To understand the idea fully, one must be introduced to Clay Christensen’s  ‘Why do you hire a milkshake?’ So Clay is a Marketer who was hired by McDonald’s to find out why folks consume milkshake and what could be done to increase the sales of milkshakes. He set off to find out that the company was looking at the problem the wrong way. The company was thinking ‘Here’s a product A and there are 3 reasons: a, b and c why you should buy the product’. Instead, Clay came up with the Framework of someone hiring the milkshake. You hire someone to do a job. And he found out that the ‘job’ that was done by ‘hiring’ a milkshake was NOT serving hunger pangs. It was not even quenching thirst. It was to break the monotony of a long drive. Yes, a typical drive from your house to your office (in the States) usually takes about 25 minutes. And milkshake is the most perfect way to break the monotony, it was found. ‘One hand on the steering, the other on the milkshake, sip, sip, sip till your parking light blips’.

Now that a premise is set with a make-believe limmerick, it could be easily understood why one would hire WhatsApp. To send messages (obviously), video calling someone, exchanging, pictures, music, voice recordings, voice calls. So, obviously there would have been other players in the fray but why did we choose WhatsApp – espionner WhatsApp?

Who/what did we hire before WhatsApp

There was mobile texting, which came at a price. But mobile texting, depending on how ‘smart’ your phone was, would get your message from A to B and maybe sent MMS from one phone to another. However, it did NOT perform other functions like our boy WhatsApp. (excuse the figure of speech) Then there was Skype to take care of the video calling. But these are two different things to take care the job of one. Obviously, this narrowed down the choice to WhatsApp.

However, these were not the only reasons. Why not messenger, why not snapchat?

Why are we still stuck with WhatsApp? Two words: being ubiquitous. WhatsApp is a tool that cuts across age limits. So, the ubiquitousness definitely had a defining role to play.

The cost difference between WhatsApp and texts (which happened earlier)

There is negligible cost difference between the service of WhatsApp and the service of mobile texts. Mobile texts, however, do not do the jobs done by WhatsApp. And hence WhatsApp stands to be a stud among mobile apps.