7 ms·

Are you in the USA? iMessage is only really relevant in the USA. Meanwhile, Whatsapp is huge in Latin America, Europe, Africa, parts of Asia

• aikinai 4y ago
  Popularity doesn’t have any affect on how many people you need to build it.
  • shubb 4y ago
    Presumably a lot of these are content moderation staff, often much cheaper than engineers. Facebook claimed to have made good progress in the last year automating moderation, but could also just be backing off on moderation to reduce costs at increased risk of regulation. Often that kind of staff will be employed via agencies, so it's difficult to really compare between companies as we don't have the numbers. For instance, Apple presumably need a lot of staff to moderate apple pay, but if they have outsourced the rolls we won't know how many there are or see if they get cut.
    • dekleinewolf 4y ago
      We're specifically talking WhatsApp, there's no moderation in private messaging.
  • oblio 4y ago
    Oh, so that's why we have millions of blog articles about how to scale software and software organizations? Because software used by 10k people needs as many features and infrastructure care and investment as one used by 3 billion people?
    • yebyen 4y ago
      No need for egregious hyperbole, there are well more than 10k iPhones in the USA
    • tarsinge 4y ago
      That's not how it works, WhatsApp had 50 engineers when it had 900M users[0]. Beside iMessage is not only used by 10k, some estimates put it at more than 1 billion users[1]. [0]https://www.wired.com/2015/09/whatsapp-serves-900-million-users-50-engineers/ https://www.wired.com/2015/09/whatsapp-serves-900-million-us... [1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2022/09/10/why-apple-iphone-ipad-mac-google-android-and-even-windows-10-users-need-secure-messaging/?sh=131ea6487fd4 https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2022/09/10/why-apple...
      • WastingMyTime89 4y ago
        iMessage has a lot of users if you count people with iphones who very occasionally try to send a text but end up using iMessage. I count as one but it still is completely irrelevant to me. WhatsApp is where everything interesting is.
        • obiefernandez 4y ago
          Same here. I’m always shocked when I meet someone that doesn’t use WhatsApp
          • pwinnski 4y ago
            I'm always shocked when I meet someone that doesn't use WeChat I'm always shocked when I meet someone that doesn't use Signal I'm always shocked when I meet someone that doesn't use Facebook Messenger I'm always shocked when I meet someone that doesn't use LINE I'm always shocked when I meet someone that doesn't use Telegram I'm always shocked when I meet someone that doesn't use QQ etc. It is true that WhatsApp seems to be the largest, but it's still used by fewer than 25% of humans, so you might be shocked often.
            • prng2021 4y ago
              25% of humans is astonishing considering only about 2/3rds of humans have internet access.
          • 4y ago
• e-clinton 4y ago
  I’d rephrase as “In the US, only iMessage is relevant”
  • happymellon 4y ago
    Which is surprising considering how bad it is.
    • clpm4j 4y ago
      In what way is iMessage bad? It works amazingly well from my perspective.
      • jerojero 4y ago
        And you're using an android phone I presume? WhatsApp runs the exact same whether it's an iPhone or an android phone. That's not trivial.
      • happymellon 4y ago
        iMessage when I have to use my MacBook because my phone is charging is amazingly awful, completely inflexible. Have you not used another messaging app?
  • davchana 4y ago
    I am in US, from an Asian community; & people in my circle who own an iPhone still prefer Whatsapp for like 100+ msgs a day. Never saw them using iMessage even for other iPhone users.