| I think the 'advantage' of WhatsApp is not as big as it seems. I already use Telegram with most people that I communicate with regularly who use WhatsApp for everything else. Almost every one of those people grumbled at first about having to install another app. But because of how the dominant phone UI's work, it turns out to be almost frictionless. I barely notice whether I get a message through WhatsApp, Telegram, or Facebook Messenger, because I either tap on the notification - and go right to the app and they all look basically the same - or I reply from the notification itself. There's one friend who is so used to WhatsApp that he'll generally initiate conversations through that, even though I tend to initiate or further conversations in Telegram. Neither of us ever made a comment about it. I hope I'm right, which means Facebook's stranglehold on communication and personal data might not be as strong as it appears. But I suspect they'll soon rollout more WeChat-like features such as payment, apps and bots that are a lot stickier. For example, I've been playing around with a number of Telegram bots, and for the first time since I started using all these different chat apps, I am bothered when I have to use a non-Telegram app, because it doesn't support my bots (ranging from silly gif-search-bots to more useful poll-bots). Payment integration would be even 'stickier'. |