WhatsApp is huge in the Middle East, it’s group chat is used for persistent dissemination of information from family news to unfunny jokes.
I’ve found out about multiple funerals through WhatsApp.
Viber also uses your phone number, is ad free, and never charges you money. I actually have no idea how they make any money (they have a “sticker market” where you can buy stupid emoticon-y things, but I can’t imagine that being a viable business model). It’s the primary messaging app that our friends and family use in Ireland - and my wife uses it to voice chat with friends and family at home as well, it’s surprisingly solid.
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Actually connecting to your phone number is one of the worst parts of WhatsApp. Change your number and you have to both manually migrate your account to the new number and potentially you lose all your history. Have 2 phones (like lots of people in Japan do) and you can’t communicate on one of them. I’ve even had it screw up and require SMS verification again (some how it lost it’s data?) while abroad which required me to switch sims just I could receive the SMS.
I’m glad FB bought them and I hope they basically just move all the users on to FB Messenger. At least FB messenger I can use from any browser so when I’m sitting at my PC/Laptop I can type replies easily on my keyboard instead of having to futs with my phone. FB messenger also lets you optionally register your phone number so people can find you that way.
All I could think was: “And people gave Google shit when they bought Nest for $3 billion.”
Holy shit - 19 BILLION? I heard it was “only” $4 Billion in cash.
Anyone else remember the tech bubble bursting a little over a decade ago?
I just don’t get how this app could possibly make Facebook enough money to make this worth it.
Really - explain this to me. How is this going to make THAT much money???
I’ve used my same WhatsApp account with about 5 different SIM cards in three different countries and never had any issues. It is a bit annoying that it only works on one device at a time, but being able to group chat internationally and between Android and iPhone is worth it.
Kinda what I was thinking. Besides, a $19B thing would land it squarely in some sort of luxury item area, wouldn’t it?
5 different SIM cards in three different countries
I’m glad it worked for you. The doesn’t mean it worked for me. Why it lost it’s login data I have no idea but it asked me to re-verify through SMS which only works if the sim registered to that SMS # is in the phone. FB Messenger doesn’t have this problem because your account is not tied to your phone number.
being able to group chat internationally and between Android and iPhone is worth it.
pretty much every messaging app provides that feature so that’s not a plus for WhatsApp. FB Messenger provides even more since you can use multiple devices including PCs so you can group chat internationally between Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, iPad, Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Some cultures like those stickers. Japan and Korea for example. So calling them stupid is arguably calling both Korean and Japanese culture stupid.
In Japan the #1 messaging app is Line. The stickers are so popular and so well known there is merchandise all over the place based on the default stickers.
You should give them a try. It’s actually pretty fun IMO. The default ones in FB Messenger are ugly but some of the optional ones are very cute and often help add emotion and levity.
Viber is apparently worth 5% of WhatsApp.
I read about the popularity of these sticker things recently.
Without wanting to offend the entire culture of Japan and Korea I’ll just say I don’t see the appeal.
Makes me sad you don’t get it
Seems pretty straight forward. People want to communicate. Lots of communication happens through body language and facial expressions. You can’t easily express those in just text so people resort to other means.
First they used text emoticons like :-) or (T_T)
Then they used icons like 
or 
Now they use more expressive images like
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I just think it’s a bit, well, naff.
I don’t much like emoticons, let alone those icon things. They just get in the way of the text.
I like plain text.
I don’t think the people that like them are stupid. I just think the stickers themselves are a stupid concept for a messaging app - they’re large enough that they can easily push the actual text of the message off my phone screen when the keyboard is shown, which is super annoying. Maybe that’s less of an issue in Japan (and Korea? I don’t know enough about written Korean) where it takes fewer characters to express a single word. They also come across as extremely childish, at least to my North American sensibilities. I know that Japan views such things quite differently.
But if they’re as huge as you say in Korea and Japan, that would explain why Viber focuses on them so much (and why Viber keeps sending me free stickers on special occasions). And if it means that my wife gets to use Viber to call her sister in Ireland for free, instead of spending 20-30 bucks a month on cheapo calling cards? Awesome. Thankfully very few people I know use them.
The person who texts me the most emoticons is not any of my children, but rather a friend in her 50s. It’s just her style. It’s great that there is more than one way to communicate.
That may be it, exactly. Although you’re right that Korean is different than Japanese (it takes more room to write a word in Korean).
There’s also the fact that some people text only a word or phrase at a time (which drives me nuts, getting 10 texts in a row from someone, with a total of maybe 15 words). So if the general culture in texting in Korea and/or Japan follows this style, it makes sense that stickers wouldn’t interfere with viewing the word(s) on a small screen.
I actually have no problem with emoticons, use them all the time myself, and I’m well into my 30’s now. It’s a habit I formed in my BBS days in the early 90’s, and can’t seem to break (at least not in casual conversation). But emoticons, at least, are the same size (generally) as the text with which they are interspersed. They can still be overused, but they’re not nearly as intrusive as stickers are.
My texts have indented paragraphs and semicolons and shit.
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