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Comment by cinericius | Hacker News Reader

Facebook the website doesn't have much to offer, however 'everyone' has one, so its separate messenger app is still very widely used (at least in the U.K.) I'd be interested to know if this is the case in the U.S. as well.

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Among my circle of friends and parents at school (K-8), Facebook is eroding as an ubiquitous platform. Many parents in certain professions feel that it is best avoided.

iMessage, SMS is ruling the day now. It’s incredible how utterly Google failed in this space by tossing Talk.

I'm not sure how to interpret the idea that iMessage is doing it right but Google was wrong to shift from talk to hangouts. Hangouts is basically iMessage but you can actually reach the other half of the population that doesn't use Apple.

Hangouts is yet another app. imesssge just works and gracefully degrades when a non iOS person is included.

That's exactly how hangouts works on Nexus and Pixel devices.

It's a closed system too, though.

Yes. But if iMessage is presented as the success and as an example of what Google could have had part of if they only hadn't switched to hangouts, I'm not sure how it works as evidence since google switched to be more like iMessage.

I'm not arguing that I think a system should or should not be open, just that I don't understand how the argument that was presented is supposed to work.

All communication systems are in the process of flipping back to closed systems.

The major open ones (mail and POTS) are either going away as telcos divest and people stop answering the phone or consolidating into a small number of big players as what we see with email.

The 2030s will probably bring back the future equivalent of Telex

But not the majority (last I heard) who has never downloaded a single app from the App Store.

> iMessage, SMS is ruling the day now.

Can you do chat-groups on iMessage? Because that's one of the main advantages of using FB Messenger or WhatsApp around these parts of the world (Eastern Europe).

Yes. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202724

Yes, but adding anyone who does support iMessage downgrades it to SMS.

And anyone who starts on iMessage but deactivates their account is silently excluded from all future group communication.

Google is failing big in SMS. I have a Google Voice number that I've used since it was announced as Grand Central. Do you know what happens when someone sends a vcard? Nothing good - it just says it isn't supported. There isn't a way on the phone or even from a computer to SEE the vcard. I don't care if you support it, show me the blob of text and I'll read it myself!

I understand a lot of the US still uses SMS, hence the constant talk of iMessage. The rest of the world uses Whatsapp or Messenger, except Japan/China/Korea who primarily use their own clients. Nowadays the only SMS I get are 2FA codes.

SMS I'm guessing is unlikely to be supported by a lot of services in future as 2FA over SMS isn't recommended by NIST (https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/08/nist_is_no_lo...)

iMessage between iMessage users is akin to Whatsapp/messenger -- not actually SMS/MMS. Those are only sent when, say, messaging an Android user or if an iMessage failed to deliver.

iMessage came after WhatsApp (WA itself isn't the first messaging app...), I wonder why WA didn't get big in the US, maybe it's because virtually all mobile contracts in the US include a texting package. As for WA, one key to its success was probably the automatic upload of your address book to see who of your contacts is already in the system (and the privacy side in the battle of privacy vs convenience loses another battle), on other IM clients you had to add contacts manually.

There are texting packages in European contracts as well, particularly in the more competitive markets in North Europe, but one reason to prefer WhatsApp is roaming: in the US, you can use your texting package all over the continent, but in Europe, you couldn't - whenever in a neighbour country, sending an SMS or an MMS could be very expensive, and what's worse, the price is unpredictable or even scammy.

So it was better to use wifi and WhatsApp to communicate. Once you'd fixed your net access, you could be sure of cheap easy text communications.

The EU roaming pricing law has now fixed the original cause, but it is too late to change people's behaviour.

IIRC WhatsApp also cared a lot about making the app available on all kinds of phones. Not just iOS/Android. So all those people in the rest of the world could start using it and bring their families on board.

WA is also practically non-existent in Denmark. If someone is one WA they are either an ex-pat or have lived extensive time abroad and have friends / family they keep in touch with.

Here we also have unlimited texting in all but the most limited pay-as-you-go offerings. The telco market is extremely competitive.

WA used to lie on the App Store / Play Store. It was something like "WhatsApp - Free SMS", when it never send or received SMSs.

I know but for iPhone users it's more or less seamless other than that they know they have fewer features if the bubbles are green.

I'm not sure about that. I don't use Whatsapp at all anymore (and before that rarely). I'm more likely to use SMS with friends within Norway and Messenger for those who aren't in Norway.

I can attest to this (HS student). Although I specifically don't have an account, my peers definitely use FB as a means of communication, a way to publicize for school events, and organize group activities. The network effects run strong.

Messenger is definitely the most popular messaging app where I live (near Vancouver, Canada), and [1] seems to indicate that this is true for most of North America. WhatsApp is still the most popular messaging app worldwide though, although in my experience it is barely used in Canada/USA.

[1] https://www.similarweb.com/blog/mobile-messaging-app-map-201...

> Facebook the website doesn't have much to offer

:thinking_face:

Facebook offers an event planner, a blog platform, photo hosting, video hosting, news aggregation, venmo-like payment system, de-facto single sign on service for most websites

That's in addition to Messenger, which as you said is huge.

The problem is that the blog and news platforms are not great. People often complain that they miss important posts.

I suppose photo sharing is integrated in messenger (the mobile app), too?

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