I was on the beta testing team and have been using Beeper for a little over two years now.

The convenience of having an application to house all of your chat networks is amazing.

  • aksdb@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    Huh, in my opinion people simply moved away, because the underlying messenger were used less and less. Once everyone ran around with smartphones using WhatsApp, fewer and fewer people cared about MSN, ICQ, etc.

    • GadgeteerZA@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Not “everyone” uses Whatsapp though - I deleted mine after the Cambridge Analytica scandal and I know of a few others who also did so. As far as I know Whatsapp has still never changed their T&C to pass metadata upstream to Facebook.

      • thesylveranti@feddit.nl
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        1 year ago

        This is really region dependent. In Europe (or at least the Netherlands) almost everybody with a smartphone uses Whatsapp

        • neutron@thelemmy.club
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          1 year ago

          Talk to anyone in latin america, you must use whatsapp. There’s no avoiding it. Some have tried Telegram a while ago, but most have reverted back to their usual whatsapp or facebook messenger. It’s crazy.

          • NekoRiv@lemmynsfw.com
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            1 year ago

            I can vouch for this in a small town of like 5k people in zacatecas, Mexico. Everyone including government and businesses uses WhatsApp. You see the logo with phone numbers all over the place.

        • GadgeteerZA@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          No, not regionally, as Whatsapp is probably used most. It is more individuals who decided not to use Facebook related products. Luckily, about 90% of my contacts are on Telegram. It’s a bit sad that a proprietary product that leaks metadata could be so widely used. If there was going to be a single “one product” I’d rather prefer that to be an open standard protocol. Those protocols exist, but are not in broad use. But the W3C standard for social networking, really needs to also cover chat messengers.

      • aksdb@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        Now? Sure. Back then WhatsApp (before it was bought by Facebook) was replacing SMS nearly everywhere.

    • dan@upvote.au
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      1 year ago

      Once everyone ran around with smartphones using WhatsApp, fewer and fewer people cared about MSN, ICQ, etc.

      People moved around, but often still use several apps even today. You might have a “main” app you use with friends (this used to be MSN Messenger for me back in the day; now it’s Facebook Messenger), but there may be other people you chat to that use other apps. Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, Wechat, Viber, Signal, Telegram, Slack, Discord, Skype, Kik… I feel like there’s actually more major apps today than there used to be.