In quite a few countries, the vast majority of Internet users (in Kenya, 97%!) use whatsapp at least once a month: https://www.verint.com/blog/what-countries-are-the-biggest-w...

In India alone, whatsapp MAU already reaches nearly 50% of imessage MAU worldwide, and rapidly rising.

It depends entirely on your social circles. That’s why all these discussions about $some_platform being completely useless because of course everyone uses $other_platform are completely pointless. I haven’t seen any of these in which there was any useful information or even a hint of looking things in perspective. It’s only people telling everyone else that no platform is relevant except for their pet app.

I agree, but I find it hard to comprehend the social circles that shun people for not having an iDevice. Why would people choose to use a platform that not everyone can participate in, when there are just-as-good alternatives that are available to everyone? Like, if there's a group chat that doesn't want to include me because I don't have an iPhone, I don't think I want to be in that group.

Sure, that one is popular too. My point was that almost no one uses iMessage group chats.

That's obviously not true or we wouldn't be having many of these discussions.

It’s clearly a US vs everyone else thing.

Despite your username, I just have to laugh. Millions of Americans use something other than iMessage. Apple doesn't have anything like a monopoly.

True but it only takes one or two to become a problem, unless you really have a small circle of friends.

Agreed that I don't get the entire "iMessages is essential". I also have never seen it been used, I'm a zoomer and most of my friends use iPhones, but with snapchat or anything else for group messages. Maybe it's a generational thing!

The funniest part is all the olds (of which I am one) talk for your generation on this topic. Of course anyone who actually interacts with zoomers knows that this “green bubble blue bubble” thing is a media beat up: discord, Snapchat, instagram are what matter to western zoomers for group chats

"western" is too wide categorize for this topic because it's different per country.

Definitely not the case for Americans