due to the new rules of European Union, whatsapp has/had one year - iirc - to open the app to talk with other apps. iirc, this started on February/March of 2024 and we are in 2025. Anyone knows more details or news about it? This is ONLY applicable to European Union countrys, iirc.
Heres a question. I may have missed something but why is WhatsApp so popular? Ive seen people on the dumb phone threads talk about how not having it is a no go?
It’s quite simple, they were the first messaging service to take hold back when sending text messages was still quite expensive.
Unlike America, Europe did not really have unlimited text messaging plans, so when data plans became a thing people switched to alternatives, and Whatsapp was one of the early services that offered that. And then later they got bought by Facebook / Meta.
Now everyone uses it, so they benefit from a network effect. You use it because everyone you know uses it.
Edit: typo
Same thing in Brazil/South America. SMS was hugely expensive and lacked features. Whatsapp showed up around the time cellphone plans were all starting to sell “X gb” of internet data and became the standard for lack of competition. Nowadays it’s so ubiquitous that we get free Whatsapp in all data plans, as not offering that would literally make your plan worthless.
Interesting! Didn’t know any of that.