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It's not really "pop" technology. Surprisingly, it's not used much in the United States, but in India it's basically a replacement for text messaging. Everyone

It's not really "pop" technology. Surprisingly, it's not used much in the United States, but in India it's basically a replacement for text messaging. Everyone from a 13 year old child to my grand mom uses it to keep in touch with friends and family members across the globe. IMHO, they were able to get to such widespread everyday usage because they such awesome and reliable technology. Much better than what Google have been able to provide with their hangouts app, for instance. Messages are always delivered instantaneously if you are online. If you are offline it stores it locally, and delivers it the moment you are online without messing up the order. Never had any issues with them. They are really awesome. Congrats to them - IMO it's a great acquisition by Facebook.

twistedpair 13y ago
I've been using Google Voice since 2009 to similar effect. However Google has never attempted to advertise the service.
shubhamjain 13y ago
I thought it was the de facto messaging app across the world? Is there any particular reason why it is not used much in US?
- zippergz 13y ago
  I can only speak for myself, but in the US I have never seen any need for it. I text or iMessage with my friends, and while I have had WhatsApp installed for a long time, I've never found something it does better for me. If I needed to communicate with people I couldn't text with, or if I were paying per text, it would probably be more compelling.
  - molmalo 13y ago
    Well, to give you an example, here in Argentina, almost everyone in my phone's contact list uses WhatsApp. Here, the fact that you pay per message is a big incentive. But there are other advantages, like instant delivery, being sure that the message was received (double-check), better feedback ('X is online' when using the app, 'Last seen at 09:22', X is writing...), media sharing, groups, etc. simple things that help a lot. Also, it works both on iPhone and Android...
    - neves 13y ago
      In Brazil, sometimes a SMS message takes hours to arrive. My bank sometimes send a validation code by SMS, but I can't use it because it expires before arriving.
- nolok 13y ago
  Some countries use Line rather than WhatsApp
  - gbog 13y ago
    Or WeChat, which is quite big in China.
    - balladeer 13y ago
      KakaoTalk is not even mentioned. It's one of the biggest player and probably more famous than anything in S Korea. ChatOn has some userbase too.
      - dba7dba 13y ago
        Supposedly KakaoTalk has 90% market penetration in S Korea.
- russell_h 13y ago
  By the time smartphones were widely adopted in the US, SMS already had massive market penetration. Trying to adopt something else when your entire social network already uses SMS is a losing game. This is why, IMO, Apple, Google and Facebook are the only companies really in a position to change the messaging game in the US. There is space for newcomers (see: Snapchat), but they're going to have to work hard to spread beyond their initial niche. Apple is driving iMessage adoption via iOS, albeit mostly only for messaging between iOS devices. Facebook has a solid mobile install base already, but they can't seem to figure out how to convince users to use Facebook messaging. It actually works really well for me, but no one I know actually uses it. Google seems to be in the process of merging Hangouts and SMS. They're already the same app on Android, but you get to pick the protocol. Their logical endgame is to move all messaging to the Hangouts protocol, and fall back to Google Voice to deliver messages to users who don't have a Hangouts client. If Google can pull this off I think they're going to absolutely kill it, but they seem to be having a lot of execution problems.
  - adsche 13y ago
    I don't know, SMS was huge in Germany as well, there were unlimited plans etc., still, today everyone uses WhatsApp. Group messages, broadcasts, media, cross-platform, and it's of course easier to convince people to use WhatsApp than Facebook. I lived in the US for a while, and I can't really come up with any reason why it should be different there. Only that way more people are on Facebook (and those are also way more active). Still, I can't really explain why texts stuck around even for smartphone users.
    - arrrg 13y ago
      Hm, I could imagine that for those with smartphones unlimited SMS plans came maybe a bit later in Germany than in the US. When I was shopping for a mobile phone plan for my sister four years ago unlimited SMS were hard to find. Sure, now you get them everywhere, but I don’t think standard smartphone contracts had them four years ago. You had to pay obscenely more (something like double the monthly cost) if you could get unlimited SMS at all. I remember that the high cost of SMS were a real sticking point for my sister. In my experience smartphone contracts in Germany tended to be much cheaper than in the US but you would also get substantially less for your money. That’s still the case today with included unthrottled data volume. So maybe that’s one reason why Whatsapp took off. Another one I can think of is that Germany is less of an iOS monoculture than the US. Android is more widespread, so iMessage frequently gets you no benefit at all.
- josteink 13y ago
  I thought it was the de facto messaging app across the world? There is no such thing. IM is extremely fragmented into local markets, and you will find different solutions being the de-facto solutions at different locations. For reference, I'm from Europe and outside the Netherlands I have never heard of anyone using Whatsapp. I tried it once, and it found 2 contacts among my 100s. It was instantly deleted as it was of no use to me. I also remember it causing stability issues with my Android-phone, ensuring I will never ever install it on anything I own ever, for life, unless my primary intent is ruining that device. What's "hot" here, or at least what I've heard of people using is MSN, Skype, FB Messenger, Hangouts, Twitter(!) and IRC.
podperson 13y ago
This suggests that its userbase is EXACTLY complementary for Facebook.
- shuri 13y ago
  you are not buying the user, you are buying their attention.
  - agsamek 13y ago
    Not only attention. Also their profile and access to their thoughts which is an asset that big brother is willing to pay for. In 1984 you needed to hand a copybook to someone you wished to invigilate. Today you invigilate by billions for $40 per head :)
zanny 13y ago
I'll shake my first and one day see people using open standards protocols rather than this morass of proprietary dribble. Until then, I'm marginally lonely on my xmpp clients, though the facebook integration really helps.
- Retric 13y ago
  Proprietary messaging apps have a huge advantage in cutting down spam. Solve that and your open standard might just take off.
  - nwh 13y ago
    That's just security through obscurity. Seems to work for iMessage though, I've heard it's obfuscation is something incredible.
    - napoleond 13y ago
      Spam prevention is not strictly a security problem, or if you choose to frame it that way it is entirely unlike most other system security challenges. Almost all spam prevention systems have some sort of secret sauce involved, otherwise spammers could train their own systems against it to discover what works. In other words, this is why most open-source security products are extremely competitive with (if not outright better than) their closed-source counterparts, but open-source spam prevention systems (with no disrespect to the people who work hard on them, because as I said, it's a hard problem) suck.
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      Security through obscurity is not an invalid strategy. If the capabilities of your adversary are low (e.g., bottomfeeding spammers) and the obscurity changes often (e.g., churn in API) it can work just fine.
- bsder 13y ago
  The messaging part isn't the problem. The value in Skype, WhatsApp, etc. is the vast amount of work and codebase that goes into punching holes in routers/gateways/NATs to make the internet actually work like it was originally designed.
kamaal 13y ago
I'm currently staying in Bangalore. I had to join WhatsApp because most of relatives on Facebook moved on to WhatsApp and there are atleast like 6-7 groups on my WhatsApp. Friends, Office colleagues, cousins and other people. I'm rarely seeing FB updates from my friends these days. Most of it happens on WhatsApp channels. So its not a surprise FB bought them. Because if they don't they risk losing all users to WhatsApp, at least that's how it is here in India.
- diminish 13y ago
  i had the following, icq, msn zone, msn messenger (live, hotmail.....:-), aim, irc, meebo, y!messenger, sms, blackmerry messenger, gtalk/hangout, facebook messages, twitters dms. so far I'm resisting whatsapp, viber... I'm curious what the future will bring.
  - kamaal 13y ago
    I'm always late to adopt things. But the issue is if everyone else is on a system, the only way to sanely communicate with them is to join that system. I had to join FB and Orkut for the same reasons.
- medell 13y ago
  I'm in Ecuador and most young people (which is a lot here, the average age is 26) use a combination of Whatsapp, FB and SMS. Ex-pats avoid SMS as they are usually on pay-as-you-go plans on $20 phones. It can't be like this forever, as the network effect leans towards a single messaging solution, the carriers will lose their hold on SMS as a revenue stream. But this will depend heavily on universal Internet access.
  - mr_luc 13y ago
    As one of those expats (starting my 8th year in a little fishing village in pacific coastal ecuador), can I just say -- We're on pay-as-you-go plans, but usually on nice phones we brought unlocked from our home countries. I'm typing this on my trusty Air, which is tethered through an unlocked iPhone 4S. I'm also listening to waves crash. We got our first swell in a month yesterday, and non-locals are showing up a day late ... 4 or 5 of them. A crowd. I was the only one out for the good stuff yesterday, and I sucked the marrow out of it, and am instead enjoying sitting on my balcony drinking coffee and vagando here on HN. Ahhh. Where was I? Oh, yes. I can confirm the crazy-fast penetration of both smartphones in general (probably way over 90% android), WhatsApp in particular, and the FB/WhatsApp/SMS mix. So WhatsApp isn't the internet here yet. But it's definitely got brand parity with Facebook around here. Which is pretty amazing considering their relative valuations.
realrocker 13y ago
My mom thinks whatsapp is the internet. That's the only app she knows how to use. I have standing instructions to recharge(pay the monthly internet fee) the "whatsapp" every month.
bad_user 13y ago
In Romania many acquaintances used it, but most of them have switched to Facebook's messenger. As I was saying in another comment, if I open my WhatsApp right now, most of the people listed as being on WhatsApp have probably uninstalled it, so there's a very real possibility that messages won't ever reach their target, whereas the new Facebook Messenger for Android is catching on like fire. In my opinion, this is probably the dumbest acquisition I've ever seen.
- eyko 13y ago
  When they say "450 million monthly active users worldwide and over 320 million daily active users", it's probably safe to assume that they have discarded inactive users. That's also depending on what their definition of inactive means (e.g. have not used whatsapp in 3 months?)
treerock 13y ago
Still struggling to figure out why it's so popular. I read the other article[1] on the front page suggesting that the reason for the popularity is that the app works on low end handsets. But then so does SMS. Is the design of WhatsApp so much better than built in SMS, or is it just the fact that WhatsApp is free? [For me and most people I know SMS is virtually free, but I guess that's not the case around the world] [1] http://blog.textit.in/your-path-to-a-$16b-exit-build-a-j2me-app http://blog.textit.in/your-path-to-a-$16b-exit-build-a-j2me-...
- slight 13y ago
  It's popular over SMS because: - It's not 10c/p per message which if you're talking a lot adds up. - You can send photos and videos and they show up in the stream. MMS isn't actually configured for most people even if it didn't cost 50c a message. - It does group messaging. - Avatars, UI etc The reason it's popular over apps I think is largely down to savvy use of network effects, particularly that your username is your phone number, so it can scan your phone book and instantly show you who you know that has it. Plus it's available on iPhone, Android, Blackberry and as that article at the top of the main page says, J2ME (news to me but I'm in Europe so not that many feature phones around these days). I'm from the UK but live in Barcelona and it has 97% penetration here.
- aestra 13y ago
  [For me and most people I know SMS is virtually free, but I guess that's not the case around the world] Define virtually free? I pay like 10 bucks a month for unlimited SMS, that's hardly virtually free!!! If I didn't they cost like 10 cents a message. That's an insane price for sending or receiving a very very small message that costs the phone companies almost nothing to send. I see it working well for say prepaid plans or barebones plans.
- ZoFreX 13y ago
  I would pay maybe £0.09 per SMS if I wasn't on contract. As it is, I am, but I still have to pay to get a delivery notification - that's £0.01 per message or £0.02 depending on your contract. I send maybe 100 messages per day on Whatsapp and probably about 3 texts. Also, where I live (UK) literally everyone I know who has a smartphone is on Whatsapp. It's completely ubiquitous.

twistedpair 13y ago

I've been using Google Voice since 2009 to similar effect. However Google has never attempted to advertise the service.

shubhamjain 13y ago

I thought it was the de facto messaging app across the world? Is there any particular reason why it is not used much in US?

zippergz 13y ago
I can only speak for myself, but in the US I have never seen any need for it. I text or iMessage with my friends, and while I have had WhatsApp installed for a long time, I've never found something it does better for me. If I needed to communicate with people I couldn't text with, or if I were paying per text, it would probably be more compelling.
- molmalo 13y ago
  Well, to give you an example, here in Argentina, almost everyone in my phone's contact list uses WhatsApp. Here, the fact that you pay per message is a big incentive. But there are other advantages, like instant delivery, being sure that the message was received (double-check), better feedback ('X is online' when using the app, 'Last seen at 09:22', X is writing...), media sharing, groups, etc. simple things that help a lot. Also, it works both on iPhone and Android...
  - neves 13y ago
    In Brazil, sometimes a SMS message takes hours to arrive. My bank sometimes send a validation code by SMS, but I can't use it because it expires before arriving.
nolok 13y ago
Some countries use Line rather than WhatsApp
- gbog 13y ago
  Or WeChat, which is quite big in China.
  - balladeer 13y ago
    KakaoTalk is not even mentioned. It's one of the biggest player and probably more famous than anything in S Korea. ChatOn has some userbase too.
    - dba7dba 13y ago
      Supposedly KakaoTalk has 90% market penetration in S Korea.
russell_h 13y ago
By the time smartphones were widely adopted in the US, SMS already had massive market penetration. Trying to adopt something else when your entire social network already uses SMS is a losing game. This is why, IMO, Apple, Google and Facebook are the only companies really in a position to change the messaging game in the US. There is space for newcomers (see: Snapchat), but they're going to have to work hard to spread beyond their initial niche. Apple is driving iMessage adoption via iOS, albeit mostly only for messaging between iOS devices. Facebook has a solid mobile install base already, but they can't seem to figure out how to convince users to use Facebook messaging. It actually works really well for me, but no one I know actually uses it. Google seems to be in the process of merging Hangouts and SMS. They're already the same app on Android, but you get to pick the protocol. Their logical endgame is to move all messaging to the Hangouts protocol, and fall back to Google Voice to deliver messages to users who don't have a Hangouts client. If Google can pull this off I think they're going to absolutely kill it, but they seem to be having a lot of execution problems.
- adsche 13y ago
  I don't know, SMS was huge in Germany as well, there were unlimited plans etc., still, today everyone uses WhatsApp. Group messages, broadcasts, media, cross-platform, and it's of course easier to convince people to use WhatsApp than Facebook. I lived in the US for a while, and I can't really come up with any reason why it should be different there. Only that way more people are on Facebook (and those are also way more active). Still, I can't really explain why texts stuck around even for smartphone users.
  - arrrg 13y ago
    Hm, I could imagine that for those with smartphones unlimited SMS plans came maybe a bit later in Germany than in the US. When I was shopping for a mobile phone plan for my sister four years ago unlimited SMS were hard to find. Sure, now you get them everywhere, but I don’t think standard smartphone contracts had them four years ago. You had to pay obscenely more (something like double the monthly cost) if you could get unlimited SMS at all. I remember that the high cost of SMS were a real sticking point for my sister. In my experience smartphone contracts in Germany tended to be much cheaper than in the US but you would also get substantially less for your money. That’s still the case today with included unthrottled data volume. So maybe that’s one reason why Whatsapp took off. Another one I can think of is that Germany is less of an iOS monoculture than the US. Android is more widespread, so iMessage frequently gets you no benefit at all.
josteink 13y ago
I thought it was the de facto messaging app across the world? There is no such thing. IM is extremely fragmented into local markets, and you will find different solutions being the de-facto solutions at different locations. For reference, I'm from Europe and outside the Netherlands I have never heard of anyone using Whatsapp. I tried it once, and it found 2 contacts among my 100s. It was instantly deleted as it was of no use to me. I also remember it causing stability issues with my Android-phone, ensuring I will never ever install it on anything I own ever, for life, unless my primary intent is ruining that device. What's "hot" here, or at least what I've heard of people using is MSN, Skype, FB Messenger, Hangouts, Twitter(!) and IRC.

podperson 13y ago

This suggests that its userbase is EXACTLY complementary for Facebook.

shuri 13y ago
you are not buying the user, you are buying their attention.
- agsamek 13y ago
  Not only attention. Also their profile and access to their thoughts which is an asset that big brother is willing to pay for. In 1984 you needed to hand a copybook to someone you wished to invigilate. Today you invigilate by billions for $40 per head :)

zanny 13y ago

I'll shake my first and one day see people using open standards protocols rather than this morass of proprietary dribble. Until then, I'm marginally lonely on my xmpp clients, though the facebook integration really helps.

Retric 13y ago
Proprietary messaging apps have a huge advantage in cutting down spam. Solve that and your open standard might just take off.
- nwh 13y ago
  That's just security through obscurity. Seems to work for iMessage though, I've heard it's obfuscation is something incredible.
  - napoleond 13y ago
    Spam prevention is not strictly a security problem, or if you choose to frame it that way it is entirely unlike most other system security challenges. Almost all spam prevention systems have some sort of secret sauce involved, otherwise spammers could train their own systems against it to discover what works. In other words, this is why most open-source security products are extremely competitive with (if not outright better than) their closed-source counterparts, but open-source spam prevention systems (with no disrespect to the people who work hard on them, because as I said, it's a hard problem) suck.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    Security through obscurity is not an invalid strategy. If the capabilities of your adversary are low (e.g., bottomfeeding spammers) and the obscurity changes often (e.g., churn in API) it can work just fine.
bsder 13y ago
The messaging part isn't the problem. The value in Skype, WhatsApp, etc. is the vast amount of work and codebase that goes into punching holes in routers/gateways/NATs to make the internet actually work like it was originally designed.

kamaal 13y ago

I'm currently staying in Bangalore. I had to join WhatsApp because most of relatives on Facebook moved on to WhatsApp and there are atleast like 6-7 groups on my WhatsApp. Friends, Office colleagues, cousins and other people. I'm rarely seeing FB updates from my friends these days. Most of it happens on WhatsApp channels. So its not a surprise FB bought them. Because if they don't they risk losing all users to WhatsApp, at least that's how it is here in India.

diminish 13y ago
i had the following, icq, msn zone, msn messenger (live, hotmail.....:-), aim, irc, meebo, y!messenger, sms, blackmerry messenger, gtalk/hangout, facebook messages, twitters dms. so far I'm resisting whatsapp, viber... I'm curious what the future will bring.
- kamaal 13y ago
  I'm always late to adopt things. But the issue is if everyone else is on a system, the only way to sanely communicate with them is to join that system. I had to join FB and Orkut for the same reasons.
medell 13y ago
I'm in Ecuador and most young people (which is a lot here, the average age is 26) use a combination of Whatsapp, FB and SMS. Ex-pats avoid SMS as they are usually on pay-as-you-go plans on $20 phones. It can't be like this forever, as the network effect leans towards a single messaging solution, the carriers will lose their hold on SMS as a revenue stream. But this will depend heavily on universal Internet access.
- mr_luc 13y ago
  As one of those expats (starting my 8th year in a little fishing village in pacific coastal ecuador), can I just say -- We're on pay-as-you-go plans, but usually on nice phones we brought unlocked from our home countries. I'm typing this on my trusty Air, which is tethered through an unlocked iPhone 4S. I'm also listening to waves crash. We got our first swell in a month yesterday, and non-locals are showing up a day late ... 4 or 5 of them. A crowd. I was the only one out for the good stuff yesterday, and I sucked the marrow out of it, and am instead enjoying sitting on my balcony drinking coffee and vagando here on HN. Ahhh. Where was I? Oh, yes. I can confirm the crazy-fast penetration of both smartphones in general (probably way over 90% android), WhatsApp in particular, and the FB/WhatsApp/SMS mix. So WhatsApp isn't the internet here yet. But it's definitely got brand parity with Facebook around here. Which is pretty amazing considering their relative valuations.

realrocker 13y ago

My mom thinks whatsapp is the internet. That's the only app she knows how to use. I have standing instructions to recharge(pay the monthly internet fee) the "whatsapp" every month.

bad_user 13y ago

In Romania many acquaintances used it, but most of them have switched to Facebook's messenger. As I was saying in another comment, if I open my WhatsApp right now, most of the people listed as being on WhatsApp have probably uninstalled it, so there's a very real possibility that messages won't ever reach their target, whereas the new Facebook Messenger for Android is catching on like fire. In my opinion, this is probably the dumbest acquisition I've ever seen.

eyko 13y ago
When they say "450 million monthly active users worldwide and over 320 million daily active users", it's probably safe to assume that they have discarded inactive users. That's also depending on what their definition of inactive means (e.g. have not used whatsapp in 3 months?)

treerock 13y ago

Still struggling to figure out why it's so popular. I read the other article[1] on the front page suggesting that the reason for the popularity is that the app works on low end handsets. But then so does SMS. Is the design of WhatsApp so much better than built in SMS, or is it just the fact that WhatsApp is free? [For me and most people I know SMS is virtually free, but I guess that's not the case around the world] [1] http://blog.textit.in/your-path-to-a-$16b-exit-build-a-j2me-app http://blog.textit.in/your-path-to-a-$16b-exit-build-a-j2me-...

slight 13y ago
It's popular over SMS because: - It's not 10c/p per message which if you're talking a lot adds up. - You can send photos and videos and they show up in the stream. MMS isn't actually configured for most people even if it didn't cost 50c a message. - It does group messaging. - Avatars, UI etc The reason it's popular over apps I think is largely down to savvy use of network effects, particularly that your username is your phone number, so it can scan your phone book and instantly show you who you know that has it. Plus it's available on iPhone, Android, Blackberry and as that article at the top of the main page says, J2ME (news to me but I'm in Europe so not that many feature phones around these days). I'm from the UK but live in Barcelona and it has 97% penetration here.
aestra 13y ago
[For me and most people I know SMS is virtually free, but I guess that's not the case around the world] Define virtually free? I pay like 10 bucks a month for unlimited SMS, that's hardly virtually free!!! If I didn't they cost like 10 cents a message. That's an insane price for sending or receiving a very very small message that costs the phone companies almost nothing to send. I see it working well for say prepaid plans or barebones plans.
ZoFreX 13y ago
I would pay maybe £0.09 per SMS if I wasn't on contract. As it is, I am, but I still have to pay to get a delivery notification - that's £0.01 per message or £0.02 depending on your contract. I send maybe 100 messages per day on Whatsapp and probably about 3 texts. Also, where I live (UK) literally everyone I know who has a smartphone is on Whatsapp. It's completely ubiquitous.