I see many people in this thread thinking that WhatsApp took off because of SMS costs, and while that may be true in some countries, at least here in Finland I think the biggest factor were group chats. By 2013-2014 basically every high school and college class had their own whatsapp group chat since it made sharing of videos/photos and keeping in touch with everyone so much easier. By 2017 i'd say the vast majority of smartphone users under 60 years old were using whatsapp and nowadays even my almost 90-year old grandma uses it primarily for video calls and to receive photos/videos.
This got me wondering if people in US do not typically have such group chats or whats the alternative?
I live in California. For me, group chats are predominantly iMessage. FaceTime for video chat. I only know a handful of people with Android phones and they just suffer with poor quality media.
I suspect it’s both regionally and class dependent however.
This got me wondering if people in US do not typically have such group chats or whats the alternative?