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this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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No Stupid Questions
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Genuine question here: why? Text messaging that comes with the phone is easier to use than installing 20 different apps to talk to 20 different people. Is this a younger generation thing? "I just like it better" was the only response my daughter gave for this. That's nice and all if it's one person but if everyone does is, that's a lot of work. I don't even talk to that many people yet I have to use a different app to talk to every person I know.
Here in the UK everyone just uses WhatsApp or maybe Messenger for some stuff. Even my 80yo mother uses WhatsApp, so it’s obviously not that difficult. I think it stems from data being cheaper than SMS (and media messages) back in the day and WhatsApp being more innovative with group chats, internet voice/video calls, etc.
I also lived in Hong Kong for many years and it was the same there, with everyone using WhatsApp or WeChat.
As far as I can tell, only Americans still use SMS as their main messaging system.
The problem is that most americans don't use SMS as their main messaging system, they use iMessage, which is an IM app so long as it's between iPhone's. So when android users complain about apple not using RCS, what they're really complaining about is that they can't use the IM app that everyone else settled on.
Like, imaging living in the UK, but you have a phone that couldn't use WhatsApp at all. I'm sure that people would be telling you to download whatsApp instead of messaging them on SMS, but you literally couldn't without buying a new phone
Huh, that is really interesting. I forgot that was a thing because when it was around I used tracfone which had one price for each unit regardless what you used that unit for. So text and data were the same price.
I have actually never used whatsapp or snapshot because nobody I know uses them. At least not without having another means I can use instead.
SMS used to be really expensive and limited feature wise. Sending messages over IP ment that you did not have to care about how many messages you sent and you could send media with non potato resolution. Media over the phone network (MMS) was basically limited to small images.
Since the messaging apps were developed by third parties (and not your phone company) there was a market for several of them. The phone companies tried to counter with RCS, but being phone companies and not internet savvy pioneers, it was a slow process to get wide adoption.
This makes sense. I was a late adopter of cell phones, mainly because I'm asocial and the thought of someone being able to contact me wherever I was is a terrifying thing. I didn't even really get into it until smartphones, because that's what made it worth it. Anything I want to know, right now? Yes please.
I never used it to send things to others until reddit got crazy popular and even I heard about it.
Cellphone network fees have historically been ridiculously expensive, when I was young a single SMS message cost about 80c, whilst for 10x that fee I could get enough data to send hundreds of WhatsApp or similar data-based messages.
In time providers tried to draw more subscribers to their networks by making the data used by messaging apps like WhatsApp free, so even if you had no prepaid airtime (in Africa most people use prepaid airtime) you could still send messages with these apps even though you couldn't SMS.
These days messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram (the latter especially) are just simply more feature-rich than SMS, and you're not locked into a specific hardware platform such as iPhone & Mac with iMessage.
You probably mean Mxit back in the days!
Oh yeah, I've forgotten about Mxit! Wow, that brings back memories. 😁
I can't speak for the rest of the world, but in South Africa basically everyone uses WhatsApp, because SMS isn't free and most contracts don't include unlimited SMS's. Whatsapp just made sense. There's a few of us that switched to Telegram when the whole WhatsApp privacy policy conundrum came up a while ago, but most people still use WhatsApp as their main form of communication in SA. Even the Telegram guys mostly still have WhatsApp.
Telegram in the US has a tainted reputation for being the app of choice for coordinating far right groups, and for politicians trying to subvert open meetings and public records laws. The "Proud Boys" used it to coordinate the January 6th insurrection on the US Capitol. WhatsApp is more common in the US, I think, but my perception is that it is best known among Americans with strong ties to Europe/Europeans.