this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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Technology
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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.
Whatsapp became popular because it was the only app that ran on everything in 2010, it ran on the newly appeared smartphones as well as on featurephones. Nokia, Blackberry, Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, you name it, it was supported.
Okay, that is a very good point that I did not realize.