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How WhatsApp became an unstoppable global cultural force

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Re: How WhatsApp became an unstoppable global cultural force

#91

Post by dcsommer »

noprocrasted wrote: post #23
exabrial wrote: post #2

What worries me is FB is in charge. It’s allegedly secure, but closed source. What’s their profit model here anyway?

It collects people's contacts and social graphs, which are then used to influence ad targeting in Meta's other platforms. That's why it insists so badly on having full access to your contacts.

This is absolutely not true and would immediately trigger lawsuits across the globe. WhatsApp and Meta data separation is extremely strict. Source: I work at WhatsApp and also https://faq.whatsapp.com/1303762270462331

> We need your contacts to provide the service, but don’t share your contacts with Meta.

Re: How WhatsApp became an unstoppable global cultural force

#92

Post by ks2048 »

I'm in a place where WhatsApp is everywhere - "call/text me" is basically assumed to mean call or send me a message on WhatsApp.

But, somehow I don't view it as a "cultural force" the way other social media sites are.

I guess because it's just people talking/chatting/sending-pics with their contacts, so there's no algorithm driving/changing peoples' behavior. It's like the cultural force of everyone having cell phones with free (and improved) SMS (which of course is a big change in society).

I've also never used WA to meet people, engage with strangers, or try to impress strangers. It's just people I've met in real life.

Although, a lot of this article is about the broadcast and "channels" features that I don't really use.

Re: How WhatsApp became an unstoppable global cultural force

#93

Post by viraptor »

Jtsummers wrote: post #48
brudgers wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facetime was announced as an intended open standard. Shortly, Apple realized their advantage of keeping it closed.

A patent lawsuit kept them from opening it up at the time. I think it's only recently been resolved.

This is such a weird claim getting repeated. If they were infringing, opening the protocol wouldn't change that fact. They didn't even have to provide the client for other platforms, so their unit count wouldn't be increased for damages.

Re: How WhatsApp became an unstoppable global cultural force

#94

Post by toast0 »

epx wrote: post #31
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting tidbit is that WhatsApp actually predates FaceTime and iMessage, and thus it was one of the earliest iPhone apps that allowed sending text messages over data as opposed to SMS. Interoperability with Android was a plus. I was tremendously pissed off when I moved from a BlackBerry (with blackberry messenger and “free over data” messaging) to an iPhone in 2008 and had to go back to paying per sms sent. Th…

At least here in Brazil, WhatsApp consolidated its position by working well in feature phones that ran J2ME and dominated the low-end market before Android. It took testing and adaptation to each and every available phone (as far as I can remember, J2ME was kind of a loose standard so developing a J2ME on one device did not guarantee it ran well, or at all, in any other). This, coupled with the possibility of eliding…

WhatsApp ran on Nokia S40, which is J2ME, but it did not run on other J2ME phones (unless there was some way to put the s40 app bundle on them? I never heard about that).

There was a period of time where someone was selling low end phones with an unauthorized and incomplete client built in... In addition to not supporting group messages, it apparently had a backdoor to remote send spam.

Re: How WhatsApp became an unstoppable global cultural force

#95

Post by viraptor »

NoLinkToMe wrote: post #52
insane_dreamer wrote: post #8

What surprises me is that while WhatsApp has become an "everything" app in many parts of the world, much like WeChat in China, it has not done so in the US. In fact, I don't know anyone in the US who uses WhatsApp "internally" (the only times I use it is to communicate with people outside the US). The description of WhatsApp here is exactly what Elon wanted X to become (which clearly didn't and almost certainly now w…

It’s the first time I hear that Whatsapp is already an everything app. Ive used Whatsapp for about 14 years or so on a daily basis as my main app. But it’s just chat for me, and about 30% of my non-professional calls. And I use the share location feature a lot when meeting friends. But that’s about it. But banking, social media, ID/login, maps, albums, browsing etc I all do outside of whatsapp.

Yup, that claim went a bit far. I mean, the company account API exists and you can do buttons and automation and lots of companies do support this way. (All my contact with Dell support was over WhatsApp) So the tech is there, but the actual deployment of it isn't that big.

Re: How WhatsApp became an unstoppable global cultural force

#96

Post by Jtsummers »

viraptor wrote: post #93
Jtsummers wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A patent lawsuit kept them from opening it up at the time. I think it's only recently been resolved.

This is such a weird claim getting repeated. If they were infringing, opening the protocol wouldn't change that fact. They didn't even have to provide the client for other platforms, so their unit count wouldn't be increased for damages.

Jobs' statement at the time was the intent to make it a published standard. If that standard was patent encumbered (or could be claimed to be, as the suit did) then it would be pretty hard to convince other people to implement that standard, and difficult to get a standards body to actually publish it. Why would Google, MS, or anyone else implement something if it'd get them bogged down in the same lawsuits Apple was already dealing with?

Re: How WhatsApp became an unstoppable global cultural force

#97

Post by ncruces »

Zak wrote: post #83
lotsofpulp wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because WhatsApp was the first with password less-login using SMS login. It was dead simple to use. You had a phone, installed Whatsapp, it sent you a verification text that it automatically read and verified to ensure you owned that phone number, and that was your “account”. No user names to remember, no passwords, a completely computer illiterate person could use it, especially if their first device ever was a smar…

I suppose none of the others, which could have leveraged their existing userbase chose to follow suit because the companies that owned them did not have a way to make money from them. WhatsApp didn't either, but startups weren't expected to.

The initial WhatsApp plan was to charge between $1 and 2€, initially a one time fee paid after a few weeks, then a yearly subscription after one free year.

I kinda wish that had paned out.

It'd still be hundreds of millions of dollars in yearly revenue. Plus businesses.

Re: How WhatsApp became an unstoppable global cultural force

#98

Post by toast0 »

viraptor wrote: post #93
Jtsummers wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A patent lawsuit kept them from opening it up at the time. I think it's only recently been resolved.

This is such a weird claim getting repeated. If they were infringing, opening the protocol wouldn't change that fact. They didn't even have to provide the client for other platforms, so their unit count wouldn't be increased for damages.

As a matter of policy, I avoid looking into details of patents, but from the title, I thought the patent was about something the server does, routing or something? In which case, infringement or licensing would scale with the number of users, not the number of shipped clients.

This was around the same time that Apple was charging for OS upgrades, at least on Mac, and I think they wouldn't have wanted to pay for something they were providing for free.

Re: How WhatsApp became an unstoppable global cultural force

#99

Post by crazygringo »

Zak wrote: post #35
insane_dreamer wrote: post #8

What surprises me is that while WhatsApp has become an "everything" app in many parts of the world, much like WeChat in China, it has not done so in the US. In fact, I don't know anyone in the US who uses WhatsApp "internally" (the only times I use it is to communicate with people outside the US). The description of WhatsApp here is exactly what Elon wanted X to become (which clearly didn't and almost certainly now w…

I'm reasonably confident WhatsApp never caught on in the USA because most American phone plans had unlimited SMS in the early 2010s when WhatsApp's popularity was growing elsewhere. International messaging was probably also a big driver in Europe, but less relevant in other markets.

You are correct, this is exactly the reason.

Other countries charged per SMS so everyone had good reason to use an app instead.

The US didn't charge, so why would anyone download an app?

Re: How WhatsApp became an unstoppable global cultural force

#100

Post by toast0 »

hocuspocus wrote: post #45
Zak wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reasonably confident WhatsApp never caught on in the USA because most American phone plans had unlimited SMS in the early 2010s when WhatsApp's popularity was growing elsewhere. International messaging was probably also a big driver in Europe, but less relevant in other markets.

International messaging is still relevant in many parts of the world that don't necessarily need to message neighboring countries, but have a big diaspora.

Yeah, but the US is pretty insular. Times are different now, but my grandparents who immigrated basically didn't communicate with the old country in my lifetime.

If roughly 15% of the US population is immigrants [1], and not all of them communicate across borders, and very few non-immigtants communicate cross borders there's not a whole lot of demand for a product that reduces costs of cross border messaging in the US.

As an early employee if anyone knew about WhatsApp, they almost certainly were a younger immigrant. Everyone else was like 'why would I use that?, I have unlimited texts' or they were using BBM.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/27/u-s-immig...

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