4 ms·

Hangouts was great, used xmpp in the beginning and was available on most devices so would work across android, iOS, blackberry, Mac, windows and web. They screw

Hangouts was great, used xmpp in the beginning and was available on most devices so would work across android, iOS, blackberry, Mac, windows and web. They screwed it up and WhatsApp won.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lotsofpulp 5y ago
WhatsApp won because it used phone number as login and SMS messages as the authentication, automatically copy and pasted from the SMS without the user even knowing, ensuring a spam free network with zero friction to “log in”. I remember thinking how genius and novel the approach was, and all the people in my family, even the old, non English speaking, non computer literate people immediately knew how to use it. All you had to do was point people to the app, and they needed no more hand holding. Of course, it was also a great cross platform user experience, and came about at the exact time mobile phones were blowing up, but I think the differentiating factor was the extreme ease of sign in, in combo with that same mechanism cutting spam made it an obvious choice. Just logging into software with username and password was a big UI hurdle back then for the older people in my family, and probably still is. I specifically remember one use case that WhatsApp fixed and that google/apple/Microsoft had no answer for. Sharing contacts. It was so hard to share contacts with non tech literate people, and I do not know why all the other messengers by the big companies could not do it, but WhatsApp made it dead easy to send and receive properly formatted contact information.
- beebeepka 5y ago
  I specifically avoided it because the whole "no authentication" thing smelled funny to me. Still don't feel using MSISDN is right. Everyone around me loved it, though, so the joke was, once again, on me. How come almost nothing I like is popular. And vice versa
- kalleboo 5y ago
  There must be more to it than that, since here in Japan LINE is wildly popular (similarly among the elderly etc who are typically not expected to adopt new technology) and it does not use phone numbers as an ID (well it does, as an option, but that opens you up to spam so nobody uses it)
RuggedPineapple 5y ago
I hear this all the time, but I have never in my life met a single whatsapp user. Is this one of those things thats huge outside the US?
- Macha 5y ago
  Yes. Similarly I hear a lot about iMessage, but in my country (Ireland) no one I know uses it. Whatsapp pretty much supplanted SMS, FB Messenger, Viber (which had a good early start here) and was dominant enough that it basically left iMessage, Signal and Telegram with no way to gain ground here.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    iMessages’ big advantage is sending and receiving full quality images/video. My WhatsApp groups that all had iPhones switched to iMessage groups as a result. Best use case is at a wedding or event or on vacation when you want to share pictures/video with others. Simplest mechanism is to send it to them via iMessage.
    - Macha 5y ago
      Yeah, iPhone market share is lower here, so there's much fewer groups with all or large majority iPhone owners, so full quality images is less of a selling point than "works reasonably for more than half the group"
- kettleballroll 5y ago
  It is huge in Central Europe at least. Pretty much everyone is on it, you would be left out of a lot of functions if you didn't have access to it (eg my kids childcare has its parents' chat groups there, my building block has a group there. In online dating, asking for a number to move the discussion to Whatsapp is pretty common... Heck, last time I brought my bike into the repair shop, they asked me if it was okay if they sent me the status report via Whatsapp). To be fair though, while Whatsapp is the default messenger for pretty much everyone, both signal and telegram also have their users, especially with younger people. Eg the volunteers for helping the Ukrainian refugees in my city organize via telegram, and the above-mentioned bikeshop ended up messaging me via Signal.

Hangouts was great, used xmpp in the beginning and was available on most devices so would work across android, iOS, blackberry, Mac, windows and web. They screwed it up and WhatsApp won.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

lotsofpulp 5y ago

WhatsApp won because it used phone number as login and SMS messages as the authentication, automatically copy and pasted from the SMS without the user even knowing, ensuring a spam free network with zero friction to “log in”. I remember thinking how genius and novel the approach was, and all the people in my family, even the old, non English speaking, non computer literate people immediately knew how to use it. All you had to do was point people to the app, and they needed no more hand holding. Of course, it was also a great cross platform user experience, and came about at the exact time mobile phones were blowing up, but I think the differentiating factor was the extreme ease of sign in, in combo with that same mechanism cutting spam made it an obvious choice. Just logging into software with username and password was a big UI hurdle back then for the older people in my family, and probably still is. I specifically remember one use case that WhatsApp fixed and that google/apple/Microsoft had no answer for. Sharing contacts. It was so hard to share contacts with non tech literate people, and I do not know why all the other messengers by the big companies could not do it, but WhatsApp made it dead easy to send and receive properly formatted contact information.

beebeepka 5y ago
I specifically avoided it because the whole "no authentication" thing smelled funny to me. Still don't feel using MSISDN is right. Everyone around me loved it, though, so the joke was, once again, on me. How come almost nothing I like is popular. And vice versa
kalleboo 5y ago
There must be more to it than that, since here in Japan LINE is wildly popular (similarly among the elderly etc who are typically not expected to adopt new technology) and it does not use phone numbers as an ID (well it does, as an option, but that opens you up to spam so nobody uses it)

RuggedPineapple 5y ago

I hear this all the time, but I have never in my life met a single whatsapp user. Is this one of those things thats huge outside the US?

Macha 5y ago
Yes. Similarly I hear a lot about iMessage, but in my country (Ireland) no one I know uses it. Whatsapp pretty much supplanted SMS, FB Messenger, Viber (which had a good early start here) and was dominant enough that it basically left iMessage, Signal and Telegram with no way to gain ground here.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  iMessages’ big advantage is sending and receiving full quality images/video. My WhatsApp groups that all had iPhones switched to iMessage groups as a result. Best use case is at a wedding or event or on vacation when you want to share pictures/video with others. Simplest mechanism is to send it to them via iMessage.
  - Macha 5y ago
    Yeah, iPhone market share is lower here, so there's much fewer groups with all or large majority iPhone owners, so full quality images is less of a selling point than "works reasonably for more than half the group"
kettleballroll 5y ago
It is huge in Central Europe at least. Pretty much everyone is on it, you would be left out of a lot of functions if you didn't have access to it (eg my kids childcare has its parents' chat groups there, my building block has a group there. In online dating, asking for a number to move the discussion to Whatsapp is pretty common... Heck, last time I brought my bike into the repair shop, they asked me if it was okay if they sent me the status report via Whatsapp). To be fair though, while Whatsapp is the default messenger for pretty much everyone, both signal and telegram also have their users, especially with younger people. Eg the volunteers for helping the Ukrainian refugees in my city organize via telegram, and the above-mentioned bikeshop ended up messaging me via Signal.