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WhatsApp Cofounder on How It Reached 1.3B Users Without Losing Its Focus

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Re: WhatsApp Cofounder on How It Reached 1.3B Users Without Losing Its Focus

#81

Post by ramses0 »

mbesto wrote: post #63
wpietri wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article? They're explicitly not focusing on user growth: "But while Facebook has long prided itself on the way its growth team has turned attracting new members into a science, Koum is equally proud of the fact that WhatsApp has not done so. Instead, all of its attention has gone into making the app as simple as possible to get started with—it doesn’t even require you to create a user name or passwor…

> Did you read the article? I did. > as simple as possible to get started with How is that not applying a focus on "user growth"? Just because you're not "growth hacking" or "using a a growth team" doesn't mean you are not implementing a strategy of growth of a user base. Adding a paywall or an advertisement would actively thwart the "simplicity of getting started", and thus halt user growth. My point still stands -…

Please understand some of the details about _HOW_ WhatsApp did what they did.

Focusing on reach (ubiquity is an innovation). Focusing on operational efficiency (a low-cost tech company is an innovation).

The apocryphal stories about WhatsApp in support of the two above points are:

1) Supporting J2ME clients (ie: dumb-phones) ... connecting "poor people" in dumb-phone countries w/ "rich people" in smart-phone countries (for $0.99 app).

$0.99 / user * 25% of your userbase isn't enough revenue for most companies to be successful.

2) Be operationally efficient, reliable, and lean. How? By running like 10 erlang servers (targeting peak message transmission RATES, not all-time storage of messages or number of users)

This allowed them to _SCALE_ revenue because they're basically dividing by zero (Income v. Expenses) if they're extremely lean on number of employees, maintenance, and operations costs.

Therefore: it compares extremely well to Juicero as a counter-example.

Re: WhatsApp Cofounder on How It Reached 1.3B Users Without Losing Its Focus

#82

Post by hiq »

fwdpropaganda wrote: post #65

I think they're losing focus. I've started seeing cracks in WhatsApp's UI: - Some times when inserting a single emoji on a single line, in between pressing send and the message being sent, the keyboard flickers. - There seems to be a mysterious space between the Euro symbol and the next character...? That space isn't displayed on the webapp. - I had a third one that I forgot. Also bad decisions: - Logs shouldn't be b…

> Sharing metadata with Facebook will be WhatsApp's undoing, mark my words.

It pains me to say this, but almost nobody cares. Many people don't even know that Facebook owns WhatsApp. Most people don't care about how privacy-intrusive Messenger (or whatever Facebook's chat app is called nowadays) is, and WhatsApp is less intrusive than that (at least the data is e2e encrypted). I don't see any undoing in sight, unless the competition steps its game up a whole lot.

Re: WhatsApp Cofounder on How It Reached 1.3B Users Without Losing Its Focus

#83

Post by skore »

fwdpropaganda wrote: post #65

I think they're losing focus. I've started seeing cracks in WhatsApp's UI: - Some times when inserting a single emoji on a single line, in between pressing send and the message being sent, the keyboard flickers. - There seems to be a mysterious space between the Euro symbol and the next character...? That space isn't displayed on the webapp. - I had a third one that I forgot. Also bad decisions: - Logs shouldn't be b…

> "Status"? No one cares.

I really didn't care either. Then we went on a family vacation and instead of sending pictures to everybody all the time, I put a couple on my status every other day and told people if they're interested, they can look there.

I must admit it was a fun experience watching people check them out (you can see who looks at your status) and a few fun conversations started through it. Definitely a better option than firehose blasting everybody with your vacation pictures directly. (Hardly anybody in even my extended family uses facebook, btw.)

As for swiping left: That's just the alternative mode for tab switching, swiping right gets you to "status". I agree that it doesn't need a camera tab, though.

Re: WhatsApp Cofounder on How It Reached 1.3B Users Without Losing Its Focus

#84

Post by ramses0 »

fwdpropaganda wrote: post #65

I think they're losing focus. I've started seeing cracks in WhatsApp's UI: - Some times when inserting a single emoji on a single line, in between pressing send and the message being sent, the keyboard flickers. - There seems to be a mysterious space between the Euro symbol and the next character...? That space isn't displayed on the webapp. - I had a third one that I forgot. Also bad decisions: - Logs shouldn't be b…

Stories + Camera + Pictures is all Zuck. (Global Facebook theme: "Take pictures, tell stories, connect with real people.")

Otherwise the comm's platform will just degenerate into shitposting, memes, and politics. Make it easier / more natural to share "real" pictures, not meme-y text.

You'll see it "universally" in all their apps... each done slightly differently to account for differing user-base habits, but the core idea is the same... suck oxygen from competitors, and push forward with tools for OC and not reposts (original content, aka: real-user-sharing).

Re: WhatsApp Cofounder on How It Reached 1.3B Users Without Losing Its Focus

#85

Post by zerr »

maqbool wrote: post #23
mbesto wrote: post #3

It's super easy to focus on a single metric (user growth) when you have a seemingly unlimited amount of capital and have no immediate pressure to turn _any_ revenue/profit. This article does a massive disservice to those who are not as fortunate who will inevitably be lead into failure. Note, this should not discredit the more interesting and glorified aspects of WhatsApp (strong leadership, technical aptitude, tech…

tech stack : Erlang

Modified Erlang, as described in one of their talks.

Re: WhatsApp Cofounder on How It Reached 1.3B Users Without Losing Its Focus

#86

Post by twic »

pjc50 wrote: post #79
coldtea wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did you ever use a taxi before uber? Almost every day.

People really need to specify a geographical context for discussions of Uber; I've no doubt that wyager and coldtea are both reporting their experiences, but taxis are necessarily a very local service. Clearly some cities just have really bad taxis.

Finally, sense!

In London, Uber is a taxi service. The people driving for Uber are taxi drivers, with taxi driver licenses [1], and the vehicles they drive are taxis, with taxi licenses [2]. The experience is therefore much the same. The difference arises from three things: Uber has a nice app, whereas legacy taxi offices are a shambles; Uber drivers are desperate to keep their star rating up, and so might be nicer; Uber subsidises the whole operation to win market share. The app is the only significant difference, in my experience.

[1] https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/taxis-and-private-hire/licensing...

[2] https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/taxis-and-private-hire/licensing...

Re: WhatsApp Cofounder on How It Reached 1.3B Users Without Losing Its Focus

#87

Post by firefoxd »

Here are some numbers i can't find. The number of users chatting on yahoo, aim, facebook, msn messenger, and all the random others combined when it was a thing not to care which people were using.

At my job in 2011, every single member of my team was on using a different client, i was on ubuntu using Empathy.

The point is, chat was already resolved, and it didn't require some sort of "quiet room or distraction free office" to get it where it was.

Kudos to the WhatsApp team for having this many users, but let's not forget that we had no problem chatting until the facebook, yahoo, googles broke the old protocol in favor of restricting users to their own systems.

Re: WhatsApp Cofounder on How It Reached 1.3B Users Without Losing Its Focus

#88

Post by tw04 »

aetherson wrote: post #40
tw04 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what to tell you, I'm not fabricating the fact there was very much a yearly subscription fee associated with the app (and prior to that a price to just download the app). I'm aware it didn't apply universally which is why I specifically said it varied depending on platform. https://www.imore.com/whatsapp-moves-yearly-subscription-pay...

Well, you claimed in the post I responded to a monthly subscription, not an annual one. What's a factor of twelve between friends? My understanding is that the annual fee was essentially nonexistent, honored far more on the breach than in the observance, though all I know for sure is that they never charged me.

Not sure why I typed /month, it was always a yearly fee or a flat fee to buy the app. Can't edit it at this point.

Re: WhatsApp Cofounder on How It Reached 1.3B Users Without Losing Its Focus

#89

Post by drawnwren »

fwdpropaganda wrote: post #65

I think they're losing focus. I've started seeing cracks in WhatsApp's UI: - Some times when inserting a single emoji on a single line, in between pressing send and the message being sent, the keyboard flickers. - There seems to be a mysterious space between the Euro symbol and the next character...? That space isn't displayed on the webapp. - I had a third one that I forgot. Also bad decisions: - Logs shouldn't be b…

The social aspects are huge in Asia. How important is it that you can send an audio message instead of text to you? Again, probably not at all. In China, it was the single differentiating feature that led to Wechat's rise. My preferences does not integrate into our preferences.
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