It’s not that is the only way to talk to your friends. In some countries Whatsapp is the default way to communicate with other people because of SMS prices so if you need to talk to your friends, distant relatives or complete strangers you know you can reach them using that app.
In some cases the fastest way to communicate with a company’s customer service is through Whatsapp.
This misses the point; trying to get people to move to a different platform is a big challenge if they don’t share the same mindset as you around the app, and even when they do agree, they might have other contacts who don’t (and so forth). And having everyone in one place is just more convenient, so people generally don’t want to split between two apps.
When I was in Europe, not only were people repelled at the mere idea of using SMS, but it also didn’t work at all more often than not. I still don’t know why. I got a local SIM, so it wasn’t an international roaming issue. Shit just didn’t work, no matter how I entered country codes in my contacts. While I’ve never had an issue sending SMS in the US, I just reinstall WhatsApp when I visit Europe because I cannot count on SMS working.
because whatsapp is the only way to talk to your friends…
It’s not that is the only way to talk to your friends. In some countries Whatsapp is the default way to communicate with other people because of SMS prices so if you need to talk to your friends, distant relatives or complete strangers you know you can reach them using that app.
In some cases the fastest way to communicate with a company’s customer service is through Whatsapp.
This misses the point; trying to get people to move to a different platform is a big challenge if they don’t share the same mindset as you around the app, and even when they do agree, they might have other contacts who don’t (and so forth). And having everyone in one place is just more convenient, so people generally don’t want to split between two apps.
Thus why I’m stuck using Snapchat.
It effectively is in some countries.
When I was in Europe, not only were people repelled at the mere idea of using SMS, but it also didn’t work at all more often than not. I still don’t know why. I got a local SIM, so it wasn’t an international roaming issue. Shit just didn’t work, no matter how I entered country codes in my contacts. While I’ve never had an issue sending SMS in the US, I just reinstall WhatsApp when I visit Europe because I cannot count on SMS working.
It’s also used very heavily for groups chats.