111–120 of 185 posts
Why do we adhere to the assumption that number of users is the ultimate metric of software success? I would like to hear from devs who aren't interested in expanding for the sake of expanding, who still consider their apps to be very successful.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Privatize the gains, socialize the losses" is undeniably a lucrative business strategy, but it's not one I particularly want to celebrate. This doesn't describe anything that AirBnB or Uber are doing. Taxis were expensive and horrible because governments created artificial scarcity via taxi medallion systems. They were "socializing the gains", to build off your aphorism. Uber re-privatized the gains by circumventi…
Airbnb socializes the costs by transfering them to the flat owners (cleaning etc.), and Uber to the drivers (fuel, maintenance etc.)
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 o…
We hear this rant on every chat-related thread. WhatsApp brought the amazing innovation of using your phone number for "login" (and later on - your native contacts as its contacts list). This enabled zero-BS onboarding, and that's why they have so many users. Thanks WA for helping humanity deprecate that horrible XMPP. I don't miss it.
> all of its attention has gone into making the app as simple as possible to get started with And they succeeded. I've been using it for years and the only new feature I remember is end to end encryption, despite they probably added new features. I don't care about status and stories, if they're still there they managed not to make them in the way of people that only want a SMS alternative. This is great design. My o…
The other significant feature added was voice chats. The fact that it's easy to forget or not notice is a strong indicator of how much humanity has adopted text chatting as the primary mode of remote communication.
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…
> seemingly unlimited amount of capital Did they burn through lots of money? > no immediate pressure to turn _any_ revenue/profit Didn't some people pay for it?
Given that they have extremely little metadata too, I actually wonder if they have any revenue stream.
I think i see a pattern: WhatsApp: circumvent cellphone texting charges Airbnb: circumvent hotel laws Uber: circumvent taxi laws Amazon: circumvent state taxes Facebook: circumvent people's anonymity online Google: circumvent copyrights (take people's content slap on ads)
Or less cynically: WhatsApp: cheap plentiful messaging Airbnb: cheap plentiful vacation rentals Uber: cheap plentiful taxis Amazon: cheap plentiful stuff Facebook: ... umm i'm sure there's something here ... Google: cheap plentiful access to information All of these disrupt the slow-moving complacent dinosaurs of the past.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Privatize the gains, socialize the losses" is undeniably a lucrative business strategy, but it's not one I particularly want to celebrate. This doesn't describe anything that AirBnB or Uber are doing. Taxis were expensive and horrible because governments created artificial scarcity via taxi medallion systems. They were "socializing the gains", to build off your aphorism. Uber re-privatized the gains by circumventi…
Airbnb socializes the costs by transfering them to the flat owners (cleaning etc.), and Uber to the drivers (fuel, maintenance etc.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Talking with non-technical family members was hard in 2007. Partly this was because the most portable solution was a big chunky laptop and most people didn't even have that. But we can't totally separate the mobile computing devices that have appeared since then from the apps installed on them. I'd love a world where open source protocols and clients dominated, but it wasn't quite the utopia you remember.
Skype
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 o…
This persists today - every single person I communicate with uses a completely different app, including SMS and email. I only know one person who uses WhatsApp, but serval have dumbphones.
Coordinating with more than one person involves at least 2 chat programs and a website. "Group chats" are impossible because in 2017 we still can't group chat between 1 person on Skype, 1 SMS, and a Facebook.
WhatsApp's success here in Brazil can be attributed to very few reasons: 1) Worked in every single smartphone (I started using it on a very resource constrained 2010's Nokia running s60) 2) SMS was and still is very expensive here. 3) Zero friction to use: it uses your phone number as your ID and your catalog list as its own. It was a killer combination, almost everybody here in Brazil uses it, no matter how young or…