As a developer, I tried building an app that needs to use Whatsapp for communication. Unfortunately my phone number got blocked by the second test message. No Spam. Not marketing, just a test message to my own number. Along with it, they blocked my entire business, my LLC, and anything tied to it.
I have been trying to get hold of anyone or anything at Whatsapp. I've spent 6 months trying to navigate the bureaucracy. Facebook support claims they can't touch WhatsApp; WhatsApp support ignores the Facebook side. If you're building on WA, have a backup plan.
If any Whatsapp employee reading this can look into my WBA Account 1117362643780814
The number is only checked at login, and after that you can now create a WebAuthn passkey (iCloud Keychain/Google Passwords synced to your next phone) for future sign-ins so it's actually only needed for first sign up. So just get a prepaid SIM or eSIM and make another account unless your business is so large that tons of people know your number.
Sorry I am confused. I have a "WhatsApp Business Account", tied to an "Business" (verifications all done). What I am talking about is registering a phone number that acts as the "Sender/Responder" of the messages from my customers. I am not trying to use WhatsApp from my phone manually, but have my app communicate with my customers programatically. Hope this is clear.
I can't do any of the above,
1. Requesting a new test number. Test numbers are placeholder 555 number that works only within WhatsApp test network. Can't get one.
2. Registering a new, real phone number (SIM obtained from a regular tele provider)
3. Disconnecting the WhatsApp product from the Facebook App to reset the integration.
Although the FB app is being used, I don't have any WhatsAppp users (because I have not even made the product), so wiping out any WBA accounts and starting fresh is also okay, if someone can do this.
Telegram API is easier to handle as far as I know if that can somehow help (in case you want live ChatGPT or notifications for yourself in a mobile chat)
Telegram's bot API is a lot easier to get started with for sure. It's got some rough edges once you start trying to do anything more complex, though, and the underlying MTProto API is nothing short of bizarre.
I'd urge caution before using them as a component of your business, though. Their business strategy is pretty chaotic and has relied heavily on weird cryptocurrency-adjacent plays (e.g. TON / Fragment / gifts). They've made a couple of attempts to introduce business features, but I'm not sure they've had any substantial uptake.
Yeah, which is ironic given that it is not E2EE (unless specifically opted in for a private chat, and even then some would argue the MTProto crypto isn't good enough, although those people wouldn't trust WhatsApp ether). WhatsApp is overwhelming associated with legitimate (though in many countries, primarily overseas) users, and Telegram is somewhat associated with shady activities.
That said, Telegram is likely a lot more open for a business type that is legal but still regulated or illegal in some countries (legalized/unregulated substances, tobacco/e-cigarettes, adult content, etc.), probably less worried of random bans/demonetization.
Despite not being E2EE, Telegram also seems to have higher usage in censored countries (Russia and Iran etc). Once a Russian guy in Korea randomly asked if I had Telegram wanting me to take a picture for him since his phone was dead -- obviously had no idea that sounded like a massive scam flag to most Western users.
I guess if you want to lower that number, you'd need to build something better, in some way. Answered as another European who've had Whatsapp forever, as some stubborn people refuse to move away from it, and also bunch of businesses use it.
Network effect is killer. "better" would include having more than 3 billion people already on it.
Maybe the EU or China will crack down on it. A single company shouldn't decide who gets to talk to half the world. If that company is American they will not tolerate it for long.
Personally DeltaChat is my new favorite Thing but it falls afoul of Zooko's Triangle - A WhatsApp number or POTS number is short because it's centrally controlled and you have to pay for each one. DeltaChat has public keys, so I have 20 of them, and nobody can control who gets one, but they're incredibly long... the QR codes are nightmares.
> Network effect is killer. "better" would include having more than 3 billion people already on it.
At one point people moved from something else to Whatsapp, and that happened before Whatsapp had 3 billion people on it. If it's good, early adopters will adopt it and want others to adopt it too, then it snowballs from there.
It has happened before, and as long as new regulation doesn't solidify Whatsapp/FB in their position, it can happen again :)
WhatsApp happened at a time when, in Europe, you paid for SMS.
WhatsApp allowed people to send SMS without paying, or rather, paying just once to buy the app, so it was instantly valuable if you just convinced your spouse or parents or a single friend to install it.
To overcome it now, you need a lot more effort (or rely on enshittification, which I'm sure will happen).
No, before Whatsapp, people were mostly using Facebook messages, at least where I lived at the time.
And no one was paying per SMS at the time we were using SMS for communication, almost everyone I know were on monthly plans that gave you N text messages and N minutes of calls for static sum each month.
The first people I saw who started using whatsapp, was people who were communicating across the border, because even if you had a monthly plan, those didn't include international messages. Eventually we all converged on whatsapp because that's what outside family and relatives used anyways.
WhatsApp launched in January of 2009 compared with Facebook Chat which launched in 2008. WhatsApp saw drastically wider adoption among the general populace and paying for “N text messages per month” is precisely what people refer to as paying per message - WhatsApp had unlimited messaging.
Is "Facebook Chat" not the same as "Facebook Messenger", the separate chat client? Because I seem to remember a lot of people using the chat built-in into Facebook (not Messenger) a lot earlier than the standalone app/client, maybe I misrecall.
> paying for “N text messages per month” is precisely what people refer to as paying per message
Maybe I said it wrong, "N text messages per month" for me means "Pay us 10 EUR per month, send up to 5000 messages" for example. Doesn't matter how many you send, you pay the same.
While "pay per message" is "Every text message you send, costs 0.01 EUR". Maybe I'm using the wrong words, but that's how I understand it.
Most of the people who were "texters" (in my circles) were on plans offering the first way of paying, while hardly anyone was doing it the second.
Another important part, was that most telecom's had free SMS and calls if you were with the same company (and still do, AFAIK), so constant bickering about what plan people are on and why they don't change so it's free and yadda yadda.
Many people were already mostly texting for free at this point.
Facebook chat preceded Messenger which was a rebranding and separating into a standalone app precisely because WhatsApp ate their lunch so bad.
The rates people were paying back then were extortionate - like 60-90% profit margin. When WhatsApp launched, plans were 5-15 euros/month for 100-500 messages with ~0.15 per message for overages. So you might not count the bundle as a per text message, but it really is which you can tell by what happens if you send more than your bundle allowed. Compare that with WhatsApp’s $1/year for unlimited messaging and you start to see the pricing disparity.
Many people were not mostly texting free in 2009. I think you’ve got the timelines mixed up. That started changing towards the mid to late 2010s precisely because of internet-based chat apps on the phone and plummeting data costs making the telco’s SMS pricing plans insane.
Let me preface this with that my experience comes from Sweden in the 90s and 00s, and is a correct and truthful lived experience of my life. Seemingly, things were different were you lived, and that's fine, but that's not how it worked all across Europe, so at least we can agree on that :)
The initial claim of "WhatsApp happened at a time when, in Europe, you paid for SMS." maybe was true in parts of Europe, but clearly not everywhere. People were mostly using the Facebook chat (not Facebook Messenger/Chat) already before Whatsapp started being used, although Whatsapp in Sweden still isn't as popular as in other countries. In Spain, everyone uses Whatsapp, in Sweden, seemingly the people I talk to only have Whatsapp to communicate with me and others outside the country.
> Many people were not mostly texting free in 2009
Most people I knew definitively were mostly texting for free even before 2009, again, at least in Sweden.
I think we can agree that Sweden is not a representative sample of what happened in Europe as a way to explain why WhatsApp became dominant for the majority of people in Europe.
I grew up in Canada so my knowledge is purely from talking with people in non-Swedish parts of Europe that I met and also reading contemporary articles analyzing the space as well as retrospective analysis of what led to WhatsApp’s popularity and dominance.
The EU has already forced WhatsApp to be interoperable. Of course, Meta complied maliciously, making it a setting that you have to enable, but at least it's a start.
I guess the bean counters figured it'd be cheaper compared to ultimately paying the fine they get for maliciously following the rules. Hope the fine ends up large enough to make them wrong :)
Make your customer support on whatsapp. "Drop us a message to change your order". Allow ordering/enquiries over whatsapp.
Send 2 factor verification pins over whatsapp - it is more reliable than SMS and generally there is a better 1:1 mapping between whatsapp accounts and real humans than phone numbers, so it is a good anti-spam or good way to distribute "first month free" type deals whilst keeping abuse low.
Obviously make sure all URL's have info cards properly rendered in Whatsapp for good share-ability.
And now your customers are required to agree to Meta's term of services and to run some black box software, and you are screwed if Meta decides your business or your customers need to be kicked out.
Force interoperability one way or another. WhatsApp is a closed system, if I want to use an alternative I'm stuck with adversarial interoperability, so stuff like Beeper (which is great, but...) which might get my account banned. Or waiting for some legislation to force WhatsApp to open it's API and let me interact with my contacts there without being locked into their apps
BirdyChat, the existence of which we all first became aware at the same time as that legislation and which nobody can use yet, only join a waitlist... :-)
And apparently requires explicit WhatsApp user opt-in to be available. Meta is of course going to maliciously comply as best they can, so they've made sure interoperability is off by default and requires a specific opt in.
> What one should do about this? I mean, beside working on lowering that number.
Every business in Brazil has an whatsapp to talk to their clients. Sometimes this whatsapp goes into the phone or computer of a real human being. Other times, it's manned by a bot (usually a dumb choose-your-own-adventure bot - I don't see business using LLMs for this here)
Indeed I use food delivery apps (ifood here) only to check out the menu of delivery restaurants, then I search for them in Google so I can order directly from them through whatsapp. This won't work for some dark kitchens, but other than that it's pretty reliable and avoid the middleman
Advocate protocols over platforms. Have your government take an active interest in opening up closed communication systems and mandating third-party client access.
Well, you now have the right to use third-party apps to exchange messages with WhatsApp users, but apparently your law only covers it if the other user is in the EEA. So you are back to square one when communicating with India, Pakistan, and much of SE Asia, Africa, and MENA.
(Asking as a European who quite stubbornly refuses to install it - there are dozens of us. Dozens!)
Edit: please don't participate in making WhatsApp even more inescapable as it is today.