Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by itsarnavb 1981 days ago
My sense for WhatsApp's dominance is peripheral contacts. I can convince close friends and family to move to Signal, but not distant friends, especially the large groups I'm in.

I'm pretty bearish on Signal for this reason. (even though I use it personally)

The playbook for unlocking adoption would be via a 'minority rule' where Signal users refuse to talk to people on WA, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.

2 comments

I actually did just that. Changed my status to “only reachable by signal app” also same message on my profile pic. Just got around 5 people who talk to me on whatsapp already writing me on signal without problem. And funny thing 3/5 have also done same to their whatsapp now
Let's assume somebody said that for some other platform: "only reachable through Telegram" or Facebook Messenger.

What would you think?

That somebody certainly values the choice of platform higher than your convenience to chat with him or her.

Why do you need to convince them to move to Signal at all? Why does Signal need to unlock more adoption?

Constant growth and expansion isn't always a good thing and IMO it applies here.

> Why do you need to convince them to move to Signal at all?

Because ideally one doesn't want to be forced to donate data to Facebook because of WhatsApps network effect?