The question is historical but posed as a tech choice. Convenience is the answer now.
My guess, because of the network effect.
I use SMS specifically because of the network effect. Almost everyone I want to communicate with has a cellphone, so all of them are capable of sending and receiving text messages. There is no need to list my installed messaging apps and compare it to theirs, we just need to exchange phone numbers.
My longest and most active conversations (chatting with my wife or my closest friends) are going to be over a more feature rich app, but if I need to set up a quick chat with 3 or 4 people, I am not going to think what messaging app we all have in common, I will just start an SMS group chat.
Bump
RCS is Google locked
It was never ‘Google locked’, its an open standard developed by the GSM Association that IOS has supported since 2024.
All RCS goes through google servers, they have to approve the devices. Graphene OS and e/os can’t use RCS
That’s not true, network carriers can also run RCS backends independently of Google. Graphene OS is currently working on a new messaging app that supports RCS without Google services. Both the app and the carrier have to support RCS which is why Google made their own backend.
Google locked?
Exclusive to Google’s texting app.
Are you sure? I definitely RCS message with friends who have iPhones.
Support was added relatively recently, and a lot of people didn’t notice. I think it also used to default to off, not sure what the current default is.
RCS has been on iPhones a couple years. The recent update was encrypted RCS.
I don’t know whether the implementation is still Google, but in August I noticed RCS chats now have a “lock” icon
SMS is insecure as hell, RCS suffered from issues between Apple and Google, both were limited for a long time by Telecoms and priced too high after reaching your allowance (i remember my first mobile contract having a whooping 10 SMS/month included). The amount of data messenger apps use is negligible even with pretty low data limits as long as you are not attaching whole movies.
I personally only use Signal - i have removed all Meta products from my life. If someone without Signal wants to contact me, they can use snail mail, i really don’t care - i won’t sacrifice my privacy for the convenience of others.
I’ve got through to some mates but some cunts just don’t care about their privacy and ruining yours. Signal is great but sadly United states of shitsville owned so I’m moving away
SMS costs money, no idea what RCS is. Other than that it’s probably just inertia. I prefer to use Signal but only about 30% of my whatsapp contacts have that.
Still? SMS used to cost me money as the cell vendors tried to maximize their profit on new technology. But I don’t think that’s been true here since smartphones
For ~150 other countries, yes, carriers charge per SMS
Yes, they still cost money in most of Europe, which is why nobody uses them.
The only sms I’ve received in the last few years were roaming-infos, voice mail reminders and 2FA codes.
That’s crazy. Even pre-smartphone, there was always the argument that sms costs less than the effort to meter and bill for them …. And maybe that’s the entire difference between the us using sms/rcs, and Europe using WhatsApp
Some VoIP plans still charge per text/call. It’s cheaper if you don’t use much.
Still?
In the EU yes and no. Most mobile internet plans here include unlimited SMS and phone calls as well. At least I know very few people who choose to have plans that include ONLY internet and those plans tend to be only marginally cheaper. However, the unlimited SMS and phonecalls (for most plans) only apply for messaging inside the EU. So if you regularly message friends outside EU you again either pay per SMS/call or have to get a more expansive plan that also includes that.
So overall it’s the most convenient (and mostly cheapest) to do all messaging and calls over mobile data or WiFi
Network effect.
And the reverse of that is true in the us. I don’t know anyone who uses that app, so I won’t. Actually it’s true in a general sense as well: there’s never been sufficient people on any specific app to make me want to use it
The part of the US I’m in its associated with sketchy dudes cheating on their girlfriends. Or maybe that’s just my social circle.
SMS uses cellular, WhatsApp uses internet. Internet connects you anywhere with one flat rate, cellular may charge extra per message or for international communication.
Signal is better, but everyone’s grandmother is already on WhatsApp and good luck getting them to switch
Signal always sounded too good to be true. I won’t be shocked to learn it’s an NSA front I promise.
Deltachat and Jabber/XMPP are good decentralized/federated alternatives to Signal.
Their clients are open source, unless you are worried about the NSA being better at decryption than is currently thought possible, the only information you are giving is encrypted traffic, who you are, who you sent a message to, and if their press release are anything to go by, they are trying to muddy the waters of the identification part with moving away from phone # account creation. I’m also a proponent of xmpp for a similar reason, and I think that xmpp is the better protocol, but signal has more concessions to non techies
I keep hoping with this anti-American Big Tech push that Europe and other places are doing they’ll get off Meta products. But I’m also not holding my breath.
I work at a company that I strongly suspect had a very serious security breach because of Whatsapp.
During the outage, we were back to SMS and direct phone calling only. After the system was restored, back to how everything was before, caution be damned, lessons not learned.
It’s not bad enough to have that invasive application as the default means of passing information around (messages, photos, video and even audio, of all things!) on work phones, office personel has it paired to their computers, where highly sensitive programs and data is stored.
SMS uses cellular, WhatsApp uses internet.
I think that’s why OP asked about RCS as well, which is also internet but built into SMS apps.
Because the common user doesn’t know what rcs is, it is still sms on their minds.
RCS is very finicky where i live, it can disconnect and fall back to sms at any moment, even with data enabled.
Back at the turn of the century text messages were exorbitantly priced
Which is crazy because it literally uses spare bandwidth they didn’t use (other than for the clock updates and other housekeeping) and the amount of data used is infinitesimal compared to voice or other data.
This is why it was free at first as it didn’t cost the carrier anything more. This changed quickly when they figured they could charge for it with rates going as high as 20 cents per message in the US. This lead to crazy bills like $5,000.
I remember having only 200 SMS per month and having to ration them carefully because the plans were structured in a way where ordering more resulted in a big price jump.
I was at the tail end of pagers so being able to text was normal but using a cell phone to talk was next great thing. I was always confused why people wanted to go back to texting when they could just talk.
It wasn’t until I had a phone with a physical keyboard that I finally started texting to any degree. It never made sense during the Nokia era for me because it was slow and unintuitive.
I actually agree with you, why would I want to text on an itty birth screen. Nevertheless, despite all my efforts, I can’t seem to get myself to switch to those short voice memos you can send in Signal and similar apps. My brother is a pro with those, but it just feels odd to me.
WhatsApp is free (or was it a low-cost one-time purchase? haven’t used Google Play in a long time), SMS tends to cost money.
This is my understanding. WhatsApp took off at a time and in places where SMS was expensive. Because WhatsApp used data, they could keep data usage low and allow people to message almost for free.
Nevermind past tense, my current phone plan still has me pay for SMS separately (IIRC I get 100 free SMS, after that it’s 9 cent/SMS).
Wow, after the move to messaging apps pretty much any general phone plan here has free unlimited SMS, the different plans are about the data included. Even the $8NZD ($4.60USD) per month 150MB data plan comes with unlimited SMS.
Others are mentioning price per message, but also important to remember that in the 2000-2010s outside of the United States, when traveling from country to country, you usually had to get a local SIM card for a provider in that country, During your vacation, you’d have a new number for a month when no one could contact you over normal text messages which was a problem. WhatsApp became popular so you could keep chatting with friends abroad even if your phone’s SIM card changed during your vacation.
Since most people from the United States don’t travel outside the country, and vacation time is rather limited, this wasn’t a problem for them, but for the rest of the world, a solution was needed that removed the cell carrier from the equation.
Why not Signal?
WhatsApp has been around for a few minutes more than Signal.
Not really, no. Signal was released more or less exactly a year later than WhatsApp (May 2010 vs May 2009), which, if you look at the 17 years since then, doesn’t really matter that much.
However, broad adoption rates in messaging apps are typically achieved by e. g. funny emoji sets vs. encryption, and the early versions of Signal were pretty barebone.
Maybe I should have said “what’s app gained popularity earlier”
Also “WhatsApp’s business model made it marginally easier to use because they don’t care about privacy”
Wile SMS in the US went free relatively early on, much of the rest of the world continued to charge for every individual SMS message. So data based instant messaging apps became very popular everywhere in the world that’s not the US.
Basically this. tl;dr: being free and being first exposure to mobile instant messenger.
in my south east Asian country, back then we did have bundle sms pricing, buy when the mobile internet infrastructure was getting big money from governments, WhatsApp came in at the right moment. advertising them being free (with a minimal $1 or something lifetime fee nobody bothered to pay for) and can do texting and sending images for free. compared to paying bundled prices for sms and MMS, it’s just a no-brainer.
It was, one of, the first widespread free global messaging services.
So became default for most.
(if you don’t count ICQ, MSN Messenger, Skype, etc…)
cause whatsapp was is older than rcs, and costs zero unlike sms
Because SMS sucks, always has, for many reasons
Give me a federated XMPP based messenger with all the same features as WhatsApp and then… Well, I’ll install it but I still wouldn’t use it because nobody is using it
That is the core of the matter: everybody uses WhatsApp because everybody uses WhatsApp
