WhatsApp -- the mobile messaging app with over 450 million users, a popular alternative to conventional SMS text messaging -- was recently bought by Facebook for a whopping $19 billion. Does that mean that WhatsApp or similar apps might be an easier, cheaper options to engage your community via mobile text messages? Probably not. At least, not yet.

Text messaging is incredibly popular in the U.S. -- almost everyone here with a cell phone uses it. However, texting remains the most challenging way to engage people in your community via their cells phones. U.S. wireless carrier requirements, customer costs, and state and federal laws present significant logistical, technical, and financial hurdles to offering SMS-based alerts, reminders, or interactive services. (It certainly can be done, and in many community it's well worth doing, but it's not as simple as setting up an e-mail newsletter.)

It's different in India, Asia, Europe and many other parts of the world -- where the vast majority of WhatsApp's 450 million users reside. Around the world there are vast differences in the regulatory landscape, in how people pay for cell phones and mobile services, and in cultural norms around using text messaging. This is why Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp is widely viewed as a strategic global move, not a domestic one. Consequently, if you were serving a community in, say, India or Germany, it might make sense to engage your community through text messages delivered via WhatsApp.

But in the U.S., so far, neither WhatsApp nor any other messaging service is likely to have significant market penetration that it might be popular with a significant part of your community. (With the possible exception of Apple's iMessage, which is pretty locked down by Apple and not amenable to bulk messaging or interactive services.)

If you're trying to engage lower-income or otherwise marginalized segments of your community, current mobile messaging apps present a technical and economic hurdle. They transmit messages over the internet, which requires access to wifi or a carrier data plan. For many people in underserved communities, data plans aren't in the budget and wifi access isn't reliable. However, conventional text messaging will work fine on even the cheapest and simplest cell phone.

It's possible that, in the future, mobile messaging apps may become more popular in the U.S. -- perhaps even to the extent that there might be a few clear leaders that would warrant consideration for inclusion in text-message-based services for your community.

Given Facebook's overwhelming U.S. popularity, it's even possible that the social media giant might figure out a way to incorporate What'sApp functionality into Facebook mobile apps to supplement or supplant conventional text messaging. If that happens, it might become possible to conduct a large portion of text messaging services via Facebook.

If you're interested in using text messaging to inform or engage your community, it's worth keeping an eye on what's happening with mobile messaging apps. But in the U.S., don't expect they'd be a better option than SMS text messaging -- at least, not for a few years.