Big news from yesterday: Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $16 billion. There's been much lamenting of this as with many threatening to delete, or have already deleted WhatsApp from their phones. Facebook will kill an excellent app, in various ways, though most seem up in arms at the mere prospect of their messages being integrated into Facebook and showing up in their feeds. Given Facebook's lengthy #privacy snafus, such thinking seems reasonable.
What caught my attention this morning and got me thinking was this piece from Ars Technica. It provides a history of its development, founder origins and usage stats. Interesting stuff.
But what got me thinking is how different communication is in the States versus the rest of the world.
Most of my communication with friends in the States has been through Facebook, and now that I have a US number, text message. In Canada, it was WhatsApp.
WhatsApp uses data connections, like your cell phone data plan or wifi. That eliminates the need to keep track of the number of text messages you send, and the issue of ridiculous fees for international texting. It's brilliant, really. The app itself is clean, easy to use (even my Mom and Dad use it!) and makes communication simple. You can share photos, create group chats which is awesome when you're organizing a trip of 20+ people and as long as I have a data connection of some sort, I'm connected.
My roommates and myself are still in a group chat, and we still communicate via WhatsApp more than any other medium.
That's not the case in the States.
People prefer Facebook or text. In that regard, Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp makes sense. It unites the States messaging preferences with the preference from the rest of the world.
Interesting, scary thought, no?