What is the deal with WhatsApp? My family roped me into using it, "because it's better than text messages", we've been using it regularly for over a year, and it's... literally the same thing? I don't get it.
2. It allowed for sharing multimedia better.
3. It closed the divide between Android and iOS, giving a singular experience across the two systems.
4. Prior to RCS, it allowed for typing notifications, high resolution media, read receipts, etc whereas SMS did not offer these options.
5. There really isn't any additional benefit for most of these now; but, folks are already ingrained into the ecosystem.
And the result is just penetration, so if you're somewhere it's widespread, odds are it's going to be the preference of a lot of people.
For me, SMS is for spammy notifications. WhatsApp is where all the messages from real people I have the phone number of comes. I never get real people SMS'ing me.