In countries where SMS isn't as widespread as it is in the US, the use of WhatsApp is much more common.
I live in one of those countries, and I don't think I've ever had to use it to communicate with someone on another continent. I think most of its use is simply local, for your community or friend group.
The downside for me is basically the lack of appeal for a non-tech user (like my parents) to voluntarily want to stop using an app they've been using for, what, 10-12 years? It’s not that big of a deal; everyone uses Instagram or Facebook (maybe)... WhatsApp is definitely going to make the process difficult, too.
Whatsapp is more popular in the US than you'd think. Probably due to a large immigrant population. I'm in several groups that use the channels feature to organize things like soccer, game nights etc. Most people with family abroad use Whatsapp, and that's a huge portion of the US.
I belong to two Toastmasters groups. One is majority non-immigrant American/caucasian, one is majority immigrant (from India, Pakistan, etc). The first one does club communication primarily via email. The second does club communication exclusively thru WhatsApp.
It's an interesting divide.
I do have some Caucasian friends who use WhatsApp. One stopped using it when FB purchased it, which I can respect. Most people I know in the states though just use iMessage or signal.
Here in EU even the 5 €/month phone plans have unlimited SMS. As soon as you want to talk to someone without Whatsapp, you need to figure out which other apps they're on. Completely useless compared to SMS
Have you considered that the EU isn't one country?
It is not unusual for there to be hosting or intermediate storage of images and other files, and from the phone you may tap a link or something to download/access that file, instead of having it automatically download and appear immediately, due to bandwidth and resource constraints.
In France, I'm "charged" for MMS, too. But that's actually considered "data", so it's deducted from the "internet" envelope which is quite generous (at least for my needs: I have multiple dozens of GB for under 10 € a month, of which I only ever went above 10 when backing up photos during a vacation with no wifi).
Yes, but there are also plenty of countries where mobile data or even smartphones aren't nearly as universal as they might be in the places where most people use whatsapp. There, people use mostly SMS and phone calls. Whatsapp and the like are the thing you use when SMS/calls would be too expensive, so international.
Both of these exist, as do middle grounds between them.
I'm in only one WhatsApp group with someone local, everyone else in my chats is from abroad. Yet I'm from a country with dirt cheap data and nearly universal smartphone ownership. People just don't use WA here for whatever reason. But drive an hour across the border and suddenly everyone is on WhatsApp.
depends where; in France you can get unlimited SMS/MMS/calls, plus 350Go of data, for 20€/month [0]. it's surprising the market hasn't developed likewise in other (European) countries; I (genuinely) wonder why − perhaps legal issues of some sort?
edit: okay, sending MMS isn't always free, depends on the countries[1]. still free for USA, Europe, Canada, etc.
I think it’s more historical at this point. 20 years ago SMS was expensive in Europe as we had cheap plans and expensive calls/texts vs US which had expensive plans but free calls/texts. That made things like WhatsApp take off in Europe while Americans would just SMS.
(Although most Americans have iPhones so just transparently avoid SMS for most of their conversations.)
There is no in the EU here. I had unlimited SMS in a sub 20€ plan more than a decade ago in France. I now have unlimited sms, unlimited calls and unlimited data in a sub 15€ plan.
I still only use WhatsApp because it’s a lot better than sms.
All the B2C services I work with are sending SMS to my phone. Not RCS, not iMessage: they are sending SMS messages.
All the MFA providers, such as Twilio and Okta, are sending SMS.
All the political campaign spammers are sending SMS.
All the reminders for appointments and bills are sending SMS.
All the notifications for apps where Push isn't good enough: they're sending SMS.
If user-to-user communication is using iMessage then that is fine. I have noticed that only about 2 of my human contacts use RCS, and at least 2 of them are using iPhones and not Androids for it. So that's some anecdata for ya!
It all depends on age group in my experience. My friends all a bit older than me prefer Messenger for everything. My friends all younger than me prefer Discord. I think my parents and their generation use iMessage, but I use WhatsApp with them. My generation used to use snapchat a lot, I think, but I never got on that boat.
That's interesting; I have and use discord myself (owner of a 300+ member server for my WoW guild), but I've never really considered it a messaging app in the same way I do iMessage, WhatsApp, and so on. I think because everyone is pseudo anonymous, it's more like social media to me. Plus I've got the phone numbers and iMessage groups for close friends I've made over discord.
Given its popularity among gamers of all nationalities, I wonder where discord stacks up in relation to the EU's DMA?
Discord is popping up as shadow IT in some places. Because of all the server admin stuff (bot APIs, Github bots, pretty advanced RBAC etc), it's basically "Slack but for free, and without the annoying SSO."
That sounds like my personal hell lol. Slack for free without the SSO, sure, but also Slack with constant annoying Nitro upsells and flashy gamer bullshit.
(I just really don't like Discord and I'm bitter that it's what my guild de facto has to use because it's what gamers have standardized on.)
Being pseudonymous doesn't prevent you from using it to contact people you actually know offline. I used Steam to talk with my group members about a project in college a couple times. Other times I used Google chat/talk/whatever it was called at the time (embedded in the browser inbox). I had a flip phone at the time, so pretty much anything I could use on desktop was easier.
I just mean I've never thought to put it in the same category as iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram, etc. Like if the EU is going to regulate messaging apps, I wouldn't have thought to lump Discord or Steam chat in there with those other ones. But, honestly, why shouldn't they?
Yeah I hate SMS. I don't want my carrier to be involved in the content of my communications. Also I normally use the computer when at home, no point using a tiny mobile device obviously.
I don't use Google or Apple accounts either so RCS is out too. WhatsApp is meta now unfortunately but for historical reasons there's no avoiding it here.
I use WhatsApp and Telegram pretty much exclusively (telegram more for group chats)
Really, really interesting read. I use env vars daily, and it never occurred to me how they actually work. It shows how many things we take for granted have such interesting implementations. :)
