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Absolutely! Also prior to WhatsApp messaging was even more of a walled garden. The ‘best’ was BBM - I lived in Canada for a year and you pretty much needed a b
by Closi 6y ago
Absolutely! Also prior to WhatsApp messaging was even more of a walled garden.
The ‘best’ was BBM - I lived in Canada for a year and you pretty much needed a blackberry to message friends because that’s what everyone had.
I had moved back to the U.K. when the iPhone came out, and I originally didn’t want it because a lack of BBM meant it would be more difficult to keep in touch with my Canadian friends. When WhatsApp came out and adoption was super quick I could finally jump ship, because it meant overseas texting for free without BBM.
Of course if blackberry wasn’t greedy and was forward thinking, they could have copied BBM and made it available on other platforms, and if done well it would probably have been a massive success.
So I agree that it’s not accurate to imply that everything was super open prior to WhatsApp - they spotted a gap in the market and wrote the best software to fill it that was available at the time.
- zapdrive 6y agoLol, blackberry eventually launched BBM on iOS and Android, but it was too late by then. They really thought they could keep other phones from gaining market by locking in BBM to blackberry only.
- tempestn 6y agoBBM has one great feature that I haven't seen replicated by any other platform - and it's so obvious, I assume RIM must have patented it: Sending a contact your real-time location for a set period of time. It was very convenient to be able to send someone you're supposed to meet an automatically updating location status.
- darcys22 6y agoTelegram does this
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dmurray 6y agoWhatsApp has this.
- twic 6y agoWhatsApp has this. Google Location Sharing does this, and i can access it from inside the SMS app: https://support.google.com/maps/answer/7326816?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid&hl=en#zippy=%2Cshare-your-location-with-someone https://support.google.com/maps/answer/7326816?co=GENIE.Plat...
- tempestn 6y agoWhatsApp: so it does! Looks like this was just added a couple months back?
- tullianus 6y agoEven FB Messenger has this!
- tempestn 6y agoIndeed. I guess I gave up on any other messenger supporting this years ago. Looks like it was added to FBM in 2017.