this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
131 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
59685 readers
3231 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I guess as an American I just never “got” why it’s used in so much of the world. I did use it for work for awhile (on desktop mainly) and it was “meh.”
It got steam because it was one of the first ways to technically "chat for free" even if it had a price tag at first. Most countries had unlimited data but still billed people for every sms sent. Whatsapp introduced the concept of an app solely to chat with others through their phones for free/a one time fee forever.
By now it has reached critical mass and its basically impossible to get people to migrate anywhere else. Everyone would have to change apps at the same time.
People don't really see any particular appeal in WA, its just the default now even if its just meh. Sadly.
In the US Apple had an early lead with the iPhone and so a lot of people converted from SMS to iMessage.
In the EU the iPhone didn't have the same adoption, so when WhatsApp came along most people were still communicating with SMS, so it was WhatsApp which captured the market instead.