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WhatsApp worldwide usage is estimated to be more than 2B+ users. Even if this article is accurate, it doesn’t really mean much. In the HN bubble lots of people have migrated to Signal with all of their contacts but outside of that bubble nothing much seems to be happening. Note that I’m not agreeing with these changes, I’m just observing reality.

To put things into perspective, let’s assume that 25M users (as stated in the article) actually moved to Telegram - which I use and like by the way. Let’s assume they fully moved and stopped using WhatsApp (very unlikely). That means less than 1.25% users moved to another platform - and this means assuming many things that aren’t probably real.

It reminds me a bit of the articles about DuckDuckGo vs Google where many people think big changes in usage are happening while ignoring that the average Joe will keep using whatever it’s using unless there’s way too much trouble to continue using it.

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The problem is that what makes Whatsapp sticky is the network effect. People use Whatsapp because everyone has Whatsapp.

But if you now have several millions of people who will not use Whatsapp at all, all the groups that they are in will need to migrate to the alternative (which is pretty much Signal/Telegram at this point). So those few million become few tens of millions. And once they migrate and start liking it, they may avoid Whatsapp as well, because it's far easier to just use one app, and then their groups need to migrate, and so on.

Edit 1: Added Telegram as an alternative.

Totally agree. I had a couple groups which were moved from WhatsApp to Telegram and they work great. So I’m aware (and happy) this happens but also I’m that kind of special early-adopter user who cares about things that non-tech users don’t.

This is something I want to highlight. I know we’re not all product managers but as people working in tech we should be able to take different perspectives and understand that what matters to us doesn’t matter at all for the 99% of the people outside our tech world.

The network effect only acts if enough people in your network use it. It is subject to a threshold with a sigmoid activation. If only three people in a group of ten want to use Signal, it's different than if 7 want to switch. So right now, as most folks use Whatsapp, it favours Whatsapp far more than it favours Signal.

It also depends on your level of seniority in that group. If you are a junior member, they likely won't switch, but if you have the social clout, you might be able to get them to switch.

For the same reason, Facebook was initially open to only Harvard, then to a few other ivies, until it opened to all colleges in the USA and Canada. If your high school friend who made it to the the highly esteemed college uses the service you are more likely to switch than if it were the reverse situation. Later these people get into important positions of society and if you want to network with them, you too can use FB.

This is exactly right. Author Nassim Taleb has written on this extensively. He calls it "The Dominance of the Stubborn Minority".

A dedicated and stubborn minority can gradually impose their preferences on a majority who does not have a strong opinion on something. This why you'll order a cheese pizza if you're hanging out with friends and a single person in the group is a vegetarian.

In my own life there are many group chats that are now on signal because one stubborn 'ole grouch, namely me, insisted on it. Most people don't give too much thought to the chat app they use, so they kind of shrugged their shoulders and went along with it.

for Nassim's example to work the minority has to be exclusionary. Everything is nut-free because you don't want to kill allergic people and you can't have both nuts and no nuts in your food, so the minority in the group can force to change the behaviour of the rest.

With messaging apps you can use both Whatsapp and Signal, so even if you convince a few people to convert, Whatsapp is unlikely to decline.

The important word in Taleb's thesis is 'stubborn', not minority. The change isn't gradual but 'fractal' with one person in the group being able to flip everyone else, and they going on an doing the same thing.

I think you both can be correct

I think the stubborn minority may indeed be small, but you havent given the intolerant minority the time ineeds to grow.

On the surface it seems like people would just use two apps, but most people don’t care. So, if nobody is extremely pro WhatsApp because for example they have a non smartphone and it’s what works then WhatsApp dies.

It’s just a question of how many people are extremely pro WhatsApp and will Facebook drive them away.

But you're stuck in a world where apps are segregated that way. But if I were Google, I'd change android to make their messaging app backend-agnostic and able to send information to any app with a unified frontend. I'd ban from the store if not.

Done, nobody cares anymore, for real and features will come from Google :D We're so stuck on using 2 apps instead of 2 networks we forget mobile phone providers had to agree together to do SMS decades ago, and it went fine with dumbed down feature.

And let's be honest, the only killer feature that made me finally adopt whatsapp like 6 years ago was that it used the data plan that works on WIFI rather than the phone plan. We were all fine with SMSes before.

It's weird to hear you say that, because SMS is terrible. Unreliable delivery, delivery receipts that come back even if the recipient's phone is turned off, no media (MMS is also terrible, just try to send a video over it and watch the pixelated garbage that comes out the other side), no privacy or security to speak of, carrier interop issues (character encodings, message length, shortcode support), identity tied to your phone number, no ability to send/receive messages without being tethered to the phone (to be fair, Signal and WhatsApp also have this problem)... I could go on.

SMS and MMS are telco standards whose progress and maintenance depends on the willingness of operators to patch and upgrade their infrastructure equipment (good luck with that)

So yeah, while saddening I don’t expect SMS to make much progress as its lifecycle is tied to the worst one in the industry.

XMPP had a better chance, but unfortunately chatting service is the bait for other purposes... so an interop standard has no chance to survive without regulation.

Interesting. I guess the issues you see as a user depend on where you life / which carrier you are using?

I had more issues with iMessage delivery then I ever had with SMS in my whole life. I dont even remember a single incident with SMS delivery. And I consider your "missing media" point an advantage. Sending stupid videos from phone to phone is a disease that I dont want to deal with.

> no ability to send/receive messages without being tethered to the phone (to be fair, Signal and WhatsApp also have this problem)

Signal actually has a desktop app. It requires having installed signal on a phone before, and linking the accounts, but it doesn't depend on the phone after that I believe.

As for SMS, it works on pretty much any device and network, with the caveats that it's the first and lowest common denominator messaging service.

  >Signal actually has a desktop app.

So does Telegram. And it works independently of whether or not you've got the app installed on your phone.

Back in the day when Google had "don't be evil" as their motto, they released something called GTalk. It was a desktop instant messaging app, because that was before the smartphone era.

They based it on the decentralized protocol Jabber (or XMPP) and even open their servers to others. Meaning you could discuss with people using other servers than GTalk, just like email.

Google closed their servers to federalization, rebranded GTalk to Hangout and made bad decision after bad decision (but always in the direction of closing up instead of supporting open standards), lost the fight for messaging despite controlling the dominant mobile OS.

tl;dr I have no faith in Google to (1) do the right thing for open standards and (2) manage to get any sort of market share on messaging

>Google closed their servers to federalization, rebranded GTalk to Hangout

rewording your sentence: Google stop volunteering time & resources on efforts that help others make money, and focused on only Google making money. I don't own any Google (AlphaBet) stocks, but if I was a shareholder, and someone would have told me that "we have a line item that is -50m on our statement, but hey, it is good for the competitors", I would like that line item gone.

I have faith in Google that they will try their best to make money. They may lose 1 here and make 50 there, but that -1 will be gone after a certain time. And this is a good business decision. Otherwise they would have one cash cow and 100 losers and they would be a break-even business, which is not a Business because Business = profit.

I get it, capitalism is fucking us up. The open standards we take for granted today were created by hippies researchers in the 20th century. That's not happening in today's world.

That's how messaging worked on Maemo/MeeGo on the Nokia N900 and N9.

You just added a bunch of accounts and all you messages and conversations (SMS, Skype, Jabber, etc.) were in one unified place.

Its still effectively this way on modern SailfishOS but as new IM services are effectively app based silos with no public API this system needs, you are not really able to make use of it.

> With messaging apps you can use both Whatsapp and Signal

You can have both Whatsapp and Signal installed, but everyone in a conversation needs to have the same app. So why not both doesn't apply as neatly as you assert.

Sure, but that assumes you only have one group. I'm in only 2 really small groups, both on Signal, but I keep Whatsapp because there are a few people I can only talk to there.

It's also a backup mechanism in case Signal fails (like it did when the exodus happened)

> It's also a backup mechanism in case Signal fails (like it did when the exodus happened)

I view SMS as a fallback solution. It has plenty of benefits, i.e. no app required, works on every mobile phone ever made.

That's true, but the people I talk to on Whatsapp are not (usually) in the same country as me, and cross-border SMS tends to not be included in a basic package. Especially now that UK has left the EU, that's definitely not going to be cheap. Add to this that cost increases with message length in SMS - over the internet it's basically flat if you have wifi or data (up to a point at least... :D )

You can have both of them installed at the same time, so anyone refusing to join a Signal conversation is just going out of their way to be a pain to deal with.

Eh, I already have enough messaging apps myself (4 right now), so adding more at this point is a hurdle I'd like to avoid. I can imagine others having similar feelings.

Stubborn minority in this case would be the stubborn Signal users refusing to use Whatapp?

3 groups:

1. Uses Signal only

2. Uses both

3. Uses Whatsapp only

1 is the stubborn minority, 2 is slowly increasing, and 3 probably doesn't care enough to be considered stubborn, and definitely not minority.

At least that was my thought, this whole debacle reminded me immediately of the stubborn minority, so I'm very curious to see how it plays out.

I'd pick a different classification. It's more like these groups:

1. Uses whatsapp out of momentum. Doesn't want to use anything else, but might if people really push them; i.e. open to transition to group 2.

2. Will use whatever. Some people in this group want to stop using whatsapp, but won't break contacts to do so. Some people in this group would prefer to stick with whatsapp to avoid the burden of a switch, but won't break contacts to do so. This is the vast majority of switchers.

3. Die hard whatsapp users. Simply refuse to switch to another app, because it's a hassle, and/or because they begrudge other people making a mountain out of a molehill and asking them to do anything. Might oppose yet-another-app; or might actually want to stick to whatsapp because they actually like the simplicity of the network effect.

4. Die hard non-whatsapp (likely signal?) users. Refuse to use whatsapp, likely due to privacy concerns or distrust of facebook.

I don't think most people trying to switch away from whatsapp are in 4. Anecdotally, I people I know asking to switch are clearly in 2, and are largely losing to those in 3. Only 1 person I know claims to be in 4, but I'm not really sure that'll stick if the exodus doesn't keep momentum. Because of the existance of the bulk of humanity which barely cares about this, and some of which will get annoyed at the suggestion - I suspect group 3 is much, much larger than 4, and that suggests this exodus will fall flat. The only real chance here is that since this is all about closed groups that network effects aren't so huge, so a considerable exodus without actual terminal velocity is possible.

Interesting, I think your classification adds some nice colour to the situation.

To me the biggest question, does 2 grow bigger than 3? When X% of people have Telegram, Whatsapp and Signal installed, then it becomes a non-issue to have Signal only sticklers.

> The only real chance here is that since this is all about closed groups that network effects aren't so huge, so a considerable exodus without actual terminal velocity is possible.

This is my experience so far. I think you're right that the network effect is very fragmented and micro. In my case the few active groups that I value have migrated, the rest don't care and could email me or sms me and I've seen sufficient migration to Signal, signalling that moving from 1 to 4 might be viable.

Yeah, I experienced this myself when - some years ago - I attempted to transition to Signal. In all the groups I was in, there was at least one person from group 3, who outright refused to move. It scuppered my efforts...

I'm in the delicate position where 6 yearsago I started using Telegram and told a friend and now he doesn't want to move because I "should have told him to use signal and I have moved all my friends to Telegram and they wouldn't understand and Signal desktop has memory leaks and I don't like it anyway".

The guy nagging people with Linux ten years ago.

Anyway.

I agree. I've been using Telegram for quite a few years, and back then I used to be more of an early adopter and tried to make my social circles to switch to Telegram and one circle did, the tech circle. The other circles didn't care much about the features that Telegram had as much as the contacts they had on Whatsapp.

So now with that amount of people switching trying out Telegram, could mean that at least 2-3 people on a non-tech social circle might be using Telegram which might end up convincing the whole group to switch because of features (polls? utility bots?) or any other benefit they might find.

I agree with this. It's exactly what happened to Skype.

This is correct, there is a magic percentage number on what the tipping point for such migration/adoption numbers is - its I believe pretty low, like 7% or so if I remember right.

Yeah the network effect of WhatsApp is much stronger to me than, for instance, Facebook. A substantial amount of my “conversations” with friends and work-related are WhatsApp. I’d say to the degree that nowadays (in singapore) I’ve recently noticed new contacts (eg someone I buy something from on an online market) will say, “what’s your number where I can WhatsApp you?” Used to be “where do I [call, sms] you?”

I have no issue using telegram or signal, it’s just that the default choice is becoming/became whatsapp.

Cant stand Zuckerberg, but he does have an eye for products that can really explode in growth.

He bought WhatsApp when it was already successful. He had deep pockets and regulators didn't do their job, the merger shouldn't have been allowed.

Afaik Whatsapp had already exploded before it was acquired, at least in Europe.

Exactly. At the time of the acquisition it was already the "default" messaging service in many countries.

The fact that the acquisition happened has more to do with regulators being asleep than Zuckerberg being awake.

As far as I can recall, the EU regulators believed Facebook's lies about not being able to link WhatsApp and Facebook accounts, which Facebook promptly ignored a few years later. They were fined €110m ($134m) [0]. The maximum fine would have been $276m at the time. Still cheap IMO.

This quote reads like a joke now:

> Today’s decision sends a clear signal to companies that they must comply with all aspects of EU merger rules, including the obligation to provide correct information

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/may/18/facebook-fi...

When I traveled around Africa, WhatsApp was the only way to contact most people.

I don't envision a whole continent to change to something else unless WhatsApp dies.

Africa used to swear on blackberry messenger. Infact what killed BBM is android and whatsapp

I wonder if the move will be that straightforward. A group of like-minded, privacy-aware people might move away from WhatsApp when one user advocates for it, but I am not sure a couple of people leaving a large group of average users would be enough to cause the rest to migrate.

Also, human have limited amount of attention --- if Telegram/Signal cannot make it to the critical mass soon then average users who had been convinced to try the alternatives might eventually revert back to WhatsApp because maintaining multiple chatting channels can be quite annoying at times, especially considering majority of their contacts might still be on WhatsApp and it is just easier to post there.

I use it because my mum, who has Parkinsons, can work her Facebook Portal.

>let’s assume that 25M users (as stated in the article) actually moved to Telegram

Oh the irony of a knee jerk reaction fleeing an end-to-end encrypted messaging service to a messaging service that only offers opt-in encryption that more often than not doesn't get used. There was never any proposal to remove encryption anywhere, only add a new feature that, by the very nature of it, didn't lend itself to practical end-to-end encryption.

People choose their messaging apps for reasons other than privacy. And there's nothing wrong with that.

There's nothing wrong with it if, and only if, people understand that's the choice they're making.

Here we have an exodus driven by *privacy* concerns surrounding the new policy. Users fled from WhatsApp to other services with the intent of keeping their conversations more private. The subset of those who switched to Telegram made their conversations strictly *less* private, achieving the opposite of their goals.

There is something wrong with that.

I wouldn't conflate privacy with encryption necessarily.

^^ This.

There's "I'm plotting criminal activities or planning to overthrow my government" messaging which requires secure encryption.

And there's "I don't particularly want to be followed round the intarwebs by adverts for piles ointment, because I mentioned my itchy arse in a message to someone" which requires respect for your privacy.

I reckon most of us are happy enough with the latter in daily use. And, when we do need to plot an overthrow of the government, we can always flick the big "secret chat" switch. I think Telegram just about gets the balance right; sacrificing some default secrecy for ease of use, seamless sync across all your devices and 'fun' things which are likely to lead to wider adoption --whilst also allowing you to switch on the more secure stuff, as and when you need it.

> Users fled from WhatsApp to other services with the intent of keeping their conversations more private.

That's not strictly true. Users fled whatsapp to keep their messages away from Facebook. It could be a concern for privacy or a concern for not letting Facebook (specifically) monetize their conversations.

People who leave a service when the terms change in a way that negatively impacts their privacy are clearly choosing based on privacy reasons though (mostly anyway, some might be leaving because their friends left).

Except that the terms of service didn't change in a way that negatively impacted their privacy - they were taken in by misinformation that was left to spread unchallenged because the mainstream media had an axe to grind against Facebook. The net impact of which is that their conversations are now less private and they don't even realise it.

Beware of the malicious PR campaign carried out by Facebook. The terms did change in a negative way, it’s enough to read them to see it. Even for EU users. Later, when Facebook realized this time things would not be ignored, they started their PR campaign. First the claimed that in EU there would be no changes, then (first time I see it in the linked article) they claimed that there were no changes anywhere in the world. At the end of the day what matters is what is in the terms, not what the spokesperson claims. And in the terms there is no opt-out from sharing data with Facebook.

The terms did not change in a malicous way, because they were already malicious. There never was an opt-out of sharing data with Facebook:

> Specifically, users had 30 days after first seeing the 2016 privacy policy notice to opt out of “shar[ing] my WhatsApp account information with Facebook to improve my Facebook ads and product experiences.” The emphasis is ours; it meant that WhatsApp users were able to opt out of seeing visible changes to Facebook ads or Facebook friend recommendations, but could not opt out of the data collection and sharing itself.

Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/01/its-business-usual-wha...

I get some trust from the fact that Telegram is the chosen platform for drug dealers and terrorists around the world. The metadata in Signal actually got people in trouble...

Whatever flaws Telegram got, it seems less impactful than getting mined by facebook and the practical design failings of Signal.

Why are telegram’s owners assigned to be better than Facebook?

I can see some benefit with Signal being open source.

Telegram's clients are also FOSS. Anyway, I am not advocating for Telegram. Just stating my trust feelz with Signal and Telegram. I wouldn't use either for anything where my mere association would be a risk.

Care to provide a source for your claims about Signal?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/20/matt-shea-righ...

I think this may have been resolved now. However the issue remains that you cannot delete signal contacts and legacy groups, which means anyone who gets a hold on your phone number (without a pin) or phone, or account access to third party involved, got evidence for communication between you and a possible incriminating entity.

> Contacts must be blocked in order to be removed from your Signal Contact List. To learn how to block someone, click here.

https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007319011-Ma...

You either have the contact in your contact list, or block list... I hope that's obviously supporting my claim.

Some of these meta data leaks may have been changed and are a result of my old account, however Signal lost my trust. (And lost sympathy over Moxy Marlinspike's opinions and presentation over time, e.g. the hangover/drunk "centralization: good" CCC talk, the F-droid drama, ...)

> I’m just observing reality.

Well me too and... Even before this recent WhatsApp fiasco I noticed that some parents are using Telegram at the school where my kid goes. Out of 24 kids in my kid's class, there are 3 families which I know for sure have Telegram (I don't have contact with all of the parents so I don't know).

And I think Telegram is reporting more than, what, 500M users by now? If it's true, it's definitely a sizeable dent in WhatsApp's market share. It may not be 2B+, but 500M is quite something.

The thing is: users are not loyal at all. Telegram or Signal or others are a click or two away: it's neither hard to find/install nor to use.

I really wouldn't be surprised to see a bigger shift some day once more people begin to realize that "WhatsApp = FB" (many don't like FB but have no idea WhatsApp belongs to FB).

> The thing is: users are not loyal at all. Telegram or Signal or others are a click or two away: it's neither hard to find/install nor to use.

Users aren't loyal, true, and installing another app is easy, but getting your friends and family to switch often is not.

the ToS hubbub going through mainstream media has made it much easier to get people to switch though.

In my case, I was one of those people really not wanting to use WhatsApp but being forced by group pressure.

But now that I can even just vaguely reference the ToS issue with WhatsApp, I find people are willing to at least try and install Signal.

There's quite likely a lot of overlap. For example I'm using all of them (Signal, Telegram, whatsApp, iMessage and whatnot).

> many don't like FB but have no idea WhatsApp belongs to FB

When you start WhatsApp the splash screen says "WhatsApp from Facebook" so I would be surprised if people really didn't know that the two companies were related. Instagram is the same, it says "Instagram from Facebook".

WhatsApp: https://i.imgur.com/JS20lGJ.png

Instagram: https://i.imgur.com/1SWybdu.png

> In the HN bubble lots of people have migrated to Signal with all of their contacts but outside of that bubble nothing much seems to be happening.

I live in Mexico, most things happen through WhatsApp.

I was surprised by how many of my non-technical friends migrated to Signal and Telegram. Non-techies were sharing fake information about the new policy. The word around was that the new policy would allow facebook to spy on all your messages and photos. This scared off a lot of people and many of my friends at least download Signal or Telegram.

I shared the same opinion, before I saw all of my acquaintances (which are as removed from the HN bubble as you can find) install Signal en masse in a matter of two weeks.

It's purely anecdotal of course, but I never expected this type of reaction to happen so massively and so fast.

This was my experience as well. The signups extend far beyond the tech bubble in the circles I’ve seen adopting signal.

Yes, I’ve seen this over here in The Netherlands as well. Just about every day I log in and can see another non-tech acquaintance having joined signal. It’s been at least 50 over the past few weeks, it’s really weird.

Agree. This has been the interesting thing to me: that so many non-nerd friends have popped up on Signal. Totally fascinating that the shift is happening to a group who are typically not that bothered about the presence of FB. I'll have to ask them about their motivations in more detail...

Maybe it was Elon's Tweet that also persuaded people to switch. His other tweet got the SEC after him for market manipulation.

Dito. I watched and counted how many are moving to Telegram and Signal and Signal is winning so far. Those aren't HN people.

But I take the bet they are moving to Telegram in a month or two when Signal's shortcomings hit them (mainly chat history and some sync issues).

I think there was a lot of miscommunication/misinformation shared around. Honestly, even now I'm not entirely sure what the whole thing entails. It's a change of policy that was already in effect, but you have to accept it now? What exactly is now being shared? Being in Europe, there was a lot of talk about how it didn't apply, and yet we still have the message?

I'd not be surprised if a lot of people got "FB (evil!) wants to read everything or they will close your account". Given how often I have received "share this message 10 times or WhatsApp will delete your account" from relatives, I think it also plays into this fear of losing access to your contacts. And it was all over the mainstream news, with the alternatives readily available (and their own shortcomings often not described).

It's funny to me how misinformation can be used to combat (further) misinformation. Food for thought.

The extremely positive side of this is that you can be a 'competitor' to Google, or other megaservices and steal enough customers to run a 10M+ user company and they woudln't even register you as a competitor. The internet market is HUGE.

Perception matters. You can't get to two billion without getting to 25 million first.

We could also say 1M and still be a valid statement. I don’t know if that tells anything though.

Perception does matter a lot, and that’s why I used the 1% figure. It means one percent of WhatsApp users are investigating a competitor (not even deleting their account in WhatsApp, but I guess few did) and here people seem to see it as a clear tipping point to which I disagree - raw numbers don’t mean much if you have nothing to compare with.

You would be surprised.. I have had two family groups switch to Signal, I never once mentioned switching over because I thought no one would agree. The switch was suggested by people not technologically savvy.

This is so funny. That is what happened to me. I’ve been on Signal for a while and suddenly the whole extended family switched over. The switch to signal is real.

It's actually possible the real drop in users (or usage) might be more. Facebook took the front page (the whole effing page) of every news paper in India last week to alleviate fears. It's only comparable to DDG articles if Google also similarly had to put ads about how Google respects privacy because of an Exodus.

That sounds pretty desperate. Is there a precedent for companies communicating like this in India?

They (Facebook) have done this before too. I recall that they bought full-page ads in all major newspapers to promote their "Free Basics" initiative.

There are also other examples, but I consider this level of advertising by them to be very desperate.

Facebook was already pushing out long video ads on Indian TV, even before this fiasco. Indian consumers are seemingly more valuable; there are a significant number of users who use WhatsApp for business (customer support & sales). WhatsApp has also started a mobile payments platform in the country.

Sri Lankan here (that island under India). You would assume that this would go right over our heads, but a lot of people here are concerned and when I finally installed Signal, I noticed many people already there. Some of them, I never expected to see outside of WhatsApp or Viber.

> loses millions of users

Did millions of users uninstall WhatsApp? I don't think so. The most downloaded app figures by App Annie shows exactly what it says, which app was downloaded the most during that period. So as long as WhatsApp stays in the phone and if it receives a single message from hundreds of contacts a user has; WhatsApp didn't loose that user.

So the correct title IMO is 'Signal, Telegram gained millions of users'.

> So as long as WhatsApp stays in the phone and if it receives a single message from hundreds of contacts a user has; WhatsApp didn't loose that user.

Agree - WhatsApp didn't lose the user. whatsApp lost the usage. That's still a loss. Not a total loss but a loss never the less

> Not a total loss but a loss never the less

This is the first time I have seen about dozen new Signal contacts; but the question is how many of those dozen contacts are initiating messages through Signal and receiving messages in Signal from the newly signed-up users?

I have sandboxed WhatsApp in a separate machine and receive its messages through email[1] and I still receive WhatsApp messages from the aforementioned contacts.

Things would have changed if WhatsApp locked out the profiles(incl. me) who didn't accept the T&C on Feb 8; but now with that gone I don't think there's really going to be any change.

[1]https://abishekmuthian.com/send-and-receive-whatsapp-message...

Did Skype lose millions of users only when those users uninstalled Skype on their desktop, or long before that when those users started installing WhatsApp on their phone?

Most people probably can't remember the exact moment that Skype was no longer relevant.

Fair point, but I don't think Skype & 'mobile first' new generation chat apps like WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram, Signal etc. belong to the same category.

> Most people probably can't remember the exact moment that Skype was no longer relevant.

When smartphones became the go-to compute device for many. Yes Skype was made available to smartphones too, but like many other 'mobile first' applications which replaced traditional desktop software Skype was pushed down by the chat apps.

Yes, you're right that desktop and 'mobile first' apps are a different category, so that at first, it would seem like the comparison between Skype and WhatsApp is a category error.

But I suppose it's also fair to say that Signal is now a good example of a 'privacy first' app, a new category that WhatsApp equally don't seem too interested in.

I think the analogy still holds both ways: exact uninstalls are not important once the communication starts moving elsewhere, and 'mobile first' and 'privacy first' are categories that companies ignore at the cost of losing millions of users.

> Most people probably can't remember the exact moment that Skype was no longer relevant.

What do you mean? Skype is being used more now than this time last year. It has just been renamed. The first few versions of Teams would even call themselves "Skype" when connecting to PulseAudio.

Teams is an evolution of SkypeForBusiness, which isn't exactly Skype -- consumer Skype still exists. (Teams for Families sounds like it would be the Skype replacement, but it's derived from standard Teams)

Skype for Business... -> Lync ... -> Office Communicator

Say what you want about Microsoft, but they are the (Forefront?) experts at re-re-re-branding.

-- Sent from my MS Passport.NET account.

Legit question: What are the alternatives to Skype?

Although it's become much less relevant for IM purposes, it's still my to-go application for ad-hoc video calls with friends and family. Mostly because (a) it has an actively maintained desktop client, (b) it is offered as a standalone service, (c) it is home-user friendly (won't splash you with meeting and calendar buttons like zoom).

FaceTime, Facebook messenger/instagram video calling, Google hangouts or whatever their new chat and video app is called, and since 2020 Zoom as well got a lot of home user adoption.

Signal now has video calling through their desktop application.

(a) its actively maintained (b) unsure about requirements of "standalone service", but its stand alone as its only a chat service (c) its just a messaging client, no calendar/meeting kind of stuff

Other than that I've had good success with web-focused services like Google Meet and Jit.si. There isn't a desktop app but to an extent that's been a win. All you need to do is email/text a link to your chosen friends and its all in their browser using web standards (or semi-standards, no plugins at least for modern FF/Chrome/Edge). No accounts, assuming they have a modern browser there's no software to install, just click and go.

Thanks for the pointer to the Signal desktop app! It looks pretty close to what I had in mind.

As for the definition of a standalone service: One that doesn't tightly integrate with other offerings/ecosystems. Skype is kind of ok because other than connecting with your MS account, it doesn't promote other offerings. Also Microsoft's business model is not based on collecting and selling your data, at least not in the same extent as Google/FB.

Web-focused services work ok if you're comfortable with the web. But for parents, grandparents etc., I feel that a standalone client with a simple interface is more foolproof.

Maybe they don't totally lose the user but if their usage decrease, that user loses value to them.

I didn't totally delete my Facebook account either, but as I haven't posted in years and don't have the apps installed, I don't think I contribute much more to their bottom line than someone without account.

You are looking at it merely from a percentage point of view. 1.24% at Facebook's scale is _massive_. It is not a drop in the bucket, and Facebook is especially worried because it could be a trend. Today it's 1.24% but how many people would switch tommorow?

Might be a bit more than you think. I’ve been using signal for some work chats, as it is a fully functional app no one I knew was using, so it made for a nice silo.

Since the term change, I’d say maybe 10-20% of the contacts on my phone have installed signal. It notifies you of new contacts. I don’t know if they’re chatting, and no one has actually used it to message me, but the group I’m seeing is far beyond some technical niche.

Whether it dents whatsapp is another question.

Every big snowball starts as a single snowflake. A few million users does _mean much_ if you give it enough time to develop.

I suspect these effects might also be very regional.

Some anecdotal evidence from my end is that with the change of terms nontechnical friends are much more open to use other messengers if I say I don't want to use WhatsApp. Previously I was sort of regarded as the guys who was making a fuzz out of nothing, now people just say OK let's try. I suspect this is because it made it to mainstream media, so there is more general awareness.

It seems also that the people moving now are more the nontechnical audience. For example my partner who is completely nontechnical and using what others are using, just told me last week that suddenly all her acquaintances are popping up on signal.

> In the HN bubble lots of people have migrated to Signal with all of their contacts but outside of that bubble nothing much seems to be happening.

HN can't represent all of the 50 million new users to Signal.

> It reminds me a bit of the articles about DuckDuckGo vs Google where many people think big changes in usage are happening while ignoring that the average Joe will keep using whatever it’s using unless there’s way too much trouble to continue using it.

I don't think that this is an apt comparison. The functionality of IM is virtually unchanged for the past 20 years or so, and can easily be replicated. This makes jumping between different IM much more frictionless than switching a search engine.

“Even if this article is accurate, it doesn’t really mean much” millions of users (to start) moving away from a platform does matter; it matters for those users and could evolve into a larger movement in time.

“Let’s assume they fully moved and stopped using WhatsApp (very unlikely)” why is this “very unlikely”, I’ve uninstalled WhatsApp, I will never install WhatsApp again, ever. I guess I’m part of the “very unlikely” group.

While in general I agree this is small, you could add “so far” to the end of the title and it changes the tone somewhat. These not-inconsiderable losses are continuing, and the question is whether it will get to a tipping point where network effects kick in or not. Every large change had to start somewhere. But I think we’re in agreement that we need to see more evidence to say with any certainty that the tipping point is going to be reached.

A message I received from telegram on Jan 12 2021 says it has more than 500 million active users. “Telegram surpassed 500 million active users. In the past 72 hours alone, more than 25 million new users from around the world joined Telegram. Thank you! These milestones were made possible by users like you who invite their friends to Telegram. ”

There is not much of a network effect on search engines. Nothing is stopping you from using DuckDuckGo instead of Google, it doesn't matter what the "average Joe" uses.

But this is different. If all your friends use WhatsApp, you have no choice but to use WhatsApp. An chat network where you are the only one is useless.

> In the HN bubble lots of people have migrated to Signal with all of their contacts but outside of that bubble nothing much seems to be happening.

I’ve had a ton of non-tech people show up on Signal suddenly. I asked one of them why everyone is signing up, and he said because he doesn’t trsut WhatsApp.

Well, it means a lot for me. Until now I had to use WhatsApp because of a few groups I had there, now I was able to remove it because all my groups migrated to Signal.

For most of those, I didn't even have to initiate it, it was proposed by a less techy member than me.

My own experience: I've seen a few new Telegram users. I don't think I've seen a single Whatsapp user leave.

That's how it starts. Then one day you realize you haven't used WhatsApp in months, or you get an new phone and don't think about installing it...

I'm not saying this will happen soon, but it happened in the past several times with products with a strong network effect.

Think about AIM, MSN, Friendster, MySpace...

Gotta start somewhere...

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