Yeah, I don't know where you're from, but over here if you don't have a Whatsapp account in working order you can't... do things.
I hired a company to wire my house and they won't communicate over anything else. I am in maybe five friends and family groups where every social event in my life is put together. I recently noticed a family member and I didn't have each other's numbers anymore, since we only ever communicate over Whatsapp. At work events people will show you a QR code for Facebook or Whatsapp and expect to receive the same back.
I get that a lot of people, especially in the US, don't notice, but Meta won this fight like a decade ago. I don't like it, but that ship sailed as far away as Amazon dominating online shopping.
I have had independent contractors offer it as an option, but most still have a phone number or have too many customers who aren't tech savvy enough to use something like that. There's really no way a reputable business in my area would survive that way.
I don't know what your area is, but everybody here is tech savvy enough to use WhatsApp. It's assumed to be just... part of how phones work. Both my elderly parents use it. My mom is on multiple chatgroups I had nothing to do with setting up. She only reaches out to me for help if she thinks something is spam or phishing. I can't stress this enough: nobody texts. Text messaging happens over WhatsApp unless you're receiving TFA notifications or automated messages from companies or the government, kinda like email.
As for the business, I'm sure if I had requested a phone call they would have called me, but it was a telecom firm and it wasn't really a big conversation. Guy just went "here's my WhatsApp, we'll ping you there" and we understood it to be the way it was gonna go. I've had delivery drivers reach out to me over it when they had my number on hand, unprompted.
Whatsapp is so big here that it's not just that everyone uses it, you are practically require, forced, to use Whatsapp.
I hate whatsapp, but they require it at the university if I want to be informed. Doctor appointments are also. via whatsapp.
Hah. During the pandemic the government here would reach out to you for vaccine appointments over Facebook and WhatsApp. I personally know at least a couple of people who dabbled in antivax stuff and wouldn't pick up the phone but still got their shots after the government reached out that way.
Not that Meta has anything to do with that, but it was funny to me to see the government embrace the vectors of misinformation to shame people into not being idiots.
I live near a major city, most people haven't had to learn anything like that over their existence: we have good cell phone reception over wifi too, perhaps that is it.
Tech is just not reliable enough for me to have any experience working with anyone who I would take seriously or who would work with anyone like that. I thought you should know your experience isn't the norm, especially in any place I have been in the USA.
Almost anyone who approached with Whatapp is seen as poor, fly-by-night, and likely a grift here. "Why not use your phone number if you are trustworthy?" Would be the opinion here.
No, wait, this isn't a "my area" as "my city" or whatever.
I mean it works like this country-wide here.
Nobody in the country can operate without WhatsApp. That's not a thing. I am not in the US and I'm telling you here WhatsApp is just how sending text messages works. For everybody. Apple or Android.
I see. I did assume you were from a place that would have had to adjusted to that due to recent infrastructure.
The US has had telephones since 1800. The culture is not as new.
The dominance of WhatsApp in some countries is not because telephones are new to them. I hope this was a joke and not a real American view of how other countries are.
I hope you are joking to act like the Europe is American and talking so authoritatively with just personal experience and frankly you seem very naive. American have to have local numbers spoofed often in order to be scammed by these other countries.
What are the WhatsApp scam rates?
Phone numbers were required for business for the longest to incorporate, so it was a way of showing legitimacy. Even now, a physical location gives customers comfort.
Jesus Christ you just have to be right but you have lived such a small life.
I have no idea what the last handful of posts on this thread are even about, so I'm just gonna rest my case here. I feel I've made my point clearly enough.
Yes, you explained your personal and local experience and it works for you. It's hilarious that a stable phone network with a private/public partnership to maintain access in one country is not unerstood by those in countries who have only recently set up any kind of "stable" way of contacting their people.
We used postal for all federal contact for decades. It's really narrow understanding of people.
But yeah that's the internet for you.
The Internet, in my opinion, is the push and pull between the weird fascination to find out when you think people outside the US started using telephones and the knowledge that digging further will not lead to anything useful or constructive.
And yet I'm writing this. Now, THAT is the internet for you.
I am reminded of when, back in school, I considered an exchange year in the US. Exchange agencies hosted a bunch of info/prep events for potential exchangees, often with former participants sharing their experiences.
Probably the most unsettling piece of advice was to expect seemingly absurd questions from students there. Examples we were given included whether we have fridges here, or electricity in general, or if Hitler's still around. (To clarify, this was late 2000s, I'm from Central Europe - hence Hitler - and those students would've been about 16.)
I also learned that "American History" is a complete, stand-alone high school subject and, from what I understood, isn’t necessarily backed up by a "General History"-type class, so that made the idea of internet-era teens asking such things somewhat more conceivable.
Going on that, I really hope you get an answer on the phone question. On the off chance that they are not just trolling, that would be some fascinating insight.
Also, obligatory-but-involuntary WhatsApp sucks so much!
Don't know where you live, but my experience of NL is that everyone and their dog did things via WhatsApp. Even government services, would absolutely struggle to abandon all things Meta-related entirely while living there.
Most people from the US think of the it as the default :/
Currently living in Argentina, if you want to make an appointment with the doctor, plumber, or barber you use Whatsapp. Want to order a pizza without using one of the gig economy ordering apps? You use Whatsapp. Communicating with anyone and everything in this region involves having a Whatsapp account.
...Nasty, what the hell? Why?!?
because it gained popularity back when mobile plans didn't include free SMS, back in the feature phone era.
This. The countries where Meta only has "a lot" of marketshare are the ones that were early to make SMS available for free to everyone.
In countries where they were late to that, Meta controls the market.
Meta won. They won social media. Worldwide they're absolutely huge. Entire countries never got the "Facebook is for old people" memo, and on many Android territories the default messaging app is effectively WhatsApp. And of course there's Instagram. That one's worldwide.
The only thing I've seen threaten Meta's dominance in this space recently is TikTok. Twitter is a footnote, mostly a residual self-sustaining place for politicians and journalists to talk to each other.
@MudMan I only use Facebook for WhatsApp though, I avoid it everywhere I can, their devices, Instagram, Facebook
Same. I never got rid of my Facebook account, though. I still have multiple work relations that will reach out to me that way, and my work phone is the one I have logged in to it. I keep it off my home browsers and personal phone.
But you can't NOT have WhatsApp. It's just not an option. If people thought it was hard to get Americans to stop using Twitter, this is an order of magnitude bigger.
Yeah, I'm in the "have to have WhatsApp" camp because it's the only way I can stay in touch with a bunch of international friends now that I don't have a Facebook account anymore.
There are alternatives, but I don't press about it because at least Meta doesn't monetize WhatsApp...for now
If someone sends me a FB message I'll usually wait a week or so and then tell them to text/email me for faster response.
Some people, though, already have my phone and email but will send me IG messages, even though I never reply to a single one and ask them (elsewhere) to stop messaging me on there. Several years later they still send me messages.
Yeah, I don't know where you're from, but over here if you don't have a Whatsapp account in working order you can't... do things.
I hired a company to wire my house and they won't communicate over anything else. I am in maybe five friends and family groups where every social event in my life is put together. I recently noticed a family member and I didn't have each other's numbers anymore, since we only ever communicate over Whatsapp. At work events people will show you a QR code for Facebook or Whatsapp and expect to receive the same back.
I get that a lot of people, especially in the US, don't notice, but Meta won this fight like a decade ago. I don't like it, but that ship sailed as far away as Amazon dominating online shopping.
I have had independent contractors offer it as an option, but most still have a phone number or have too many customers who aren't tech savvy enough to use something like that. There's really no way a reputable business in my area would survive that way.
I don't know what your area is, but everybody here is tech savvy enough to use WhatsApp. It's assumed to be just... part of how phones work. Both my elderly parents use it. My mom is on multiple chatgroups I had nothing to do with setting up. She only reaches out to me for help if she thinks something is spam or phishing. I can't stress this enough: nobody texts. Text messaging happens over WhatsApp unless you're receiving TFA notifications or automated messages from companies or the government, kinda like email.
As for the business, I'm sure if I had requested a phone call they would have called me, but it was a telecom firm and it wasn't really a big conversation. Guy just went "here's my WhatsApp, we'll ping you there" and we understood it to be the way it was gonna go. I've had delivery drivers reach out to me over it when they had my number on hand, unprompted.
Whatsapp is so big here that it's not just that everyone uses it, you are practically require, forced, to use Whatsapp.
I hate whatsapp, but they require it at the university if I want to be informed. Doctor appointments are also. via whatsapp.
Hah. During the pandemic the government here would reach out to you for vaccine appointments over Facebook and WhatsApp. I personally know at least a couple of people who dabbled in antivax stuff and wouldn't pick up the phone but still got their shots after the government reached out that way.
Not that Meta has anything to do with that, but it was funny to me to see the government embrace the vectors of misinformation to shame people into not being idiots.
I live near a major city, most people haven't had to learn anything like that over their existence: we have good cell phone reception over wifi too, perhaps that is it.
Tech is just not reliable enough for me to have any experience working with anyone who I would take seriously or who would work with anyone like that. I thought you should know your experience isn't the norm, especially in any place I have been in the USA.
Almost anyone who approached with Whatapp is seen as poor, fly-by-night, and likely a grift here. "Why not use your phone number if you are trustworthy?" Would be the opinion here.
No, wait, this isn't a "my area" as "my city" or whatever.
I mean it works like this country-wide here.
Nobody in the country can operate without WhatsApp. That's not a thing. I am not in the US and I'm telling you here WhatsApp is just how sending text messages works. For everybody. Apple or Android.
I see. I did assume you were from a place that would have had to adjusted to that due to recent infrastructure.
The US has had telephones since 1800. The culture is not as new.
The dominance of WhatsApp in some countries is not because telephones are new to them. I hope this was a joke and not a real American view of how other countries are.
I hope you are joking to act like the Europe is American and talking so authoritatively with just personal experience and frankly you seem very naive. American have to have local numbers spoofed often in order to be scammed by these other countries.
What are the WhatsApp scam rates?
Phone numbers were required for business for the longest to incorporate, so it was a way of showing legitimacy. Even now, a physical location gives customers comfort.
Jesus Christ you just have to be right but you have lived such a small life.
I have no idea what the last handful of posts on this thread are even about, so I'm just gonna rest my case here. I feel I've made my point clearly enough.
Yes, you explained your personal and local experience and it works for you. It's hilarious that a stable phone network with a private/public partnership to maintain access in one country is not unerstood by those in countries who have only recently set up any kind of "stable" way of contacting their people.
We used postal for all federal contact for decades. It's really narrow understanding of people.
But yeah that's the internet for you.
The Internet, in my opinion, is the push and pull between the weird fascination to find out when you think people outside the US started using telephones and the knowledge that digging further will not lead to anything useful or constructive.
And yet I'm writing this. Now, THAT is the internet for you.
I am reminded of when, back in school, I considered an exchange year in the US. Exchange agencies hosted a bunch of info/prep events for potential exchangees, often with former participants sharing their experiences. Probably the most unsettling piece of advice was to expect seemingly absurd questions from students there. Examples we were given included whether we have fridges here, or electricity in general, or if Hitler's still around. (To clarify, this was late 2000s, I'm from Central Europe - hence Hitler - and those students would've been about 16.) I also learned that "American History" is a complete, stand-alone high school subject and, from what I understood, isn’t necessarily backed up by a "General History"-type class, so that made the idea of internet-era teens asking such things somewhat more conceivable.
Going on that, I really hope you get an answer on the phone question. On the off chance that they are not just trolling, that would be some fascinating insight.
Also, obligatory-but-involuntary WhatsApp sucks so much!
Don't know where you live, but my experience of NL is that everyone and their dog did things via WhatsApp. Even government services, would absolutely struggle to abandon all things Meta-related entirely while living there.
Most people from the US think of the it as the default :/
Currently living in Argentina, if you want to make an appointment with the doctor, plumber, or barber you use Whatsapp. Want to order a pizza without using one of the gig economy ordering apps? You use Whatsapp. Communicating with anyone and everything in this region involves having a Whatsapp account.
...Nasty, what the hell? Why?!?
because it gained popularity back when mobile plans didn't include free SMS, back in the feature phone era.
This. The countries where Meta only has "a lot" of marketshare are the ones that were early to make SMS available for free to everyone.
In countries where they were late to that, Meta controls the market.
Meta won. They won social media. Worldwide they're absolutely huge. Entire countries never got the "Facebook is for old people" memo, and on many Android territories the default messaging app is effectively WhatsApp. And of course there's Instagram. That one's worldwide.
The only thing I've seen threaten Meta's dominance in this space recently is TikTok. Twitter is a footnote, mostly a residual self-sustaining place for politicians and journalists to talk to each other.
@MudMan I only use Facebook for WhatsApp though, I avoid it everywhere I can, their devices, Instagram, Facebook
@hedge @Jeze3D
Same. I never got rid of my Facebook account, though. I still have multiple work relations that will reach out to me that way, and my work phone is the one I have logged in to it. I keep it off my home browsers and personal phone.
But you can't NOT have WhatsApp. It's just not an option. If people thought it was hard to get Americans to stop using Twitter, this is an order of magnitude bigger.
Yeah, I'm in the "have to have WhatsApp" camp because it's the only way I can stay in touch with a bunch of international friends now that I don't have a Facebook account anymore.
There are alternatives, but I don't press about it because at least Meta doesn't monetize WhatsApp...for now
If someone sends me a FB message I'll usually wait a week or so and then tell them to text/email me for faster response.
Some people, though, already have my phone and email but will send me IG messages, even though I never reply to a single one and ask them (elsewhere) to stop messaging me on there. Several years later they still send me messages.