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Comment by pesus | Hacker News Reader

Is there any data that shows people in the US are switching to WhatsApp? The only people I've ever seen use it are people with family in other countries. The statistics I've seen indicate that iPhone usage amongst American teenagers is high and still increasing(1), which almost certainly would lead to higher iMessage usage.

(1) https://www.pipersandler.com/teens

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how do imessage and android users communicate with each others? Do android users really still use sms to reach apple users? Don't they have group chats everywhere?

Here in europe every club/association/group has a whatsapp group chat. For instance here since the official app provided by the government has a super clunky UX most people get information from primary school through a whatsapp group chat managed by the parent's representative who has exclusive access to teaching group.

Yes, I text my brother who has an iphone. Thats our primary communication when not speaking.

As a counter to your question I've never used whatsapp and never saw a reason. What group chats? Are they groups of personal friends or mostly things you would 'follow' like a football club?

There is the parent's group for the school mentionnned above, my cycling club to discuss the upcoming rides/events and share pics (replace cycling with any kind of hobby you can think of), we have a family group chat with my parents and siblings, which are leaving in a different country as mine, an extended family in law group chat, comprised mostly of people living in another continent. At a former job we had a group chat that was meant to discuss anything not related to work, arrange out of office meetups. It sporadically served to share valuable information relative to work when there has been natural disaster so that people don't try to reach the office and stay at home. Much quicker than calling all employees.

Additionally whenever there is a social event a group chat is created so that people can discuss the organization, and after the event share their sentiments, pictures, videos.

It is never mandatory to participates in all those group chats but a lot of info go through them and they are usually useful. And the family group chats are great when you only get the chance to meet them more than a couple times a year.

Thanks for that information - it does seem to provide some good utility. And now that you mentioned it I recall my father uses it to talk to our polish relatives as that's the most convenient platform. I am not in that circle tho as I don't know polish haha.

Glad to hear they aren't mandatory, that would be my fear for certain things.

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