In Germany too and I remember how upsetting it was to me from the beginning. There were third party messengers that supported established (at the time) services like ICQ or live messenger but people got onto the hot new thing because it’s so much like SMS.
I remember starting to use it because texting was pretty expensive and limited at the time. Whatsapp was free (group) texting when on WiFi and still cheaper when on cellular. If texting wasn’t so expensive at the time I really don’t think whatsapp would’ve caught on like it did. Now people are just used to it so that’s probably why it’s still big
I lived the switch in second person. My sister kept running out of SMSs to text her boyfriend, and our elder sister told her about Whatsapp and how she could have basically infinite text messages
Exactly. And, combined with the shared amount of texts/minutes (which IIRC for me was something like 100), actually calling people and wanting to text your friends you’d run out of texts very quick. WhatsApp was a godsend at the time.
never heard anyone use whatsapp in sweden, everyone is expected to use something that supports sms as a fallback. Usually facebook messenger or whatever the iphone thing is called.
Far as i know the only popular truly separate platform would be something like snapchat or kik or whatever, which is used by teenagers.
Yeah they’re all on Facebook Messenger which sucks. I’ve managed to switch a few in my surroundings to Signal but I still need to keep Messenger for holdouts.
Thankfully I have managed to get everyone to switch from Messenger to Signal, atleast for talking to me haha. Two other family members being privacy oriented too really helped getting the rest of the family moved over.
Must be more popular in your country, in Canada I don’t know a single person on whatsapp
It’s very big in western Europe. Here in the Netherlands everybody is on WhatsApp pretty much since it’s creation
In Germany too and I remember how upsetting it was to me from the beginning. There were third party messengers that supported established (at the time) services like ICQ or live messenger but people got onto the hot new thing because it’s so much like SMS.
I remember starting to use it because texting was pretty expensive and limited at the time. Whatsapp was free (group) texting when on WiFi and still cheaper when on cellular. If texting wasn’t so expensive at the time I really don’t think whatsapp would’ve caught on like it did. Now people are just used to it so that’s probably why it’s still big
I lived the switch in second person. My sister kept running out of SMSs to text her boyfriend, and our elder sister told her about Whatsapp and how she could have basically infinite text messages
Exactly. And, combined with the shared amount of texts/minutes (which IIRC for me was something like 100), actually calling people and wanting to text your friends you’d run out of texts very quick. WhatsApp was a godsend at the time.
This is another reason why I think the key to success is timing. Be the first to provide a service people need, and they’ll use it for a long time
I think the whole europe except some countries
never heard anyone use whatsapp in sweden, everyone is expected to use something that supports sms as a fallback. Usually facebook messenger or whatever the iphone thing is called.
Far as i know the only popular truly separate platform would be something like snapchat or kik or whatever, which is used by teenagers.
Checks out
Yeah they’re all on Facebook Messenger which sucks. I’ve managed to switch a few in my surroundings to Signal but I still need to keep Messenger for holdouts.
Thankfully I have managed to get everyone to switch from Messenger to Signal, atleast for talking to me haha. Two other family members being privacy oriented too really helped getting the rest of the family moved over.
Poland , and everybody around me is on WhatsApp, only a few people have Telegram. Searched a bit of saved phone numbers, none had Signal tied to them