Why is the Telegram Messenger not popular in US? ~60-70Mln users are small comparing to Whatsapp, WeChat, Line, Kakao, Kik.
The reasons are pretty complicated, but I'd wager that it's largely because Apple, Google, Facebook, and SnapChat are all U.S. companies, and so iMessage, Hangouts, Facebook Messenger, and SnapChat are all perfectly adequate communication tools in the U.S. All of my friends use Hangouts, for example, because they're Google employees (except one who uses iMessage because he was the tech lead for iMessage). The only reason I'd even heard of Whatsapp is because a number of my wife's business school friends are from India.
Social software tends to be very regional, like how LiveJournal is huge in Russia, Orkut was big in Brazil in India but virtually unknown in the U.S, and the majority of Chinese are on some social network that most Americans have never heard of. It's not surprising that most Americans would use software developed by U.S. companies.
Yes they are probably non-existent in US, but each of them have at least 200Mln users (WeChat >800Mln)
It's not surprising that most Americans would use software developed by U.S. companies.
Good point
(USA resident here). I'd say Kik is huge amongst young people. A lot of people also use it to message casual sex/booty calls on the side if they don't want to use their main texting app.