The mobile App – WhatsApp – has caught on in a big way certainly in India and elsewhere too. Dimple is part of the apartment complex ladies groups on WhatsApp where the amount of instant communication that happens is amazing.
For us who stay away from family in USA/UK (and hence we keep feeling lonely at times), WhatsApp has proved to be a good instant tool to chat away between 3 countries (US, India, UK). And no need to wait to see if other person is awake or not. If a thought comes to mind we instantly communicate it via WhatsApp and often times we are surprised when someone on the other end replies at 2 am in the night also. :-). Sharing instant photos is invaluable and fun too.
Facetime has proved to be valuable too since we can see the other person now and feel like they are closer to us than they really are.
Thanks to these 2 tools and other online tools we are able to stay in close touch with family and it seems like a smaller world.
I agree about WhatsApp.
Just couple weeks back my cousin started our Family Group Chat on WhatsApp and now suddenly we are all flooded with messages. Instant Birthday Wishes…Good Mornings, Good Nites…..sharing jokes, pictures just makes us stay connected.
Its a wonderful experience.
Still not into FaceTime as most folks/family members do note use iPhones.
Now also started hearing about matrimonial meeting on Skype being very popular wherein the girl and the boy talk over Skype for few weeks in case both are in different geo locations.
And this way they get to spend more time to know each other than just one or two in person meetings!
Its really a small world now.
For us, the webcam and vonage phone calls with parents in mumbai has now switched to facetime. And whatsapp definitely has taken over, though see that lot of iphone users in US don’t seem to have installed whatsapp. Anyone uses viber frequently – don’t seem to find it that useful yet.
I use Viber to call my niece in Japan.
I occasionally use viber to call sisters while on hwy early morning for Pune_Bom.
We also tried family conf. call with clubbing facetime, viber & webcam 😉