> It's VERY easy for user to switch to a competitor compared with other industries

Not FOR WhatsApp it isn't. I don't know of an app that all my family/friends would switch to if WhatsApp decided to put ads on it. Switching chat apps with your entire contacts list is very cumbersome.

> Not FOR WhatsApp it isn't

I got my friends and family to switch to iMessage and Signal. The method was simple: I stopped responding on WhatsApp and spun up new threads, when planning something, on those apps. WhatsApp’s stickiness is overrated.

I wonder if it works the other way too. If a few key people in a network migrate to another network and stop using the old, will that force the others to move so that communication remains possible?

It's not as hard you might think. Other messaging services like Telegram and Signal also use phone numbers as the identifiers so it would be relatively easy to switch.

I tried my friends to switch to Signal and it failed miserably. Their friends and family are on WhatsApp, so why would they switch? It's very annoying for people to deal with multiple chat apps for multiple groups, especially if some members of those groups are overlapping. I've personally settled with chatting with my SO on Signal and everyone else deleted Signal and moved back to WhatsApp

Maybe we need laws against abusing the network effect, which is akin to monopoly. The networks should be split in multiple segments and they should be forced to implement a public protocol to communicate between them, and with other networks. Moving from one network to another should be like porting your cell phone number to a different operator. It's ridiculous that we imposed such strict rules on phone networks when people use SMS and voice calls less and less by the day, but not on internet based services that offer similar functionality (communication). It's a public interest issue, just like in the case of net neutrality and eminent domain.

I had the same issue, and I believe it's tied to UI/UX.

Signal, at least on Android, looks like a stock SMS text app. That turns "normal" people off because it looks and feels different from a "messaging" app like Slack/Messenger/Whatsapp etc where doing stuff like group chats, attaching video/audio/images is easy. When people see a standard SMS text interface, they feel it's for one-to-one communication only with limited multimedia capabilities (remember MMS?).

Of course, there’s no large reason for them to switch from whatsapp. It’s reliable, free, has no ads and it’s encrypted. Yes, privacy is an issue, but most people don’t care about that all that much. What they do care about is being annoyed or paying. If they give people a reason to move by making the app significantly worse through ads then people will move, and once people start moving it will be fast. Sure, people will need to keep two apps around for a while to deal with stragglers, but that is a minor inconvenience that will become unnecessary fast.

A free chat app does not have much lock in. Just look at what happened to e.g. MSN.

> Not FOR WhatsApp it isn't. I don't know of an app that all my family/friends would switch to if WhatsApp decided to put ads on it. Switching chat apps with your entire contacts list is very cumbersome.

Signal is a pretty good drop-in replacement for WhatsApp, given that WhatsApp is pretty much a Signal clone (it uses its protocol, etc).

It's a network effect problem, not an app problem. There's no IP or secret sauce, it's just a user migration challenge. It's not easy but it can happen very quickly, it takes a few seconds to download a different app and get setup. There's no vendor lock in from whatsapp.

Just use telegram? Literally no differences, but even more ease of use.

It took me about one hour to get my relatives to switch from WhatsApp to Signal. It literally takes a few minutes to switch. Just share the invite link and start using the other app.

Does that mean that the valuation of new companies in this space would be reduced once it becomes clear that the whole market is cyclical and by monetizing you start to kill your product?

Yes, I think that is the case. New social networks add very little value nowadays, which is a long term indicator that the will not continue to grow in value in the way they have so far. Personally I would not invest in the long term with FB.

Id say the value of new earlier stage companies in the space will increase given its obvious FB needs to constantly buy new properties to keep the machine running :)

I agree - replicating WhatsApp will not be hard. In any case, Signal and Telegram are waiting in the wings.