My wife uses Kakao and she got me on it too. The app works well and it is cute. I thought it was hilarious how they monetize with stickers. Then, I realized ... holy sh*t ... this is worth a billion!
KakaoTalk has more profit than WhatsApp per user I think. Had KakaoTalk been an American company, it would make more and might have been snapped up by someone bigger already...
They are the de-facto messaging service in the rest of the world (except for China).
FWIW, I'm in the UK, and I'm not aware of anyone who uses it here, either. I too have heard the name mentioned once or twice in the past, usually for undesirable reasons related to things like security or privacy. Even looking them up today, I don't quite see the attraction: what is the USP here?
Seriously, I went to sit in with a few University freshmen recently here in Germany and they all used it. (They didn't know the Back to the Future movies, though!)
But I was talking to a former colleague who is EVEN OLDER THAN ME - over forty, in fact! - and he was saying he has used WhatsApp. Has been using it for a while, in fact. So, it looks like my age isn't to blame here - I am just hopelessly behind the times.
(He said he was going to stop though, now that Facebook have bought it. I pointed out that due to his age, Facebook probably won't care.)
Codswallop! I'm in the UK and I use WhatsApp a lot. Though I do know many (mainly iPhone users with their iMessages) people that haven't heard of it, for us Android people it is an excellent tool for group chat & image sharing.
As far as I understand the purpose of WhatsApp, Americans use SMS instead. The ones I talk with anyway.
Everyone either has unlimited texting (the price of which isn't considered since they get it with a cell plan that they want for other reasons (probably data)), or keep it under the monthly free limit.
Either regular text messaging or Apple's iMessage (iPhones are most popular in the US). My sense is that they don't really do group chats (a heavily used feature of WhatsApp).
We (my friends and I) use group messaging heavily and none of us use WhatsApp. MMS supports group messaging just fine and lots of my friends have iPhones so iMessage works just fine there.
We do pay more than $1 per year for unlimited text messages but I don't know anyone that doesn't get unlimited text messaging these days.
@kayoone No it's NOT free. US is just slow picking up new tech. It wasn't too long ago when Verizon was charging $10/month for 100 or 500 texts a month, with MASSIVE over the limit usage fee. The smart/young ones alternative but generally most don't care. And while most complain about paying $ for service that may not get used, they continue to pay, because they have the $.
Yep. Most of the new plans the carriers in the US have rolled out recently have unlimited minutes + texting as standard, and then charge extra based on data limits. Not exactly cheap mind you, but that's how its structured. Even my cheapo $30/mo T-mobile prepaid includes unlimited texting.
I'd heard the name, but I've never used the app and don't know anybody that does. Though according to this article (http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/20/whatsapp-dld/) they have hundreds of millions of active users, so clearly some people are.
I'm the same as you - heard the name, never used the app. In the recent 4-5 months though all of my friends migrated to WhatsApp. I'm from Eastern Europe and when I cruised around other countries from the region there were many people who used that too. Maybe has to do with the fact that some telecoms still charge insane prices for a piece of SMS when you deplete your free quota.
It's one of less great messaging apps. Needs your phone number to work (i.e. you change sim cards, your account changes). Works only on phones, not tablets (no iPad Version). Doesn't have a web or desktop version (such as Line or iMessage).
In Latin America its the standard because all the big telco companies don't offer unlimited text, so If you got a smartphone and some mb of data each month you have unlimited text, image etc. That was the killer feature, that Whatsapp manage to take advantage of that opportunity.
