In the past few weeks, Facebook has put its daughter WhatsApp in a mess. Users were sometimes forced to accept new terms of use. Otherwise there are medium-term consequences. Alternatives such as Signal or Telegram, however, recorded a rush and reported the highest user growth of all time. But is WhatsApp written off? Not at all. This is shown by a recent survey by the British market research institute YouGov, which was created on behalf of the German Press Agency (dpa) for messenger use in Germany.
Most users do not seem to mind the harsh criticism of the new terms of use. In the survey, 79 percent said that they have the app on their smartphone and also use it. For four out of five Germans, WhatsApp is still the number 1 messenger.
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For these reasons, users don’t want to leave WhatsApp
Of all respondents, only 13 percent said that they want to delete WhatsApp from their mobile phones. At the time of the survey, however, the messenger was still running on smartphones. For the remaining 76 percent, changing the messenger is out of the question. Despite all the adversities, you remain loyal to WhatsApp. The reason that was mentioned most often: “I have concerns about data protection, but too many of my contacts are best reached via WhatsApp.” So a third of those surveyed use Messenger because their contacts also use it.
Around 28 percent said that they would stay with WhatsApp because they had little or no concerns about data protection. Another 15 percent would have concerns, but do not know of a good alternative.
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The most popular alternatives
The YouGov survey also looked at the alternatives. The researchers wanted to know: “If you want to remove WhatsApp: Do you want to install or use another messenger app on your smartphone? And if so, which ones? ”27 percent of those surveyed stated that they favor Signal. Telegram follows closely behind with 26 percent. Around 16 percent would give Threema a chance. After all, 15 percent would even go back to texting. And 13 percent would switch from WhatsApp to Facebook Messenger. Interesting: 16 percent said that if they uninstall WhatsApp, they do not want to use any other messenger.
