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Comment by tasogare | Hacker News Reader

I’ve never understood the appeal of WhatsApp: it requires a phone number (so it’s useless or hard to setup abroad, and it’s tied to a very personal data), handle very poorly wifi connection (somehow it seems to only update when connected over 4G) and force me to download pictures and videos to see them, trashing my photo folder in the process. It also has no killer features in comparison to any existing messaging app, nor the defunct MSN. And finally it’s now owned by Facebook, so using it to avoid Messenger is moot. Yes, this app success is truly a mystery for me. I have it for speaking with two family members, otherwise I would not bother.

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I think you are underestimating the degree to which requires only a phone number is a killer feature:

-you download the app and can immediately get started after verifying your phone number (no ID or password required) -you don't need to share any ID or connection details other than just your phone number

I spend a lot of time in India, and I think this lack of complexity has contributed significantly to its virality (I'd estimate that a pretty significant percentage of the user base does not have or regularly use an email account, which is usually a prerequisite to setting up many accounts).

It's amazing to consider this killer feature for _normal_ people is one of the kill-worthy features in my will never touch it category.

This is one of the very important things to remember about HN; we are not a representative audience.

Whatsapp has replaced SMS as the defacto standard mobile messenger for 98% of users in Europe (or many other places). It doesn't matter if they do things badly, there is no way around them at the moment.

It is even replacing SMS more in areas where Facebook pushed their internet.org / free basics program, where mobile network companies where supported by Facebook to grant free access to Facebook services while still charging for SMS (or other websites and services) There WhatsApp is/was free. (A few years since I looked into it last, not sure how the project changed)

I just don't see the appeal. MMS works well for things like pictures, doesn't it?

An anecdote from South Africa: SMS was charged per message at very high rates. MMS even higher. Mobile data, while expensive too, was much cheaper per message. Also, free wifi was quite common in many urban areas. All this at a time when WhatsApp was much much simpler and easier to use, with good UX. The person to person advertising for WhatsApp at the time was “it’s free”, which while not 100% true factoring in mobile bandwidth, it was effectively true since mobile data and WiFi was at least 1 or 2 orders of magnitude cheaper than SMS or MMS.

That stayed true for a few years, and so WhatsApp became the de facto standard for messaging.

I can’t speak for other countries but in South Africa that’s why. And the rest is just networking effects.

Ah, that makes sense. I'm fortunate enough to live where we have unmetered SMS/calls/data so I've never had that issue (at least not while WhatApp's been around).

It requires a phone number and a smartphone. Not just a phone number.

Weren't there lots of featurephones with whatsapp in the past? And that helped a lot with getting widely deployed?

It seems to be available on cheap feature phones now anyway: https://www.gizbot.com/mobile/features/fnord-047499.html

I'm sure there were but not on mine and that's just fine by me. The last thing I need in my life is Mark Zuckerberg reading over my shoulder.

As I've heard it, the alternative that drove the first hundred million users was the telco reading over your shoulder and/or randomly dropping your messages on the floor.

Whatsapp grew big with customers of telcos like Vodafone, which may be less capable than Mark Zuckerberg's snoopshop but I wouldn't bet on their being nicer. See https://toroid.org/vodafone-smtp-mitm for example.

I have less of a problem with EU telcos than with American multinationals.

900 INR

https://www.gadgetsnow.com/tech-news/Indias-cheapest-Android...

And there's a fair choice for under 1500INR

Now sure you can get a non-whatsapp phone for half that price, but it's pretty cheap

Not having whatsapp is a feature, not a bug.

Not to the majority of the world

> you don't need to share any ID

My phone number is an ID. An ID I don't want to share. An ID that can be stolen by calling the phone company and saying you're me and bought a new SIM.

That can never ever happen in Europe. You can't just go ask Vodafone for a new sim with the same number because you lost it. You must be American.

You can get replacement SIMs with the same number (source: I'm in Germany and on my third SIM with my current number after first not having a micro-SIM and then a nano-SIM) – I did get notofied of this by SMS, though, and no idea what other anti abuse measures may be in place. I can order one for 10 Euro via the website anytime and I suppose I could do it via phone as well.

There was actually a scandal about that in Denmark recently. Some journalists managed to get new SIM cards for other people without proper authentication. Repeatedly and from different providers.

Then you need to realize that you are a special case and not representative of the general public.

Most people who meet each other in real life and want to exchange contact information exchange… you guessed it… a phone number. Maybe you exchange email or twitter handle, but again you are an exception here. So imagine we meet for the first time and we exchange phone numbers. Now I can WhatsApp you, just like that no other account info needed.

The appeal of WhatsApp was free text messages, which is still not a thing in many countries.

Plus free international text messages.

That’s is how they grew to a billion users without being a success in either the USA or China.

> The appeal of WhatsApp was free text messages

Except that this is a feature of every messaging app. It's not really a response to

>> It also has no killer features in comparison to any existing messaging app, nor the defunct MSN.

> Except that this is a feature of every messaging app. It's not really a response to

It wasn't 11 years ago.

Yes, it was. For example, I ran AIM on a BlackBerry. MSN Messenger was around 11 years ago too.

Those were not simple, seamless, cross-platform, drop-in replacements to SMS though, which is what OP was referring to by “text messaging.” Sure, clunky systems which had no chance of mass adoption existed before.

They were if you're willing to overlook the requirement -- which WhatsApp shares -- for the other person to use the same app. (Well, protocol. Gaim handled AIM and MSN fine.)

The only thing SMS offered was that the other person didn't need to be running anything. WhatsApp didn't offer that, and also didn't improve on the other messengers of the day.

I haven’t used the services you mentioned but maybe WhatsApp was easier to sign up for since you just needed a phone number?

You’re missing the fact that WhatsApp was actually available for essentially all phones (even in 3rd world markets) and that nothing else is needed. AIM and MSN required an email address which means you need one, as well as an email client on your phone, not something that all people want or have. The signup process wasn’t even always available within the device, you might need access to a desktop to complete signup. They both require you to remember and accurately share an extra piece of info you have to memorize (email or username). They were both extremely slow, clunky and unreliable compared to WhatsApp.

Essentially, 95% of the reasons WhatsApp was successful were things you glossed over here.

> You’re missing the fact that WhatsApp was actually available for essentially all phones

And it still is. Even cheap feature phones often have WhatsApp support.

That's not a replacement from SMS since those aren't based on phone numbers. If you have the phone number of somebody and they have WhatsApp installed you can message them immediately. If you both have AIM or MSN installed you have to exchange your handles through some other channel. That's a massive difference in terms of usability and friction to get started.

Gtalk came with the original Android 1.0, and you were already signed up with your gmail account when you set up your phone with OOBE.

Could you chat with people on iOS with this? Or with people who didn't have a Google account, or didn't want to setup yet another account at all? Being a free and hassle-free drop-in replacement for SMS was the main appeal of WhatsApp at the time. If there would have been alternatives with the same features, WhatsApp would never have become popular in the first place.

Everyone (in Joel Spolsky meaning of everyone) already had an gmail account. Not giving out phone number was a feature.

When Whatsapp started out, it was free only for the first year; after that, they wanted a payment. What this experiment has shown, that people did very short term decision without regards for long term.

That's probably because you lived in a tech bubble already 10 years ago.

I reluctantly installed WhatsApp only after everybody around me started using it, or (the more tech savvy among them who already knew how to "open the internet"), switched away from Facebook to WhatsApp.

Everybody who had a phone also naturally had a phone number, and the phone numbers of their friends were already stored on the phone. Nobody outside the "nerd sphere" had a Gmail account 10 years ago, especially not outside the US.

PS: I don't remember ever paying money to WhatsApp, I think that was a short-lived experiment that didn't work out right before the Facebook acquisition.

Every mobile messaging app has this now, but not in 2009 when WhatsApp started. I remember that mobile carriers were really pissed for a while that WhatsApp killed the SMS.

My UK wireless carrier still charges extra for "MMS" (aka SMS w/photos) but I can't imagine who pays for it when WhatsApp exists.

It’s really simple, really.

When WhatsApp first came around sending SMS in many places like in Europe was not free. It wasn’t free to send SMS to other people from the same country, and Europeans, especially European Students going to university will typically have friends or contacts with different country codes because they didn’t get a new SIM card for various reasons. It wasn’t free to SMS people in the same country, and it was not free to SMS people from other countries.

WhatsApp changed that, without needing you to sign up for an account somewhere and telling people “my AIM is this” or “my email is that.” You were already giving people your phone number when you met them, and WhatsApp was compatible with that. So it requires no extra steps. Just download the app and go and now you can SMS people for free using the contact information you already have, using the contact information you were most likely to give to people you just met.

That was the appeal.

> > The appeal of WhatsApp was free text messages > Except that this is a feature of every messaging app.

No it isn't. WhatsApp is a replacement for sms, while other software is (or at least was) always some kind of internet messenger that now also runs on your phone.

I think it'll have to be more precise, to make a point. E-Mail is also a form of text message and it has been free basically forever.

Email with real-time push notifications is not free. Without push notifications, WhatsApp, or any other messaging platform is essentially DOA. Theoretically, we only have Apple and Google with their limited operating systems in the early years to blame for the rise of the notifications economy.

Edit: While there are free email solutions that provide free push, you are either tied to the platform or are made to download an email app, which just makes WhatsApp an easier to use alternative, even if your use case is just spamming groups with pictures or video.

How about group email on demand? Setting up a group takes a few seconds, so does exiting or blocking. Ever imagine doing that with yahoo groups? I have some permanent groups but we have created and dropped so many need based groups. No need to accept the group by logging in here and clicking this and so on.

I got my first smart phone around 2011.

In 2011 I was a student in university and I had friends in my circle from Erasmus so they kept their phone number from their own country. In 2011 it wasn’t even free for me to send a sms to people from my own country so I couldn’t even imagine sending sms to people internationally even though they were physically in the same city as me.

Well one day a friend told me to download WhatsApp. So I did. All it wanted me to do was verify my phone number and that’s it.

Now suddenly all of my friends with smart phones could just sms me for free. And I could sms them back too. For free.

That was the value of WhatsApp. The fact that all you needed was a phone number, which you already had saved in your phone. Now instead of opening your phones messages app, you just open whatsapp.

There was no extra step of signing up for a new account or telling people “search for my name on Facebook my profile picture is blah blah.”

It's interesting. Whatsapp didn't start out to be a messanger app for the world. It didn't start out to be a replacement for SMS, it started as a tool for frequent flyers to be able to set a status on their iphone in the same way you could on Yahoo messenger.

Frequent flyers weren't particularly enthusiastic

"It appears that this requires the other party to also have the app installed, right?"

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-technology/952359-tho...

That’s wild. I had no idea that the original feature of WhatsApp is a feature that I have literally never even looked at and forgot even exists lol

The appeal of WhatsApp is simply that everyone already has it. It's the only messaging platform that can be used to message all your contacts. Network effect, that's it.

Not everyone already has it.

In the Netherlands it was the platform that was easy to install and didn't cost money per message. SMS was pretty expensive back then. Whatsapp quickly became the defacto messaging app. The word "whatsapping" even replaced "sms'ing". At this point in time you need Whatsapp (Or Messenger when you don't have their number yet)

The only time I get an SMS now is for specific multi-factor authentications or automated updates from companies. A lot of businesses even do their live support through Whatsapp now.

What about just “apping” is that a word? On a business trip earlier this year my colleague told me (in English) “I’ll meet you down at the bar after apping with my daughter.”

Now that I think about it I’m not sure if “apping” implies texting, voice call, or video call. Lol

They do use "apping" as a shorthand sometimes. Dutch people abbreviate a lot.

Usually it's "I'll send you a Whatsappie", "I'll whatsapp you" or "I'll app you".

The fact that an SMS costs money is a feature. That way people will think twice before they SMS you. Free communications is only great if you have infinite time to communicate, as the cost of a bit approaches zero the quantity of bits goes up considerably. Things that before would have been fine to save up until you meet again now need to be sent instantly, and need to receive an instant response as well otherwise there will be a bunch of 'did you get my message' messages to follow up on the first one.

I prefer a slight barrier before I'm interrupted and don't mind paying the cost of sending a message. On top of that I don't like non-regulated foreign companies looking over my shoulder. That this is a non-standard pattern I'm well aware of but it suits me just fine.

I agree to a point. The barrier is something I miss sometimes. Because people will be asking something, and then start spamming question marks after 5 minutes.

If you're on a pre-paid plan then SMS doesn't just cost money. It's actually a finite amount you can send before you need to up it. Whereas Whatsapp can function on WiFi. So that can be a big deal if you have urgency.

> I don't like non-regulated foreign companies looking over my shoulder

I mean sure. You have to trust Facebook that the end-to-end encryption has no backdoors. But SMS is known for being intercepted really easyily.

Almost everyone has it. I do not want to use WhatsApp, but in The Netherlands it is nearly impossible to go without it (although it seems you do ;)).

E.g. the parents of our daughter's class uses a WhatsApp group. You can decide not to join it, but you will miss out on all kinds of activities people plan together for kids, school-related messages, etc.

Similarly, our larger family uses a WhatsApp group to stay in touch, coordinate our the bi-yearly family outing, etc.

And this goes on and on, basically everyone communicates through WhatsApp groups. If you do not join them, you miss out on a lot of social activities, etc.

I wish WhatsApp just stayed independent and charged $1 per year, which they did irregularly before they were bought by Facebook.

No one in Japan has it. (well, of course not no one but effectively no one). Here it's Line.

You can change the setting for photos not be saved to your camera roll. And in my experience whatsapp has the best connectivity.

Connectivity is what your phone has. It has nothing to do with Whatsapp. Whatsapp does not add anything to your connectivity.

Perhaps you mean "server availability/reliability"?

The only thing Whatsapp could do, without reaching deeply into the system, is to retry sending messages over and over, until they are sent. If other messengers give up early, then perhaps that could create a false impression of improved connectivity.

Is this not correct?

Do you claim WA reaches that deeply into the system on phones?

Not sure whom I poked the wrong way this time, but it would surely be good to have explanation.

You can do a lot with UDP packages as Mateix is proving

https://matrix.org/blog/2019/03/12/breaking-the-100-bps-barr...

Same here. Other messaging apps don't receive messages, yet WhatsApp does. Don't know how but it works.

Many operators "zero-rate" WhatsApp, meaning that you can access the service without having to pay for a higher tier full data connection. It's true for many mobile data plans and even sometimes wifi hotspots. It's shitty because it gives WhatsApp an advantage that's extremely hard to compete with but it does make it a lot more reliable and cheap to use than some alternatives.

It's a simple calling and messaging app without the baggage of Facebook integration. That is all people wanted.

It is now redundant but that was not the case 10 years ago. People just stick with it since there is little incentive to adapt anything else. WhatsApp just works.

You can disable storing media to your photo folder. That was the first thing I did after installing it. I've never had issues with support on wifi, and that's a large amount of my usage of it.

Its killer feature was what it did before it was acquired by FB, really not much difference since then. The killer feature was international messaging without SMS/MMS costs (and poor reliability) and only needing a phone number, so you could take it with you easily as you moved through devices so long as you controlled the same number. This got presence around the globe making it easy to message almost anyone, almost anywhere.

I have no problem with wifi connection and whatsapp, neither does anyone in my circle

There is option in Chats\media visibility to not trash your photo folder

not sure what are you using what is safer and/or does not require phone number

It's "killer feature" is that it's just another messaging app that only requires a phone number. I don't want to add people to yet another proprietary network.

Whatsapp's killer feature was reliability, 10 years ago. It simply had better message delivery.

Now most apps are pretty much equally good but the network effect already did its job.

iPhones are in minority outside the US, WhatsApp is simply the Universal Apple Messages replacement, because it’s a lightweight app.

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