No WhatsApp ...................the end of the World is nigh....

There are 22 replies in this Thread which has previously been viewed 4,692 times. The latest Post () was by Rice.

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    You got me for a second , GlasgowJohn!


    A friend told me Whatsapp is not very popular in the US. I wonder if it is used more from people with friends abroad. In Italy, it is very popular but I'd say in Argentina is even more popular and used to make business. It is common to see a 'Haga su pedido por Whatsapp' sign even in the most modest veggie shop. I have never seen that in Italy; I guess it is not used for business like it is in Argentina.

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    Quote from serafina

    You got me for a second , GlasgowJohn!


    A friend told me Whatsapp is not very popular in the US. I wonder if it is used more from people with friends abroad. In Italy, it is very popular but I'd say in Argentina is even more popular and used to make business. It is common to see a 'Haga su pedido por Whatsapp' sign even in the most modest veggie shop. I have never seen that in Italy; I guess it is not used for business like it is in Argentina.

    Apparently it's because the Yanks don't travel very much and most still use SMS, ffs!

    https://www.basicthinking.com/…ll%20relatively%20unknown.

    I now have all my US friends using WhatsApp - Most were a bit nervous but now they are all converted


    When I first started travelling in the mid eighties to South America , you had to book a call with the operator to talk to Europe . The cost was horrific


    Now its all included in your data plan.

    Splinter , I’m not sure that the best conclusion to draw is that Americans don’t travel much. I’d watch what happens to business and tourism travel in the EU and UK while closed to the US this summer. But perhaps Americans don’t move to other countries as much as people in smaller countries?


    In any case, it is true that WhatsApp is largely unknown in the US, even among frequent business travelers, many of whom use Facebook Messenger for international contacts. But Americans’ default service within the 50 states is definitely SMS, a “free” service with almost all phone plans. Why complicate life?

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    Quote from Rice

    In any case, it is true that WhatsApp is largely unknown in the US, even among frequent business travelers, many of whom use Facebook Messenger for international contacts. But Americans’ default service within the 50 states is definitely SMS, a “free” service with almost all phone plans. Why complicate life?

    At first, SMS were not free in Italy. Then phone operators started to offer a certain number of free SMS per day to clients of the same company. Slowly, this was extended to clients of any company.

    There were also business plans with unlimited texts, but most people had the cheapest plan. To save on SMSs, we used abbreviations, contraptions and tricks to save characters, like writing X instead of PER (= for) or GRZ instead of grazie (= thank you), or not leaving spaced among word, and mark words capitalizing each word (TellMeWhatTYouThink).

    When I was a teenager, on December my operator had a "Christmas Card" (yes, it was called like this, in English) that gave you 200 SMS per day to any operator. There were people switching phone operator or getting an additional SIM card just to take advantage of that!

    When Whatsapp made its debut, it was immediately a hit in Italy because we could finally send unlimited texts.

    I think its strength is that it is as simple as a text. In Italy, email became widespread later than in the US, and especially older people never feel the need to get an email address. Whatsapp is more akin to what they already know (SMS).

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    Quote from UK Man

    I'd have to turn the wife off as well...she does go on a bit. ^^

    I call my husband 'the radio'. If it is not YouTube talking, it's him, his whatsapp with other argentinians going on with voice messages for HOURS and every day. I don't know what they have to talk about so much, it's not like they have exciting lives, anyway. I think they go on loop on the same subjects over and over.

    Must admit although I've never sent a Whatsapp voice message I can understand why people use it. I rarely carry my reading glasses so typing without them is useless. If sending a voice message is easier to do then I would do it.


    Then again it might be easier just to phone someone. ^^

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    Quote from Rice

    Doesn’t WhatsApp have a time limit for voicemail?

    If it has, it is too a long one. My husband routinely receives voice messages that are, combined, longer than 8 minutes. Dale Carnegie must be rolling in the grave....

    The person speaking simply keeps the mic icon pressed. Whatsapp breaks the whole voice recording into 2-minutes audio tracks, which are then played non-stop on the recipient's phone.


    Most transcription softwares, stop at 50 seconds of audio.

    The issue with voice messages is that they are SO easy to grab, that people don't put any care in the effectiveness of that message. Most messages I receive are 80% about "uhmm ehm, maybe, I don't know... I was thinking... I am not sure...". Whereas written communication involves clarity of mind, because it is also harder to write, so you don't want to write a long poem for a brief message.


    I once invited a friend over for dinner on a certain night, and she replied with a 2+ minutes voice message. I hit play but then I started working at the computer because what I was hearing wasn't compelling nor worth my attention. At a certain point, I picked up the phone for something else and the audio stopped. Completely forgetting about it, I moved on with my life, and on that day I spend the afternoon cooking a luscious Arabic dinner. But when my guest didn't arrive, and I messaged to ask about her whereabouts, she said she had told me that she was not free on that day.


    I went back and finally listened to the whole 2+ minutes of voice message, and indeed she said, at the very end, that she couldn't accept my invitation. She spend 2 minutes talking about her stuff, how many things she was busy doing, "oh my gosh" "I don't know how I am gonna do" etc. and delivered the actual reply (I can't come) at the very end.