I’ve found it to be very popular in Chile and Peru.
This corroborates more or less what people have been anecdotally sharing though skype really isn’t the same medium.
And in Italy. To the point where people complain in you haven’t got it. At least age 40 and under. I have one friend who refuses to get it, and the other grumble about, because we have one group on Whatsapp and then we have to sms him separately and it’s a pain.
OTOH in China, WeChat, another similar app, is popular instead. It’s quite similar to WhatsApp with messages and groups, but also lets you have a “page” like Facebook.
The pictures may appear random to you (or me), but they are the product of a swift and brutal selection process, and have the advantage of conveying nuanced information in a coded fashion, and the code is ever-evolving. The information itself may be trivial and fleeting, but the communication mode itself is actually rather impressive in a way.
Consider this: for decades, science fiction authors have described telepaths communicating in almost exactly this fashion.
And Germany. We use it to text our daughter in Germany for free. I’ve sent snippets of voice with it also.
Marketplace said that one of the reasons Facebook bought it was to get access to emerging markets. And one user said that if they start charging they are gone.
I honestly wouldn’t mind paying if that meant that it kept my stuff out of FB’s hands. As I understand it, newer members of Whatsapp do have to pay a subscription of a dollar a year, or somesuch. I’d pay that in a heartbeat. I’d even pay a dollar a month. Just make sure there aren’t any fucking ADS.
See, I always just used email. Nowadays, my family often uses Facebook for this purpose.
That’s what I find strange about WhatsApp. Sure, it presents a useful feature, but it’s a feature that’s been around since mobile devices started going online.
At least the mailing list aspect makes a little more sense, as that’s often kinda hard to set up on other platforms. But sending an email is as simple as putting that email into your contacts and then using it.
What is it that WhatsApp provides that is superior?
So the difference between email, wall posts, instant messaging, texts, letters, etc? It fits a specific form of communication. Email is not as real-time as text/IM and carries a connotation of formality. That’s all it takes.
Wall posts are public. Instant messaging lets you know if the person is online. Texts originally were for different devices, and use a different protocol which, in the US, is often free, unlike data. Letters, in this context, I assume are not sent electronically.
And for those you didn’t give: Twitter is public but also lets you hide your name. Facebook leverages your existing Facebook friends. Tumblr makes it easier to comment on tumblr pages and contact people you know on tumblr–and that goes for pretty much any other PM system.
There’s always something that distinguishes any two different forms of electronic communication.
ETA: Are you saying that WhatsApp is actually faster than email? That would work. Email can take up to a few seconds, so I can see how something that takes, say, less than a second might be preferable for short, text-style messages.
I think I do, because it’s easier to sign up for and works better than the others. This is going back about 1.5 years, several friends and I were planning a trip to the UK (from the US) and wanted a way to keep in touch without foreign texting fees, etc. We tried multiple different apps, including Whatsapp, Viber, Facebook Messenger(!), and Skype. In our test situations WhatsApp was the only one which reliably delivered messages when a phone went from no-connection (simulated with airplane mode) to having wifi available. The others might deliver a message if you checked, and sometimes never delivered messages. Also, when you send a message you can see if it’s been delivered, and if it’s been read.
The other reason is that Whatsapp is incredibly easy to sign up for. There’s no username or password, just your phone number. Once the app is installed (after prompting and such) it will send you a text message with a code to put into the app, and then you’re done. The downside of that is that there’s no non-phone version; so no web, tablet, or IM based messaging. To send a message to other users, you just need their phone number.
There were two main reasons Facebook decided to buy WhatsApp: a new customer base outside the US, and to stamp out a competitor. I really don’t think Facebook expects it to take off in the US - nor do I think they’re going to change it. But the purchase gives them access to millions of new customers they would have been unable to reach otherwise, plus there’s another threat to them crossed off the list. The reason WhatsApp is popular in other parts of the world, I think, is simply becasue everyone uses it - it’s convienent in a way that it can’t be in the US. Now, how it became widespread when you can only text other WhatsApp users, I have no idea.
Anyway, in my book, WhatsApp gets this year’s award for the most annoyingly named app. Written down, it looks bad because there’s a missing apostrophe, and spoken, it’s a terrible pun. :smack:
Yeah, sorry. In retrospect I wasn’t too clear in answering your question specifically. On top of it being a texting service, some phones/carriers don’t allow for group chats so this is an easy way to get around that.
It also gives them a leg up in the new generation of texting seeing as SMS is pretty much obsolete. I wouldn’t be surprised if texting plans are completely phased out of phone plans within 2 years.
Hell, yeah. And it’s not like there won’t be more new things like it coming down the pike, so you know that all Facebook is buying by giving you $16B is a few years’ time, if that, before they’ve got to ladle out another several billion to someone just like you, only a few years younger.
So if I were in their position, I’d take the money and run, and have no qualms about it.
I know…I’ve been [un]fortunate enough to have the nuances of one of these conversations explained to me in great detail. 
But I do find it funny/interesting that all of these multi-lingual kids (we live in very diverse area), are suddenly communicating largely in pictures. And it isn’t to avoid misunderstandings.
I would - too many people use standard texting. Us old folks use it, and my son’s babysitters use it. (As has been noted in this thread, can’t even say that about FB anymore; the kids have moved on.) It works whether your cell phone service is through Verizon or AT&T or whoever.
First player to get rid of it loses a huge chunk of business.
Whatsapp was available on a much wider range of phones than Facebook of GChat, including Blackberries and Java based dumbphones which are much more common in the developing world. Also, unlike the US, in many countries, unlimited texting is uncommon of unavailable, causing people to seek out cheaper alternatives that used data instead of SMS to send messages.
Young people have always communicated amongst themselves in ways that were unintelligible to their elders. They’re just finding new ways to do so through technology.
pancakes3 covered it, but any “Facebook is dead!” claims are a myth. Facebook wasn’t even built for teenagers in the first place. College kids got to use it first and after it was expanded to high school kids, the plan was always to open it to everybody. But that’s not to say kids don’t use it. A few of the teens I work with use it regularly.
And besides, teenagers are a small portion of the population. It may be “cool” to have them, but having everybody else is more profitable.
Here’s a couple of points left out of this discussion so far.
- Facebook has been trying to purchase WhatsApp for years
- The two owners said “no” till just the other day
- One of the owners tried to work for Facebook and was denied
- That owner was born in the Ukraine and raised by his mother on food stamps in San Francisco and as you well know the Ukraine has been having a few political unrest days … I bet some of this money goes to help the cause of freedom.
- WhatsApp has been adding one million that is 1,000,000 new subscriptions a day
The 4 billion dollars cash is nice … the rest is just paper and before it was paper it was just thin air, poof from nothing to 16 billion dollars in just a matter of months of other peoples investments.
My intelligence doesn’t reach the point of understanding this deal, but then that is probably why I still drive an old used car, eat fast food and have to pay my bills like everyone else that uses WhatsApp.