this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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because it gained popularity in countries where sending SMS used to cost money at the time, years before Facebook has purchased it, became the main means of communication, and it turns out that moving an entire country's (or even continent's) population away from a messaging app has proven to be difficult.
Ironically, it got popular when it still tried to get users to subscribe to a monthly payment. And as it was one of the few messaging platforms to be (in the future) paid at all, I cannot understand why it ever got popular...
Well, sure, Meta cancelled the subscription plans later but to me it sounded a red flag in the first place.
Because that way people thought they were directly paying for the service they were using, instead of being the product of said platform, having their personal data harvested and sold to the highest bidder?
The red flag is to look at a free meal and not wonder what the catch might be. Especially to this day, with all we learned about what the tech majors do with all the data.
Are you saying that people perceived WhatsApp as better than SMS or better than Facebook?
That's not my point. My point is why would the majority of the world do this when they knew it was going to be paid.
I can't think of other product examples where people would so gladly accept trial versions of otherwise free feature-equivalent services. Maybe WinRAR, but that could be replaced with any other product instantly anyway (no network effect), should it ever get enforce its trial.
As it happened, both.
Back then, the norm was to pay for a service. When it's good and the price is fair, people use it, especially when the alternative was feature-limited SMS paid by the message at inadequately high cost. And Facebook isn't free: you trade privacy and exposure to customized ads in exchange for access to the service, so your comparison is biased.