WhatsApp was a game changer for people that had international contacts. Before WhatsApp, all the mobile networks (at least in the US) charged exorbitant amounts of money for international SMS and MMS.

Then, WhatsApp came and it was free and cross platform, compressed images and video to send them quick with decent quality, and free of spam. Absolutely perfect execution, in my opinion. If it was not owned by Facebook, I’d probably pay a considerable amount for it if it promised security and privacy.

> Absolutely perfect execution, in my opinion.

There were no usernames with watsapp, its just your phone number, its so easy that even my mom can use it.

All it asks is to hand over all your private contacts. For me that is a ridiculously high price.

they owe a huge part of success intially to tricking people into what you describe -- that it's a replacement/better than SMS -- that it's "free". When it was simply that ppl couldn't tell difference between SMS network and Internet. And using phone numbers as accounts got a ton of people in non-American areas to use it (also north american texting rates crazy cheap unlike alot of the whatsapp-popular countries). Ridiculous. When all it is is another internet messaging app.