3 ms·

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 networ

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.
- MartinMcGirk 13y ago
  SMS was (still is) huge in the UK too, but all of my friends started using WhatsApp because you could send pictures to each other on WhatsApp without having to use MMS which cost more, was always a hassle to set up and wasn't available on every phone back in the beginning.
  - weavie 13y ago
    I'm in the UK and I'd never heard of WhatsApp until now. I wonder if a lot of these people who say 'X app is big in my country' actually just mean 'X app is popular within my social circle'.
    - timje1 13y ago
      I'm in London, and most people between 20 and 30 that I know of uses WhatsApp. Possibly it hasn't filtered to the rest of the country.
      - weavie 13y ago
        Devon here.. that probably explains it.
    - slight 13y ago
      WhatsApp has about 50% of the mobile messaging market in the UK, so no, it's just you ;)
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - zxcdw 13y ago
      > I wonder if a lot of these people who say 'X app is big in my country' actually just mean 'X app is popular within my social circle'. Yes, that is exactly what it means unless there's some research data provided. Obviously it is easier to scale our current surroundings to the whole country, than to really go around and see how things are outside our social circle. Then again, same applies to you too, just because you haven't heard of WhatsApp before doesn't mean it wouldnt be big in the UK. :)
slazaro 13y ago
In Spain, SMS was also the main way of communicating with mobile phones (pre- and post-smartphone). The benefit of WhatsApp was that you didn't have to move to a different "social network" with usernames and stuff, it just used your contact list, and that it didn't cost anything besides your internet connection. So if someone had WhatsApp, you used that, otherwise you texted them through SMS. You almost end up avoiding communicating with people that don't have WhatsApp because they cost you money...
- vanessarp 13y ago
  In Spain everyone uses it, from 12 to 60 years old. My mother in low just wanted a smartphone to have Whatsapp. The new trend is Telegram though...
  - balladeer 13y ago
    Really? Telegram is a trend? In India I doubt many people even heard about it. I think I will give it a serious thought if it open sources its code base or otherwise it's as good as Viber or Line as an alternative. Same goes with helm.is.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
bad_user 13y ago
In Romania WhatsApp is fairly popular, but it's declining. About 60% of my phone's contacts have had it installed at some point, but I noticed that many of them have uninstalled it. Its popularity has been declining due to Facebook and Android - Facebook on Android works really well lately, most of my acquaintances are on Facebook already and everybody with an Android (which is most of my acquaintances) has either Facebook or Facebook Messenger on it. This is happening because Facebook is the messenger that finally dethroned Yahoo Messenger in my country - really, I'm serious, Yahoo Messenger was still really popular until about 2 years ago. And Android penetration has been phenomenal, due to cheap models being advertised by mobile carriers and sold instead of feature phones. > 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. You're a US citizen and so you might have missed the part where Google Voice is not available outside the US - no alternative can win over SMS, unless it is international. I actually hate them for trying to take over my SMS messaging and I'm glad that I still have the option of not allowing them to do it on my Android, even though I'm also a regular Hangouts user. What is it with these companies trying to be everything to everybody?
- rajivm 13y ago
  re: your last thought. Google isn't really taking over your SMS messaging in Hangouts as it stands with their current implementation. If you enable "Hangouts SMS" -- it's really just a client side merge of the SMS and Hangouts UI (i.e. SMS does not flow through Google's servers). It just makes it easier to manage SMS and Hangouts conversations side by side through the same app.
  - bad_user 13y ago
    I saw that, but if you take a look at the wording they use for denial ("Maybe Later"), that's what they did every single time before shoving it down on all customers' throats. Plus, that question pops up every single time Hangouts gets updated and there's no way to make it stop, because surprise, you can't uninstall Hangouts. The message on the wall is very clear - in future versions of Android Hangouts will be the SMS app. > It just makes it easier to manage SMS and Hangouts conversations side by side through the same app. No it doesn't, it's actually quite confusing. At some point I sent a message to my wife, without paying attention if it's SMS or not and so I sent it by Hangouts because that's the default, but she's not using her Google account at all and never received the message. And you have to pay attention like every single time. It's much, much easier to separate services, when they are in fact different. For SMS, I open the SMS app and I send and receive SMS messages. For Hangouts, I open the Hangouts app and I send and receive Hangouts messages. When I'm not sure what protocol to use for somebody, I go to that contact's details and check out the available options. If I have to read new messages, I click on the notification. If I want to reply to a new message, I'm already in the right app. What could be simpler than that? Trying to combine Hangouts or any other SMS alternative with SMS in the same app is first of all a huge usability fail - unless that service would fallback to SMS in case delivery didn't happen, in which case there's always the question of unexpected billing, because your phone number is going to have to send that SMS and SMS can get quite expensive - so no, it's an epic failure.
foobarian 13y ago
The problem with what Google or Facebook do is that deep down I know it's going to be integrated into their main product, and I won't be able to use it without sharing my real name and friends and everything else tied to the account. Or it will make me create an account, pick yet another password, fill out a profile, yadda yadda. Just thinking about it makes me sleepy. Why can't it just be simple? Get the app and pick a phone number to message. The SMS situation is so bad that it's got a giant flashing neon sign "Disrupt me please" all over it yet none of the big players are stepping up.

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.
MartinMcGirk 13y ago
SMS was (still is) huge in the UK too, but all of my friends started using WhatsApp because you could send pictures to each other on WhatsApp without having to use MMS which cost more, was always a hassle to set up and wasn't available on every phone back in the beginning.
- weavie 13y ago
  I'm in the UK and I'd never heard of WhatsApp until now. I wonder if a lot of these people who say 'X app is big in my country' actually just mean 'X app is popular within my social circle'.
  - timje1 13y ago
    I'm in London, and most people between 20 and 30 that I know of uses WhatsApp. Possibly it hasn't filtered to the rest of the country.
    - weavie 13y ago
      Devon here.. that probably explains it.
  - slight 13y ago
    WhatsApp has about 50% of the mobile messaging market in the UK, so no, it's just you ;)
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - zxcdw 13y ago
    > I wonder if a lot of these people who say 'X app is big in my country' actually just mean 'X app is popular within my social circle'. Yes, that is exactly what it means unless there's some research data provided. Obviously it is easier to scale our current surroundings to the whole country, than to really go around and see how things are outside our social circle. Then again, same applies to you too, just because you haven't heard of WhatsApp before doesn't mean it wouldnt be big in the UK. :)

slazaro 13y ago

In Spain, SMS was also the main way of communicating with mobile phones (pre- and post-smartphone). The benefit of WhatsApp was that you didn't have to move to a different "social network" with usernames and stuff, it just used your contact list, and that it didn't cost anything besides your internet connection. So if someone had WhatsApp, you used that, otherwise you texted them through SMS. You almost end up avoiding communicating with people that don't have WhatsApp because they cost you money...

vanessarp 13y ago
In Spain everyone uses it, from 12 to 60 years old. My mother in low just wanted a smartphone to have Whatsapp. The new trend is Telegram though...
- balladeer 13y ago
  Really? Telegram is a trend? In India I doubt many people even heard about it. I think I will give it a serious thought if it open sources its code base or otherwise it's as good as Viber or Line as an alternative. Same goes with helm.is.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

bad_user 13y ago

In Romania WhatsApp is fairly popular, but it's declining. About 60% of my phone's contacts have had it installed at some point, but I noticed that many of them have uninstalled it. Its popularity has been declining due to Facebook and Android - Facebook on Android works really well lately, most of my acquaintances are on Facebook already and everybody with an Android (which is most of my acquaintances) has either Facebook or Facebook Messenger on it. This is happening because Facebook is the messenger that finally dethroned Yahoo Messenger in my country - really, I'm serious, Yahoo Messenger was still really popular until about 2 years ago. And Android penetration has been phenomenal, due to cheap models being advertised by mobile carriers and sold instead of feature phones. > 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. You're a US citizen and so you might have missed the part where Google Voice is not available outside the US - no alternative can win over SMS, unless it is international. I actually hate them for trying to take over my SMS messaging and I'm glad that I still have the option of not allowing them to do it on my Android, even though I'm also a regular Hangouts user. What is it with these companies trying to be everything to everybody?

rajivm 13y ago
re: your last thought. Google isn't really taking over your SMS messaging in Hangouts as it stands with their current implementation. If you enable "Hangouts SMS" -- it's really just a client side merge of the SMS and Hangouts UI (i.e. SMS does not flow through Google's servers). It just makes it easier to manage SMS and Hangouts conversations side by side through the same app.
- bad_user 13y ago
  I saw that, but if you take a look at the wording they use for denial ("Maybe Later"), that's what they did every single time before shoving it down on all customers' throats. Plus, that question pops up every single time Hangouts gets updated and there's no way to make it stop, because surprise, you can't uninstall Hangouts. The message on the wall is very clear - in future versions of Android Hangouts will be the SMS app. > It just makes it easier to manage SMS and Hangouts conversations side by side through the same app. No it doesn't, it's actually quite confusing. At some point I sent a message to my wife, without paying attention if it's SMS or not and so I sent it by Hangouts because that's the default, but she's not using her Google account at all and never received the message. And you have to pay attention like every single time. It's much, much easier to separate services, when they are in fact different. For SMS, I open the SMS app and I send and receive SMS messages. For Hangouts, I open the Hangouts app and I send and receive Hangouts messages. When I'm not sure what protocol to use for somebody, I go to that contact's details and check out the available options. If I have to read new messages, I click on the notification. If I want to reply to a new message, I'm already in the right app. What could be simpler than that? Trying to combine Hangouts or any other SMS alternative with SMS in the same app is first of all a huge usability fail - unless that service would fallback to SMS in case delivery didn't happen, in which case there's always the question of unexpected billing, because your phone number is going to have to send that SMS and SMS can get quite expensive - so no, it's an epic failure.

foobarian 13y ago

The problem with what Google or Facebook do is that deep down I know it's going to be integrated into their main product, and I won't be able to use it without sharing my real name and friends and everything else tied to the account. Or it will make me create an account, pick yet another password, fill out a profile, yadda yadda. Just thinking about it makes me sleepy. Why can't it just be simple? Get the app and pick a phone number to message. The SMS situation is so bad that it's got a giant flashing neon sign "Disrupt me please" all over it yet none of the big players are stepping up.