Every big snowball starts as a single snowflake. A few million users does _mean much_ if you give it enough time to develop.

frereubu 6y ago

While in general I agree this is small, you could add “so far” to the end of the title and it changes the tone somewhat. These not-inconsiderable losses are continuing, and the question is whether it will get to a tipping point where network effects kick in or not. Every large change had to start somewhere. But I think we’re in agreement that we need to see more evidence to say with any certainty that the tipping point is going to be reached.

graeme 6y ago

Might be a bit more than you think. I’ve been using signal for some work chats, as it is a fully functional app no one I knew was using, so it made for a nice silo. Since the term change, I’d say maybe 10-20% of the contacts on my phone have installed signal. It notifies you of new contacts. I don’t know if they’re chatting, and no one has actually used it to message me, but the group I’m seeing is far beyond some technical niche. Whether it dents whatsapp is another question.

cycomanic 6y ago

I suspect these effects might also be very regional. Some anecdotal evidence from my end is that with the change of terms nontechnical friends are much more open to use other messengers if I say I don't want to use WhatsApp. Previously I was sort of regarded as the guys who was making a fuzz out of nothing, now people just say OK let's try. I suspect this is because it made it to mainstream media, so there is more general awareness. It seems also that the people moving now are more the nontechnical audience. For example my partner who is completely nontechnical and using what others are using, just told me last week that suddenly all her acquaintances are popping up on signal.

m000 6y ago

> It reminds me a bit of the articles about DuckDuckGo vs Google where many people think big changes in usage are happening while ignoring that the average Joe will keep using whatever it’s using unless there’s way too much trouble to continue using it. I don't think that this is an apt comparison. The functionality of IM is virtually unchanged for the past 20 years or so, and can easily be replicated. This makes jumping between different IM much more frictionless than switching a search engine.

GuB-42 6y ago

There is not much of a network effect on search engines. Nothing is stopping you from using DuckDuckGo instead of Google, it doesn't matter what the "average Joe" uses. But this is different. If all your friends use WhatsApp, you have no choice but to use WhatsApp. An chat network where you are the only one is useless.

bicepjai 6y ago

A message I received from telegram on Jan 12 2021 says it has more than 500 million active users. “Telegram surpassed 500 million active users. In the past 72 hours alone, more than 25 million new users from around the world joined Telegram. Thank you! These milestones were made possible by users like you who invite their friends to Telegram. ”

dikaio 6y ago

“Even if this article is accurate, it doesn’t really mean much” millions of users (to start) moving away from a platform does matter; it matters for those users and could evolve into a larger movement in time. “Let’s assume they fully moved and stopped using WhatsApp (very unlikely)” why is this “very unlikely”, I’ve uninstalled WhatsApp, I will never install WhatsApp again, ever. I guess I’m part of the “very unlikely” group.