80% is not an edge case.
Agreed that the person you replied to did not specifically mention the US, but their comment is consistent with a US user's experience, which makes sense since the thread is about US messaging.
Someone asks:
> I still don't get why people use SMS/MMS anyway?
Someone responds:
> [I use SMS/MMS because] Almost nobody I know uses WhatsApp.
You respond:
> Your bubble is not representative of the whole world though.
Not only did the responder not claim for their bubble to represent the world, but it doesn't matter in any case. The set of people they'll be messaging on their phone is largely constrained to their "bubble." If nobody in their bubble uses WhatsApp, then why would they install WhatsApp?
As for the meta discussion revolving around the US: just because nobody mentioned it doesn't mean that's not obviously the central focus of this comment thread. If someone's bubble contains no WhatsApp users, you can be 99% sure that they are American. The US is the main place where platforms like WhatsApp have not been widely adopted. iPhones are extremely popular there, and iMessage is widely used. It's a country of over 300 million people where the vast majority of residents don't communicate with people outside the country.
Between NYC/SF, I do not know a single person that does not use both iMessage and WhatsApp. But typically it is people who are not children of immigrants and whose social circles have no one outside the country that tend to not have WhatsApp.
Sure, if I want to send someone videos, or do regular group chats, I'm going to find an alternative platform. But if it's just a casual contact, or I don't anticipate needing these things, I'll just stick with SMS.
90% of my time is spent copying and pastingl...help me.
Not having any friends makes this less of a burden than you might think.
https://support.google.com/messages/answer/10252671?hl=en
I think this is exclusive to Jibe and Google Messages but a widespread (in terms of installs) proof-of-concept is still pretty cool, and better than nothing.
The bigger problem is adding E2E to SMS is going to attract the FBI's ire, they really really really like reading everybody's texts.
If there were a single 3rd-party messaging platform that I trusted, and my friends started using it, sure. But since 75% use iPhones/iMessage, and the rest SMS, why in the world would I use WhatsApp?
SMS is crap for group chats, and imessage doesn't work if someone in the group isn't using ios.
Now, you absolutely might not care about those things, but millions of people definitely do.
SMS doesn't do group chats; I think you're thinking of MMS. I agree that it's not a great experience, though.
> Group messages to anyone regardless of platform.
That's the thing though; that's not true. WhatsApp might be available on both Android and iOS, but it only works if the person you want to talk to has it installed and has set up an account. That requires coordination. If I meet someone new and want to get in touch with them, I'm going to ask for their phone number (or email address). I'm not going to ask them which messaging apps they have installed so we can figure out which one(s) we have in common.
Sure, if later on I want to start a long-running group chat including this person, I'll absolutely go to the effort of finding a common chat platform that is not MMS, because MMS is terrible. But if I'm only doing 1-on-1 conversations, or just short one-off group chats, I won't bother.
(Interestingly, for some people, even though I have group chats with them on an alternate platform, I'll still message them 1-on-1 using SMS. Not sure why that's the case, and it's not universal. I guess it's just whatever we'd gotten used to, and saw no need to change.)
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408818454938-...
Prior to business features a long time ago they used to charge a one time $1 fee to download then $1 per year.
But that's the case for any business, even one for which users directly pay for the service.
> But if I send him a text from Europe to the US, I pay 1 damn euro per delivered text
How the tables have turned! It's no secret that the US has more expensive cellular plans than the rest of the world, but with my carrier, international texting is free.
They don't. At least not in my experience. I have an iPhone, but there's about a 50/50 split ios/android in my friends and family.
Group chats are almost entirely WhatsApp, and single messages are a blend of WhatsApp, iMessage and SMS.
I probably use SMS/MMS once a week
I've managed to move a few of the 1-on-1 chats to Signal, but not many.
I wonder if that's a US based thing (I'm in NZ)?
Example: https://www.telkomsel.com/en/tariff
A text costs you Rp 350.