this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
417 points (91.6% liked)

Technology

59568 readers
3916 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
L3s@fry.gs
L4s@fry.gs
L4s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
417
Nothing Phone builds a blue bubble iMessage bridge while Google and Apple fight over RCS (www.androidcentral.com)
submitted 1 year ago by DannyMac@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
219 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] blackn1ght 4 points 1 year ago

WhatsApp became popular (in the UK) around the time when SMS was free for most. It was a huge jump over SMS because:

  • group chats
  • read receipts
  • worked on WiFi without a phone signal
  • picture / video messages
  • it was fast (or it certainly felt faster anyway)

From what I recall at the time, BBM was quite popular but WhatsApp won over in the end as it was cross platform. There was a big appetite to move away from SMS. WhatsApp wasn't even free at the time, it had a small annual fee on Android or a one off installation fee on iOS and still gained popularity. It's kind of surprising that the rest of the world seemed to make this jump at the same time but the US seems to be stuck on SMS.