It’s confession time. I’ve never used WhatsApp. Now they’ve been bought by Facebook I probably never will.
I have occasionally used Skype. Since Skype was bought by Microsoft it’s probably the kiss of death for the service anyway. Probably a long, slow, lingering death1.
I am starting to use Google hangouts more often. Google hangouts has replaced Skype as the comms medium of choice with Kid 2 whilst she is away at university. We can have multi-party video calls involving kids 1, 3 & 4 as well though it tends to get boisterous (just as if they were all together at home) and the sessions can ramble on “coz it’s free”.
Kid 2 has now also bought a Chromebook, fwiw. It’s a trend:)
Yesterday I made or received 4 mobile phone calls, 9 on Tuesday (out and about in London) and 7 on Monday (ditto) and on the same days sent or received 2, 5 and 5 sms messages. On Facebook I had 2 chat sessions yesterday and one each on Monday and Tuesday
As far as hangouts are concerned having said it’s me preferred means of communication I only had one session yesterday, admittedly a 20 minute video call, and one short exchange of messages on Monday.
It’s unlikely that in that time I used the home landline at all.
So now you know.
Checkout this post on Google Hangout over 4G.
PS $19Bn seems like a lot of dosh to me. Someone is going to lose a lot of money sometime somewhere.
PPS The doc bit in the post title just sounded right. Nothing to do with the actual content:)
PPPS How many of you lot use WhatsApp?
1 aaaaaaarrrrrggggghhhhhhhhhhhh h h h h…nnnggg
4 replies on “What’s up doc? I’ve never used WhatsApp”
Occurred to me that I didn’t mention Twitter in this post. I just looked and I had around 55 tweets during the Monday – Wednesday period! Twitter is a far more random way of communicating though and has a lot of drivel in it 🙂
It’s useful when someone you normally text a lot goes abroad or vice versa… or to avoid extortionate domestic network charges for picture messaging with said contacts.
I think the lesson for consumers is, as with e-mail, to use federated services (open XMPP) not proprietary ones (usually walled-garden XMPP) but I can’t seeing people going down that route because there isn’t critical mass. It’s a similar story for VoIP: providers all use SIP internally but very few federate…
I don’t use it either. Never heard of it tbh. I am still rooted in skype, used it for so long its part of our family. Guess i use it 4 times a day most days to all over the world. Hangouts are better, but family members slow to change over. My mobile calls are increasing, and landline only used in evenings. I can see landline dying out and only being used to get broadband, as many folk now rely on mobile. The people who are getting real fibre are sacking off the landlines altogether, or using voip.
Facebook, twitter et al is good for meeting new people ie friends of friends and being entertained. Its good for sharing interests in groups and finding new people who can help you in life, projects, work etc. I can see other apps that aren’t as controlling, but if they don’t have the subscriber numbers they aren’t as effective? Bit like monopoly, get the utilities, they control us all and fb, google, microsoft are the controllers of the future? worrying.
Usually the winners in Monopoly are those who get Mayfair and Park Lane 🙂