Coordinating the 10 people in my family group to not only install a new app, but choose it the next time they want to send a message (especially if they add a new person) is not to going to be easy (and in some cases might be impossible if some people refuse).
You can't, WhatsApp will only let you send to numbers that also have WhatsApp installed.
There's an "invite friends" sharesheet that will send a signup URL, but that's it.
> If WhatsApp doesn't just work, then it's at a severe disadvantage any way you look at it.
Ultimately WhatsApp has won in most of the world, so this clearly isn't that big of a problem.
That's my point. It's a very substandard experience for initial contact to SMS, which is ubiquitous.
> Ultimately WhatsApp has won in most of the world, so this clearly isn't that big of a problem.
Compared to SMS, WhatsApp is almost nothing. And given that maybe 2-3 people in my family group might have it installed, "won most of the world" is irrelevant for me, and probably most groups of any size or with people over 30, as there's likely to be a few people without it.
Yeah, having thought about it when this comes up, there's a very real trade-off between what people are willing to use because they've heard of it or might actually have it, whether that app/service will stay around or keep similar features in the future, and whether it's associated with a large org that may farm the data for personal information about you in some way (even if that's just your location).
Something like Signal seems good, but I imagine it may be a pain to get some of my extended family to adopt it (or to make sure things send using it).
WhatsApp would be good in that people have heard of it, and if they have Facebook it's probably easy for them to integrate with, but people are much more likely to have relative's phone numbers than service profile links, meaning they might opt to not use it in many cases.
Really, it needs to be ubiquitous on phones for it really to be a viable replacement that will be used 9 out of 10 times. That leaves RCS as an upgrade to SMS, but who knows if we'll ever get that. I know people complain about how it doesn't actually raise limits enough, but going from SMS to a limit fo 105 MB for videos and more features (even if not on parity with current systems) is a huge step, and I think the only one likely to achieve even close to the same deployment as SMS, and then only if Apple supports it too (assuming US networks actually get on board).