The only people that believe I’m worth contacting have already switched to Signal and the ones that refused to switch lost contact with me. Their loss I guess.
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.
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.
Why would anyone use WhatsApp when there’s Signal?
I know we’re all saying network effects, but I don’t know what the fuck network effects means.
Network effects dude. Network effects.
I don’t get to choose what app my European friends use
Network effects
because it’s the de facto sms replacement in many european and south american countries
I could move to Signal, open up a chat with myself and chat for a while but I think it would get pretty boring pretty soon.
I thought people on here of all places would understand the impact of the network effect.
Because most of the world is already on WhatsApp, and changing to Signal would isolate you from most people and businesses.
Damn shame
Sounds great - if I wasn’t already using Signal, that just might persuade me 😁
The only people that believe I’m worth contacting have already switched to Signal and the ones that refused to switch lost contact with me. Their loss I guess.
Same thing with Twitter and mastodon I guess.
Must be more popular in your country, in Canada I don’t know a single person on whatsapp
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
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
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.
I agree, but the other people all use it 🫠
Couldn’t be me… but some people don’t care that Meta can read their messages. Or they still don’t know but I doubt it.
Mark Zuckerberg has a term for these people…
“dumbfucks”
-Markie Zuc
You genuinely don’t know? 😬