3 ms·

WhatsApp grew to its size because of its first mover advantage. The completion, SMS, had the highest cost of data transmission on the planet, so not hard to see

by smoovb 6y ago

WhatsApp grew to its size because of its first mover advantage. The completion, SMS, had the highest cost of data transmission on the planet, so not hard to see the reason for its growth. WhatsApp squandered their early lead with slow development and so competitors like Line, Viber, Wechat and Telegram all came later and added features and took market share. If you are an international business person, you have all these messengers installed, and more. The switching cost is low, and the only real trouble is agreeing with someone on how to connect.

cameldrv 6y ago
Except in group chats. The switching costs are higher for those.
- kappi 6y ago
  Agree, active whatsapp users have so many groups with huge number of members. whatsapp switching cost is high because couple of group members refuse to switch, so group remains in whatsapp. Without group chats migrating to new platform, it remains a ghost town.
  - ryukafalz 6y ago
    This is why interoperability is so important: it lets you move from one platform to another gradually rather than all at once. I've done this myself; my friend group was on XMPP for a while, then we moved to Matrix, but there was never a point when we all switched at once. It was a gradual process, with us bridging our group chats between the two, and slowly people started moving over (and in fact some of us still use both). I have never had a transition that successful between proprietary chat platforms. To quote a recently-posted piece by Cory Doctorow: > Interoperability lowers “switching costs” – the cost of leaving behind whatever you’re using now in favor of something you think will suit you better. When my grandparents emigrated to Canada from the Soviet Union on a displaced persons ship, they incurred a high switching cost: for more than a decade, they had no contact with their family in Leningrad except through unreliable, slow word-of-mouth with the rare person who got a visa to travel there. > Contrast this with my move from the UK to Los Angeles in 2015: we are in routine contact with my in-laws in London and Wales, as well as my family in Toronto. My laptop and books came with me, as did our other personal effects. We left most of our appliances behind because they ran on a different voltage, but there were a few things we loved that we brought with and either changed the plugs on or connected to our house’s electrical outlets via transformer or adapters. https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/ https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/
- hnick 6y ago
  And chat history, if it's relevant. I think it is possible to export and browse chat history 'offline' but it's not trivial. Simply transferring my history from Android to IOS was a pain and I gave up, but I still have the backup somewhere just in case.
  - koolba 6y ago
    > And chat history, if it's relevant. Losing your chat history might be a blessing in disguise.
    - hnick 6y ago
      I'm stuck between trying again with a new app after a failed merge, or letting it go. It is oddly liberating but I am a sentimental hoarder by nature so I feel like I lost something special. Though the history might actually be useful for some people in business or divorce proceedings and that sort of thing.
  - prionassembly 6y ago
    I think Telegram is trying to get people to migrate their chat histories now.
peteretep 6y ago
> WhatsApp grew to its size because of its first mover advantage Whaaaat? There were plenty of chat apps before WhatsApp that were free. > WhatsApp squandered their early lead with slow development Mmm, the story that _I_ have been told is that WhatsApp was prevented from getting any better because the desire was to get people to move to Messenger. This has been a reasonably effective strategy, although I note their are markets (like Thailand) where everybody just switched to Line instead

by smoovb 6y ago

cameldrv 6y ago

Except in group chats. The switching costs are higher for those.

kappi 6y ago
Agree, active whatsapp users have so many groups with huge number of members. whatsapp switching cost is high because couple of group members refuse to switch, so group remains in whatsapp. Without group chats migrating to new platform, it remains a ghost town.
- ryukafalz 6y ago
  This is why interoperability is so important: it lets you move from one platform to another gradually rather than all at once. I've done this myself; my friend group was on XMPP for a while, then we moved to Matrix, but there was never a point when we all switched at once. It was a gradual process, with us bridging our group chats between the two, and slowly people started moving over (and in fact some of us still use both). I have never had a transition that successful between proprietary chat platforms. To quote a recently-posted piece by Cory Doctorow: > Interoperability lowers “switching costs” – the cost of leaving behind whatever you’re using now in favor of something you think will suit you better. When my grandparents emigrated to Canada from the Soviet Union on a displaced persons ship, they incurred a high switching cost: for more than a decade, they had no contact with their family in Leningrad except through unreliable, slow word-of-mouth with the rare person who got a visa to travel there. > Contrast this with my move from the UK to Los Angeles in 2015: we are in routine contact with my in-laws in London and Wales, as well as my family in Toronto. My laptop and books came with me, as did our other personal effects. We left most of our appliances behind because they ran on a different voltage, but there were a few things we loved that we brought with and either changed the plugs on or connected to our house’s electrical outlets via transformer or adapters. https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/ https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/
hnick 6y ago
And chat history, if it's relevant. I think it is possible to export and browse chat history 'offline' but it's not trivial. Simply transferring my history from Android to IOS was a pain and I gave up, but I still have the backup somewhere just in case.
- koolba 6y ago
  > And chat history, if it's relevant. Losing your chat history might be a blessing in disguise.
  - hnick 6y ago
    I'm stuck between trying again with a new app after a failed merge, or letting it go. It is oddly liberating but I am a sentimental hoarder by nature so I feel like I lost something special. Though the history might actually be useful for some people in business or divorce proceedings and that sort of thing.
- prionassembly 6y ago
  I think Telegram is trying to get people to migrate their chat histories now.

peteretep 6y ago

> WhatsApp grew to its size because of its first mover advantage Whaaaat? There were plenty of chat apps before WhatsApp that were free. > WhatsApp squandered their early lead with slow development Mmm, the story that _I_ have been told is that WhatsApp was prevented from getting any better because the desire was to get people to move to Messenger. This has been a reasonably effective strategy, although I note their are markets (like Thailand) where everybody just switched to Line instead