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Comment by kxxsc | Hacker News Reader

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).

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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.

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).

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

> 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.

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.

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.

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

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