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georgeolaru

Back to SMS.

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On that topic, Twilio is also down: https://status.twilio.com/

The internet appears to be imploding this morning.

the status page needs a status page

Why? Is messenger your only option? I personally don't use Messenger but there's still WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, etc.

How many people can you reach with WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Messenger? How many people can you reach with SMS? Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2365

In Europe, Whatsapp is ubiquitous. FB Messenger and iMessage are pretty rare here.

Edit: looks like I was wrong. I'm in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands and our neighbouring countries, Whatsapp is ubiquitous, so I presumed the rest of Europe was the same. I guess this proves that assumption is the mother of all failures.

In your country/social group. Messanger has a bigger footprint than WhatsApp in some of my social groups in Europe.

Also in Europe: The exact opposite.

Europe is very heterogeneous. I'm sure social network usage is very different in Lithuania, Bulgaria, Spain, Norway or the UK.

As a Brit living in Spain I can cover half of those, and in both Spain & UK whatsapp is absolutely everywhere.

In Spain in fact it's ridiculous - surveys show approx 97% of the population saying they use it regularly (https://www.messengerpeople.com/global-messenger-usage-stati...).

https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2015/02/16/inenglish/14240... has some interesting background on why. I suspect also the fact that Latin America tends to use whatsapp quite heavily (https://www.messengerpeople.com/global-messenger-usage-stati...) probably makes a difference too.

Viber is very used in some parts of Europe. More than WhatsApp.

Latin America is basically WhatsApp and nothing else.

Depends on country, many has messenger as the primary app. In Sweden Whatsapp barely even exists.

https://www.messengerpeople.com/global-messenger-usage-stati...

Everyone use Snapchat in Norway

Im also from The Netherlands. I don't use whatsapp at all... (for me its a bliss and removes the group chats insanity)

iMessage and Telegram covers everyone I know.

I'd say >50% of smartphone users have Whatsapp in the UK and >50% of smartphone users have FB messenger, of course quite a few have both. I prefer Whatsapp, but contacting a small or large business like a pub or takeaway often works surprisingly well with FB.

Ireland here - Whatsapp is ubiquitous, even amongst the elderly. Presumably because iPhones are still in the minority, so iMessage hasn't taken over.

Well my mom knows how to use WhatsApp. All the women in her knitting club are using it to stay in touch with their grandkids.

She probably doesn't know what an SMS is (those are those things her bank sends her, right?).

Should be easy – SMS it's the "default" messaging app from a phone, isn't it?

How would my mom find it?

She knows that the green Whatsapp logo is for talking to her friends.

She probably wouldn't click the envelope looking thing.

(I'm not being facetious - IMO HN readers massively overestimate user capability.)

I agree completely. My mom still doesn't really understand the difference between phone calls, calls over Facebook Messenger, and calls over FaceTime

@ThePadawan Got it now! WhatsApp did a great job in tricking users with their interface. No other pun intended, but it fits perfectly in the context: "What's the App?"

I remember I missed a few calls from my mom recently, and she asked me if I noticed her missed calls. I didn't have any missed calls as she was calling me through WhatsApp, but in such a way that she thought is the "regular" way of calling. I explained, now she knows. Not sure where this is going...

> How many people can you reach with WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Messenger?

99% of all the ones I care about to be honest.

Maybe it's a function of me being an eastern-european expat living in London, but almost every here (Europe) uses WhatsApp.

Yeah WhatsApp is the complete norm in the US but almost no one uses it in the US.

A lot more than with SMS. You can send someone an SMS but they are not going to respond because either they cost money or they have some tiny allowance of them.

Where I live mobile plans include unlimited SMS.

Also I have a dumbphone and I am the only person my friend send SMS too. That makes me quite a unique person !

The point is that the penetration of WhatsApp is way higher than the penetration of unlimited SMS plans. So whatsapp has broader reach.

SMS only works if you live in a region where unlimited SMS plans are standard AND you don't have any friends outside of that region OR WhatsApp doesn't have market share there. Basically only US.

Or they know that responding via SMS only encourages the use of a messaging system whose time has past.

What is the limit of SMS allowance on your network?

There are cheap postpaid packages with only data (a lot, >10 GB) and ~100 minutes, SMS is paid per message.

> How many people can you reach with SMS?

Essentially no-one as we've all stopped trading actual phone numbers years ago.

Eh, most messengers use phone number as the primary identifier these days. Whether I use Telegram, Signal or WhatsApp, I add people using their phone number. In the last 3 years or so I can think of one exception where someone preferred Discord but I still got their phone number as a "backup".

Over here it's either LINE (does support adding by number but can't remember the last time I used that, literally years) or FB/Instagram.

In India, WhatsApp is the gateway to Internet for millions as many of its users wouldn't have ever opened a browser or received an email.

WhatsApp new version updates gets prime time News spot in even prominent, respected News channel.

Social structures are being built on WhatsApp here, Relatives get offended when you don't join their WhatsApp groups, people don't believe when you say that you don't use WhatsApp, Package disptach details from eCommerce arrive through WhatsApp(no permissions asked) and of course spam arrives through WhatsApp(Local shops wish for your birthday because you signed up for that damn discount card 10 years ago).

Signal can also function as SMS client on Android, so it's easy to communicate with those who have Signal or use plain SMS; besides additional hardening against SMS based exploits.

I wish they didn't discard the encryption on SMS, at least there's still Silence.

Was it for exporting SMS to other clients? Although I don't know why it cannot be done with a primary password.

There are options sure but on my friends case I can see people aren't so eager to leave the most popular applications/networks, the privacy argument is often shunned with classic "I don't have anything to hide" line and often one is "I won't be installing another app on my x/y/z".

But Telegram still seems to be most popular second choice after Messenger and/or WhatsApp - I've seen recently two people joining it out of sudden (perhaps messenger gained traction because of Belarus situation); personally that's my default instant messenger nowadays, while Signal is the backup one. I'd like to move everyone to element/matrix but that's rather impossible to achieve...

+1 for Matrix. Just needs some more polished clients

> there's still WhatsApp,

Literally in the headline. (unless it's been edited)

It was edited.

dont use SMS, even sending an email from a public cyber coffe is safer than an SMS this days

Do you think that Facebook users worry much about their privacy?

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