Our best paper nominee presentation at Mobile HCI 2013, Munich, Germany (30th August 2013). Here's the paper abstract: With the advent of instant mobile messaging applications, traditional SMS is in danger of loosing it’s reign as the king of mobile messaging. Applications like WhatsApp allow mobile users to send real-time text messages to individuals or groups of friends at no cost. While there is a vast body of research on traditional text messaging practices, little is understood about how and why people have adopted and appropriated instant mobile messaging applications. The goal of this work is to provide a deeper understanding of the motives and perceptions of a popular mobile messaging application called WhatsApp and to learn more about what this service offers above and beyond traditional SMS. To this end, we present insights from two studies — an interview study and a large-scale survey — highlighting that while WhatsApp offers benefits such as cost, sense of community and immediacy, SMS is still considered a more reliable, privacy preserving technology for mobile communication More details available at: www.karenchurch.com

1. What’s up with
Comparing Mobile Instant Messaging
Behaviors with Traditional SMS
Karen Church
Yahoo! Labs
Rodrigo de Oliveira
Telefonica Research
Presented at Mobile HCI 2013 - 30th August 2013, Munich, Germany

2. SMS or Short Message Service

3. 8 trillion
SMS Messages sent globally in 2011
- Mobile Messaging Futures 2012-2016

4. Mobile Instant Messaging Apps

5. How and why people (teenagers) have
adopted SMS in their daily lives, e.g Grinter
& Eldridge 2001 & 2003, Taylor & Harper
2002
Different countries and demographics, e.g.
Ito 2005, Kasesniemi & Rautiainen 2002, Kim
et al 2007, Battestini et al. 2010
Past research on SMS behaviors

7. 27 billion
messages per day handled by WhatsApp
- The Next Web, June 2013

8. Differences in the perceptions
and motives of use between
WhatsApp and SMS….

9. WhatsApp
• MIM application for
smartphones
• Runs on many mobile
platforms (Android, iOS,
Blackberry, etc)
• No cost
• Requires data plan/
internet connection

10. Groups
• Beyond 1:1
communication
• Supports group based
chats.

11. Beyond text
• Sharing of images,
videos, sounds,
locations, etc.

12. Social Cues

13. Social Cues
Status

14. Social Cues
2 ticks!
message
delivery

15. VSs

16. 1!
2!
Procedure
interviews survey
8 themes

17. Phase 1: Interview

18. John (P1)
36
Phd Student
2 years
Mike (P2)
29
Mobile dev
2 years
Oliver (P3)
35
HR Developer
2 years
Dean (P7)
31
Researcher
1 year
Eric (P8)
40
Project Mgr
3 years
Cathy (P4)
24
HR Intern
2 years
Laura (P5)
45
Teacher
3 months
Beth (P3)
36
Business owner
2.5 years
Ann (P9)
30
PA
2 years
Phase 1: 9 participants
Icon source: http://www.thenounproject.com

19. 1. Review of daily communication needs
2. Perceived value of WhatsApp, reason
for adoption and history of use
3. Motives and intent of SMS and
WhatsApp focusing on factors like cost,
trust, privacy
Phase 1: Interview

20. Phase 2: Survey
Image source: http://lighthouse8.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/people.jpg

21. 131
subjects
70 61
20 – 60
age range
33.7
average age
Spain
living in / from
54.4%
Pay for SMS

22. Phase 2: Survey
1. Expected behavior
2. Actual usage behavior (reported)
3. Two groups:
• SMS payers (N=71)
• SMS nonpayers (N=60)
Image source: http://lighthouse8.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/people.jpg

23. 1. cost

24. “
“
Using WhatsApp is a
guarantee the other party
won’t pay. I might not
care. And now I don’t care
because sending SMS for
me is unlimited but maybe
other people care.

25. 57 %
SMS Payers believe they would not
change their frequency of SMS usage
even if SMS was free
(χ2 = 19, 803, p < .001)

26. Negative Correlations
• between paying for SMS and
frequency of SMS usage with clients
(ρ = −.35, p < .01) and for business
purposes (ρ = −.22, p = .03).

27. Positive Correlations
• Paying for SMS and frequency of
WhatsApp usage with family
members (ρ = .20, p = .03) and for
planning/coordinating social
activities (ρ = .18, p < .05).

28. 41 %
SMS Payers reported not
seeing any value in SMS
compared to WhatsApp

29. 41 %
SMS Payers reported not
seeing any value in SMS
compared to WhatsApp
22 %
SMS Non-Payers reported
not seeing any value in SMS
compared to WhatsApp

30. 2. social
influence

31. Recommended by friends

32. “
“
I was using SMS and
everyone had WhatsApp
and everyone was saying,
you are the last one and it
costs money to talk with you
so get WhatsApp

33. 3. nature/
intent

34. “
“
With WhatsApp maybe you type
more, but the conversation is more
fluid. You type a sentence and
someone sends a sentence and
then you type another one. I have
the feeling that if it’s WhatsApp, it’s
an open conversation. It is similar to
if you were talking in person

35. “ “
I can say much more things
than 120 characters and I
don’t have to think about
the whole message. I can
be more natural

36. On-the-fly social planning

37. 6 different intents
1. Chatting,
2. Planning/coordination of social activities,
3. Sharing personal news,
4. Interacting with groups of people,
5. Business/work related communications,
6. Receiving ads

38. Less than once per
month
About once per
month
About once per week
Several times per
week
About once per day
Several times per day

39. 4. community,
sense of
connection

40. “ “
WhatsApp for me is very
informal so it’s friends and
family. SMS is formal, with
clients and then my friends
and family who don’t have
WhatsApp

41. WhatsApp
• Used significantly more often than
SMS across all communities (p < .01)
• Used most often with partners than
any other community (p < .01)
• Higher frequency of usage with
family, close friends and friends than
with work colleagues or clients (p < .
001)

42. 8 of 9 participants used groups

43. 5. immediacy,
privacy &
expectation

44. “ “
I tend to think that SMS is
not as fast as WhatsApp. I
don’t know why but I think
maybe people are more
aware of WhatsApp and
not so aware of SMS

45. Status

46. “ “
people read too much into
when you’re online and
when you replied to
messages or why you
didn’t reply and they try to
guess why and sometimes
this is annoying

47. 42 %
Considered SMS to have fewer privacy
issues than WhatsApp

48. 34 %
Considered privacy as the most valuable
aspect of SMS

49. 2 ticks!

50. 7 of 9Participants thought that
2 ticks = message read

51. “ “
I don’t like it very much
because if I don’t want to
answer straight away, I
don’t want them to know
that I’ve seen the message

52. “
“
If I send a message and you
are busy at least answer and
say that you’re busy...... if
you’re online, it sort of means
that it’s in front of you and
you are doing other stuff and
you are ignoring me...

53. 47 %
Revealing last access time is a privacy
concern

54. 6. reliability &
guarantee

55. 6 of 9Participants though that SMS is more
reliable for message delivery

56. Reasons included
• SMS is a paid service and money
increases reliability of a service
• SMS is an older, more established
service
• For others it depended on their past
experience with one service or
another
– Bad past experience = bad perception

57. “ “It’s happened to me that
I’ve sent messages and
they arrived very late, like 1
day or 2 days late

58. 30 %
WhatsApp messages have a better
chance of being delivered that SMS.

59. 7. choice of
technology

60. Choice of SMS or WhatsApp?
• Does the recipient have WhatsApp?
• Is it formal? Or informal communication?
• Do I want or need the message to be
delivered immediately?

61. 8. coping
mechanisms

62. 5 of the participants always switch phone to
silent mode

63. Negative Correlations
• between how often participants use
WhatsApp with clients and how often
they turn on the phone’s silent mode
(ρ = −.41, p = .001)

64. Business communications
• Frequency of using WhatsApp for
business is reversely related to the
frequency of muting phone
notifications (ρ = −.23, p = .02).
• Same for using SMS for business (ρ =
−.29, p = .006)

65. Image source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/01/mobile-messaging-apps_n_2991747.html

66. WhatsApp use in general….
1. Used more often, closer-knit groups
2. More conversational
3. Perceived as more immediate
4. More chatting and on-the-fly planning
Image source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/01/mobile-messaging-apps_n_2991747.html

68. 1. Privacy concerns and last access
2. Delivery notifications, i.e. 2 ticks
3. Increased expectations of fast response
Problems with WhatsApp

69. Future work
1. Explore behavior by combining logging
of real-life usage with reported usage
2. Different demographics and cultures
3. How to handle abundance of mobile
notifications?

70. thank you! Qs?
Karen Church
www.karenchurch.com
kchurch@yahoo-inc.com
@karenchurch
Full Paper available here - http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2493225
Images from - http://www.sxc.hu or where acknowledged