WhatsApp is immensely popular here in the Netherlands. It's way more popular than SMS because it's free, that is if you are on a data bundle (which almost everyone is).
Everyone who's already in your phone's contacts and who has WhatsApp installed will automatically appear in your WhatsApp contacts. Thus, you can instantly see who has WhatsApp installed and who hasn't. If you ever remove a person from your contacts, the WhatsApp history with that person will remain visible. But like you said, you can always block someone.
You can very easily send photos and videos which you can't using SMS. Also, I'm in several groups. My family, my football team, various groups of friends. Last week we were planning a weekend with a group of friends. We made a new group chat specifically for that weekend and everything related to the weekend got posted there.. so you don't have to spam other group chats where most of those friends are in.. but also other people who wouldn't want to receive all those messages.
And if you're fed up with a group, you can always leave it or just silence it for a certain period.
|