WhatsApp this week reached a significant milestone of 100 million monthly active users in the United States, a market traditionally dominated by...

The achievement, announced in an official blog post, indicates a potential shift in the American messaging landscape, where WhatsApp has steadily gained ground despite the longstanding popularity of Apple’s iMessage. The Meta-owned messaging app is extremely popular in Europe owing to its cross-platform compatibility.

  • Gloria
    433·
    5 months ago

    Disgusting. How was the merger of Facebook and Whatsapp allowed in the first place is beyond me. FB Messenger and WhatsApp are the most popular messenger services in the western world and are coming from the same company. The illusion of choice.

    • .:\dGh/:.@lemmy.ml
      251·
      5 months ago

      The Meta-owned messaging app is extremely popular in Europe owing to its cross-platform compatibility.

      There you have it. If iMessages was cross platform, people would use it, but it doesn’t, so people will pivot for the second best thing.

      Also, Northamerica SMS roots are deep, deeper than Europe, Asia and Latinamerica. Disgusting or not, the people already made its choice: $1 a year was too much.

      • Atherel@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        8·
        5 months ago

        I did pay $1 shortly before they were bought by Facebook. But then everyone already had WhatsApp and didn’t want to change. I use Signal as often as possible but non tech savvy people are impossible to persuade to switch.

        • GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip
          5·
          5 months ago

          I simply uninstalled WA. I have signal, threema and as a sort of compromise towards the average users I also have a Foss telegram client. If the wa users dont also have either of these, tough shit. Send me a text then I guess

          • Atherel@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            2·
            5 months ago

            I’d love to but the consequence would just be that I’m missing even more from family, club etc.

            WA completely replaced SMS here from the very beginning. There were phone providers with subs where WA traffic was free when flatrates weren’t common.

      • fer0n@lemmy.worldOP
        2·
        5 months ago

        I agree. Similar to all the anti-competitive lawsuits Apple has to deal with regarding the App Store because they’re clinging to every last dollar they can squeeze out of it, their iMessage approach seems to be going a similar way.

        I’m sure tons of people are buying iPhones because of iMessage, but it looks like that might be slowly eroding away. In the end, they’ll have lost both their relevance in the messaging area and a strong reason for people to buy iPhones. They should’ve just made an Android app for iMessage.

  • edric@lemm.ee
    15·
    5 months ago

    The only reason I have whatsapp is because my neighborhood group chat uses it. I wish everyone moved to Signal.

    • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      5 months ago

      I can’t believe how hard Nextdoor royally fucked up their ability to be communication for a local block.

      My “neighborhood” feed is basically rage posts from senior citizens across my 1.6 million person county. I never ever see posts or comments from the people within my 2 to 4 block radius.

      • edric@lemm.ee
        1·
        5 months ago

        Yeah to be fair my neighborhood’s whatsapp group is still better than nextdoor because it really is contained to the neighborhood only, and so far no karens. Chats are mostly about people giving away extra food, reporting pets that have gotten loose and seen roaming around, and my favorite: everyone united on complaining about the HOA and working together to get those brought up to the board.

    • ClassifiedPancake@discuss.tchncs.de
      3·
      5 months ago

      For some reason, with the few people in my bubble who have installed Signal, we are sometimes missing notifications which never happens on Whatsapp. So you never know when the other end actually sees the message. That is a turnoff for most people and honestly for me too.