The US is a big place. WhatsApp has plenty of users in the US. It’s easily the third messaging app I use, after LINE and iMessage. And the people I talk to on WhatsApp are US natives, it’s not like they picked up WhatsApp in some other country and brought it here.

If you're using three messaging apps on a regular basis, you are either an extreme outlier or have lots of contact with people who are in other countries or have strong ties to other countries.

LINE? Really? I have yet to see anyone use that unless it is to talk to friends in Japan or Korea.

We use it for the stickers.

There's a lot of people who use WhatsApp even in the US. Perhaps not as many as iMessage, but it's still a household name.

Do they use them to talk to people in the US who have no connection to countries where it is the main messaging app?

In some cases?

> Network effects are a thing

Exactly. These are social products. Features are meaningless if you can’t talk to the people you want to reach.