The REAL Reason WhatsApp Took Over The World
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- Опубліковано 5 гру 2023
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🖖 Hey! I'm Enrico and on this channel I go behind the scenes of the design, psychology and stories behind tech and making stuff on the internet. I'm a tech Product Manager, builder of things made of pixels.
WhatsApp is a weird one. It's the most innocuous and boring app ever, with no crazy features, seemingly so similar to thousands of other chat apps, but it managed to break out of the noise and become the messaging standard for most of the world. How? In this video I go behind the scenes of WhatsApp, to understand the secret behind its success, how it got to 2B users with such a small team and their unique product philosophy - Наука та технологія
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Also, as I remember, the possibility of making free phone calls was a big thing for whatsapp (at least in my country).
In every country I think.
To point #1: I’m from Georgia, where Facebook Messenger was the dominant platform, and I was visiting Berlin for a few days with some people. They said let’s create a group chat and asked for my number, and I said “oh, I don’t have a German number”, and someone said “you don’t need one, it’s for WhatsApp”. And I distinctly remember having an epiphany at that moment of “oh. now I _get_ it.”
As someone who developed a messaging platform from scratch back in the day, the video correctly points out but doesn't elaborate the crucial difference bw WhatsApp and all those other fancy messaging apps out there, and that's you could build a network off the phone numbers without asking people to "add" each other for a second time, bcz as long as they have each other's phone numbers saved they're already acquainted.
When Community and Updates tabs appeared (between which you can switch by swiping left and right) my 80 y.o. relative got confused and asked me "What is this? What do I need to do?" I told that you don't need to do anything. I got asked to remove it, and I told "sorry, I can't, it's built in, just get used to it and ignore it". They added just a little complication and old people are getting confused already.
WhatsApp does what it's supposed to do and it's useful. No unnecessary distracting bullshit.
I always laugh at my friends in the US sending txt, why not use a superior method? 😅
Because iMessage is actually better
Watching from India.
Here a person buys a new smart phone, they install the whatsapp application in first .
Nice video! I’ve often wondered why WhatsApp is so simple yet so widely used. This helps me understand it a bit more.
Any competent software company knows to always prioritize improving the existing features over adding new ones. Unfortunately, most software companies are not competent. Even Apple who are practically worshipped for their user experience keep adding useless features (animated emojis? seriously?) instead of fixing longstanding UX fails.
It seems almost every country has the same story with WhatsApp: phoning fees were outrageous, most of all for low-income countries. An anecdote: in Brazil, few years before WhatsApp, it was common for people (mostly small businesses/freelancers) to have multiple SIM cards from different carriers because calls and text between same carriers would cost way less. You’d pass in front of a shop and see 3 or 4 different phone numbers advertised, each one of a carrier lol. Was it global?
You are a good creator!
I love how smooth whatsapp is on Android. the same couldn't be said about most of the other messengers. and also I love the simplicity of the app. and the dark mode UI looks so sexy on Android aaaaaaaa.
Man the information that you give is so nostalgic takes back in time when tech was there just to help humans not to control them
fuckerberg bought it to control ppl now
I would add voice message as another key point in Brazil to the massive popularization.
Telegram also has that and much more.
@@HAWXLEADER We are talking about WhatsApp and why it became so popular.
also the fact that you can share documents! we basically used whatapp as our study group in college.
Love the analysis🎉 genius!
5:38 the version of WhatsApp for mac use mac catalyst that use most of the iOS app so it not that different.
And by the way, macOS also use swift just like iOS.
Hey,
Please make a similar analysis of Telegram. It would be interesting to know what you think.
Great video man :]
For me it was being able to send fotos without haveing to pay mms, which for some reason never worked
Super interesting! Great video 😊
Hey, Congratulations on reaching 100K subscribers! 🤗
I still don’t know why, in the Balkans, WhatsApp hadn’t had the same popularity rise as Viber had, when smartphones started becoming a standard household item. Today most people either use Facebook Messenger or Viber
I dont see what the point of the new Channels feature is
just like they introduced Moments to compete with Insta Stories/snapchat, Channels is intended to compete with Twitter. Imho.
My opinion is that they will add an option to subscribe to a cannel which will give them another revenue stream.
They also want people to check the news in Whatsapp
the channels feature is basically a trimmed down version of facebook inside of whatsapp but more comparable to the likes of telegram
Quick survey: how the elder and non-english speaker in your country pronounces WhatsApp? Have they created nicknames like “zap zap” or “whats”?
Whatsapp will never be the same since Facebook acquired it.
Lol no nothing has changed
What's the difference?
Its been under Facebook/Meta for like a decade now lol. Still easily the best messaging app.
Yeah they added payment feature on it.🤦
@@Monkerey nonsense - it's a damn pain every time i have to update the app, it never used to *have to be* updated before FB bought it.
SIMPLE was how i liked it.
Remember Windows Phones? Enrico, you hit a never there. Windows Phone was freaking amazing.
Hey, I've got some thoughts and questions about the subject and would love to chat with you directly. Is there a way to reach out to you?
By the way, hoe does WhatsApp exactly make money?
It never did I think
It doesn't
Why does it exist then?
@@Lotschi gateway drug to other meta/facebook services and apps, a way for meta to study and analyse social behaviors between people and other data collection since they get a copy of ur entire contact list
As far as I know, WhatsApp makes money by:
1. Charging businesses accounts.
2. Taking fees for money transfers in some countries.
3. Sharing revenue with companies that offer services within the app.
4. Using user data (!)
Keep in mind that Meta (who owns WhatsApp) makes money through targeted advertising
Very cool ✔️ ✔️
great video, congrats! there is just one key thing on top of all this: lucky and emergent countries. Brazil was the first country where WhatsApp completely took over, and the reason was simple: SMS services here costed A LOT, and most carriers charged user by message, that quickly added up. People needed a solution for this, as neither Apple's or Google's native apps were options.
So came WhatsApp, and the reason is simple: the app was light (to the point it was horrible and poor designed) and could run in any phone being sold on these emergent countries. WhatsApp rapidly spreaded to other latin american countries, and other emergents, like India.
The point is: WhatsApp was not special and did nothing brilliant. They probably never intended the app to be the way it was. Not even the "use your phone number" feature is that innovative (SMS existed for 20+ years at that point). It just was the wrong app at the right time.
Whatsapp and zoom are deep tech companies who built everything from scratch to solve simple problems
Unfortunately, this focusing on the basics seems to not be that important any more. When you want to write to multiple people at once, you have to decide between
- group chats
- broadcasts
- communities
- channels
- status
- video calls with multiple people
Let's say the situation got a little bit confusing.
Especially after adding the new status, communities and more recently channels, I have the impression that WhatsApp is on its way to a feature-rich social media platform.
Also, as a heavy user of the WhatsApp status, I can say that it seemed to get more and more buggy in the last months, espescially when posting text.
I have to agree, especially on the status front. I miss the old days when it was just status and not a menu of status + channels which makes it weird to browse.
As for the communities thing, I'd honestly have no issues with it _if_ they implemented it correctly. Why are groups separately displayed for some communities but not for others ? Why are communities displayed both in the chat section and their own? They removed the useful camera icon and placed Communities there, but it's still displayed in Chats...
I barely use any apps if I don't have to, but Whatsapp is a daily one. So simple, no concerns.
I can't believe it, youtube once again stole your idea about proposing the long videos in the same format as the shorts.
The best part is that the first video that was proposed to me in this format is your video 😂
I remember a time, where it was the cool new thing for the kids in my school who wanted to text for free and how my parents way later started to adopt it
LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
I always wondered why everyone seemed to drop Viber at some point in favor of Whatsapp since I remember it being pretty much the same thing, same popularity, especially with boomers in europe. But it became a hassle to have 2 chat apps at some point so Whatsapp won. Also Telegram was in the same boat but they carved a niche with the crypto stuff or whatever.
viber also sent geolocation by default, which a lot of people didn't necessarily want, and got bad press because it collected lots of data on you. On top of that, the UI was quite different between iOS and Android
I think WhatsApp's simplicity was its biggesy strength there, no complicated menu or pages that you ever had to visit, just the main page with your chats in chronological order of latest messages. When new features did roll out, it usually just added a small button in the menu or above a chat.
whatsapp chat backups and transfer are a pain, i hate it
How are they a pain? I've changed phones at least 20 times in the last decade and backups just works.
How often did you change phone for it to br a pain? Like, actually. Doing it once every 4-5 years sounds reasonable enough
@@makatron It's a pain going from Android to iOS and vice-versa. Drive/iCloud sync don't work cross platform, iOS doesn't let you browse the backed up local database, or copy it, and the direct transfer option is also not cross platform. There's also the case of other platforms like KaiOS, at which point, chat backups is, let's say... non-existent.
If you have Android and others have IPhones, FaceTime is an issue and the best you can get in video message clips looks to be about 120P. I'm a Samsung S series user. I'll never go over to Apple's ecosystem. But, I would like to be able to connect with IPhone users, using those features. Those are the only things I care about. I'm in the US. Obviously this app wasn't built just because of that, but my reasons are pretty decent reasons for using it. If Apple hadn't done the video locking down to Android, I wouldn't be using this app.
Bloody hate it. It's biggest problem is that it's tied to my phone and not a service in it's own right. Now I get work calls when I'm not working and personal calls when I am. I don't want work clients calling me on what I consider to be my personal chat app. The only way I can separate the two and thus block work calls is to buy the business version of WhatsApp. The Irony of that!
Get another number like many do
...? Just get two phones LMAO.
I've rarely ever heard of this app. Is it delicious?
Yes.
I'm one of the 6 billion
It isnt as dominating as u think, most of us from the balkans only use Facebook messenger, also most of eastern europe
WhatsApp is total crap, Telegram is so much better! ❤
Agreed
Telegram is even worse in terms of private messaging as it doesnt secure your messages with a private key
@@CrisCheese_ It does, but only in "secret chats"
signal is the best bro
whatsapp was unique not because it **let** you use your phone number, it is because they **forced** you to use your phone number. Savvy tech folks who value their privacy are never going to agree to that, so you get a user base of low tech individuals, who are ripe for adsplotation. That is what they bought that was so valuable- not the app, it was the gullible user base. Gullible users are far more likely to actually succumb to advertising.
I cannot remember the last time I agreed that strongly with a UA-cam comment. I bloody hate the fact that you have to use your phone number and even more, that your phone has to be connected to the Internet for you to use WhatsApp on a PC. And I hate the fact that so few people care about this sort of stuff because I see this as a dangerous precedent.
And finally as every people are using, even the tech savvy part of the market is forced to use it 😢.
@@raghunathansundaresan8017 That would be a hard NO. Some people are sheep, some are shepherds.