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I've heard of WhatsApp. I have no f'n clue what its purpose is for, though.
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Wow, it's just a mobile chat app, like SMS (more advanced, allows (video) calls too), but over internet and owned by Facebook.
Maybe it's not as big in other countries, but in the Netherlands almost literally everyone uses it.
As I said, I know no one who isn't using it, apart from my grandma, and I know and have known 100's of people well enough to be chatting with them on WhatsApp, including friends, family, coworkers and customers.
Every workplace, family and group of friends has a WhatsApp group for chatting.
It's really standard here, when someone says "here's my number, send me a message" they mean WhatsApp.
It's pretty much impossible to live here and not know WhatsApp.
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I see.
Most people (adults) here communicate directly with their default messaging apps on their phones.
I think a lot of the younger generation use other apps, I'm sure. My kids probably use WhatsApp, Instagram, etc.
At work we use MS Teams for all communication, Office 365 Outlook for email. We are not allowed to use anything else for work related communications. MS Teams is nice. I currently have no complaints about it.
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Slacker007 wrote: At work we use MS Teams for all communication, Office 365 Outlook for email. We are not allowed to use anything else for work related communications. MS Teams is nice. I currently have no complaints about it.
Yeah, over here too, for lots of people.
But work can't really force you not to use your phone and send a message to a coworker.
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On top of that, you get to make telephone calls for free all over the world.
That can save you a ton of money.
I have family and friends living in Australia, the US, Canada, and England. I am able to call them and talk to them from India or wherever I am visiting — sometimes, it is a video chat — and that saves me money.
Some countries such as Dubai don’t allow WhatsApp phone calls. But Dubai does allow messaging using WhatsApp.
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I am sure the someone is paying something. How is WhatsApp able to let you guys make free international calls? Do you pay a monthly subscription?
Nothing in life is free. Someone is paying for everything, even if you are not.
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"Meta [formerly Facebook] eventually removed the $1 fee and made WhatsApp a free service, with the idea that consumers would communicate with businesses through it and businesses would pick up the cost."
Personally, I know very little people with a business account though.
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I haven’t paid a penny so far.
One cell phone company inIndia used to offer calls to US/Canada at one (Indian) penny a second. At prevailing exchange rates, that worked out to US $0.60 an hour.
But calls to Australia were expensive (several dollars a minute) and I wouldn’t call friends/family in Sydney. I would ask them to call me; they seemed to have a good deal with the Australian telephone company.
With WhatsApp, it is all free.
I am enjoying the free ride while it lasts.😁
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Why don’t you download WhatsApp and see if you can make free phone calls or not?
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Slacker007 wrote: Do you pay a monthly subscription?
We pay with our data.
If something is free, we are the product
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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In Europe there is a fair market share of Android and 'other' OS. Whatsapp is available on any platform so it is the most common choice for messaging, as it's the one where everyone of your contacts will be.
GCS d--(d-) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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In regards to messaging only, what makes WhatsApp better than your default phone SMS text message app? I guess I don't understand that one.
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SMS are limited to 160 chars, no multimedia, no voice and cost 15 cents each, more if the person is abroad.
Other 'default' apps are default for a single platform, i.e. Hangouts (or Duo I think it changed name) for Android, iMessage for iPhone, nothing for the deceased Windows phone, who knows what Blackberry has). Since the market here is not polarized towards Apple, there is no deafult. Whatsapp is free and available on all the platforms, it's there since a lot of time so it established itself - meaning it became the standard, indeed it's preinstalled in every phone sold in EU.
ADDENDUM: It was also used when data plans were more expensive as it allowed the usage of University / Campus / Work / Public wifi.
ADD #2: I did a quick check and activated Google Duo, which would be the default on Android (but it isn't) and out of 70 mobile numbers in my contacts I have:
67 on Whatsapp
27 on Telegram
24 on Duo
And that's why Whatsapp is the default. And Telegram got a lot bigger after FB (which owns Whatsapp) started banning everything not adhering to their political narrative.
GCS d--(d-) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
modified 7-Feb-22 8:56am.
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I have never used WhatsApp. I use discord, messenger, google chat, and telegram, none of which were listed, but I don't consider messaging apps to be social media, so I didn't 'other' them.
I am a grandma and a boomer tho, so ... 
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I follow Lord of the Lost, a metal band, in Telegram.
And I follow CodeProject 
Enough for me.
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I use my social media often more "read only" and don't post that much myself
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Same here, I ticked a couple of the options, but my usage is read-only for most of them. E.g. I don't have a TickTock account, but sometimes via Reddit watch a video that's on TickTock.
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I do read and watch TicToc and Reddit, though I don't have accounts there (my son links me through discord when he finds something I'd like); and I have accounts on several that I did not tick off because I don't engage with them more than once or twice a year if that.
The word 'engage' guided my responses in that way.
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