Facebook may rule the social networking domain but its Messenger hasn't won as many hearts as WhatsApp .
Facebook may still be the king of social networking sites but it sure has lost its edge to WhatsApp when it comes to mobile messaging service. According to a new survey by On Device, the free internet-based messaging service has topped the list of the most popular mobile messaging service. Over 4,000 smartphone owners from 5 countries, including US, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia and China, participated in the survey.
According to the results, 44 percent of users admitted to using WhatsApp at least once a week compared to 34 percent Facebook mobile messenger. However, Facebook continued to rule in its home country, United States. Data collection took place between October 25th and November 10, 2013.
This is not the first time a leading mobile messenger has lost its lead to other messaging services. Earlier, BBM was widely used in Indonesia and South Africa, but as mobile users shifted to the newer and cheaper Android phones, BBM lost its fame and gave way to applications like Facebook and Google Talk. However, Blackberry's recent move to make BBM available to phones running iOS and Android has attracted its lost user-base back to using the "original" chat application.
WeChat was also extensively used in China with over 93 percent of the country's population admitting to using it at least once a week.
Social Messaging Overtaking SMS, Emails and Calls
Social messaging now dominates the communication market with 86 percent of mobile users across five surveyed countries saying they use this service the most for communication compared to 73 percent using their phones for voice calls, 75 percent using SMS and 60 percent using email, according to the release.
The lack of advertisements is what draws users to WhatsApp. Back in April, WhatsApp chief executive Jan Koum said the service had more users than Twitter and carried more messages than Facebook.
"We do have a manifesto opposing advertising," Koum told AllThingsD, HNGN reported earlier in April. "We're proud of that. Who likes advertising? We're so bombarded with ads so much in our daily lives and we felt that smartphones aren't the place for that. Our phones are so intimately connected to us, to our lives. Putting advertising on a device like that is a bad idea. You don't want to be interrupted by ads when you're chatting with your loved ones."
