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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-pl

by 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. :)

by adsche 13y ago

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. :)