I find it surprising how the stickiness of most of Meta's products revolve around the idea that, in essence, there is no equivalent "SMS" (provided by all telephony / telecommunications data plans) but over data rather than SMS? I.e., you use IG messenger or WhatsApp but you can't talk to users who are not on IG messenger or WhatsApp like you could just SMS someone with a regular phone.
I know there's Signal, Viber, WhatsApp etc, but all these services require you to register with the service provider rather than being able to send a data based message from User A with Telco Z to User B with Telco Y.
Has there been standards before? Any thoughts on why it hasn't emerged?
dschuessler•3h ago
1. The various clients and servers implemented different subsets of the functionality, which deteriorated UX.
2. Service providers have an incentive to lock you in and the average user doesn't mind. So no one pushed for it.