I read about WhatsApp and how people can’t part with Meta because of it, however no one on my continent uses it. Why is it so popular in the EU and other parts of the world?
I read about WhatsApp and how people can’t part with Meta because of it, however no one on my continent uses it. Why is it so popular in the EU and other parts of the world?
SMS used to be the standard way of messaging people on a cellphone. Since a European country is about the size of one US state, it’s pretty common to have friends, family or other people you have to message in another European country. Many carriers still charge additional fees for sending SMS messages to other EU countries. So Europeans needed some way of messaging people in other countries for free. That’s where WhatsApp came in, it’s designed for phones and simpler to use than Email. In 2013, WhatsApp was bought by Facebook, which later became Meta. It’s basically the same for other countries that rely on WhatsApp, they need to send messages to foreign countries frequently, which can become quite expensive when using SMS. Americans never needed WhatsApp, because they don’t have to message people in foreign countries as often as Europeans, and they often have unlimited SMS included in their cell plans.
Also in the US the plans had free unlimited sms early on and people just stick with it. They know a number will receive a text message they don’t on now if they have Whatsapp.
You can’t send someone a message unless they have WhatsApp.
This is the best answer.
Source: American, but I’ve spent the past 6 years living across Asia and Europe.
Maybe this is true for some regions, but in general the reason was money. SMS costs money, Whatsapp intially had a low one time or annual fee that was way below what you used to pay for a few SMS, but you got better service than MMS for that fee. And now it’s free and sustained by network effects.
Okay your answer annoyed me because I don’t see how the size of european countries really relates, whatsapp was popular because of group text functionality and messages being free I don’t think it had anything to do with international communication, that said whatsapp and viber took off during the recession when emigration was rampant so there could be something there.
Anyway, I went to investigate and the average US state is larger than the average EU country by quite the margin 190,000 sqkm to 126,000 sqkm.
deleted by creator