141–150 of 185 posts
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Even though it was not free until some years ago, the price was so ridicolous that people were happy to pay for the service.
They never actually charged it though, you didn't actually have to pay it.
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)
WhatsApp: circumvent cellphone texting charges, making texting cheaper
Airbnb: circumvent hotel laws, making staying anywhere cheaper
Uber: circumvent taxi laws, making taxis and flexible transport cheaper
Amazon: circumvent state taxes (and VAT, until recently, and still the case in Europe, Australia and I'm sure many other jurisdictions), making getting mail-order goods cheaper
PS for Amazon: and also making mail-order a great deal faster.
PPS for Amazon: also cut out many middlemen to make things cheaper.
Facebook: make advertising to particular groups, accurately identified, a LOT cheaper
Google: Make it a lot cheaper to find things online.
But Why stay in tech ?
Aldi + their discounter competitors: Make groceries a lot cheaper by cutting out the middleman
GE, in their day: Make lighting and anything that could be done cheaper electrically a lot cheaper. Or possible at all in the first place.
VW, in their day: make owning a car a lot cheaper.
GDF/Suez: make transporting goods from Europe to Asia a lot faster (but mostly cheaper).
Keep in mind Jevon's paradox. Cheaper does not just mean cheaper, as in less dollars. It also means that whatever becomes cheaper becomes more ubiquitous. Faster. Becomes accessible for more people, either in difficult geographies, or poor, or ... It also means those things become feasible to use for various purposes that they couldn't be used for before. It means a lot more of said good/service will get used. And so on and so forth.
You want to make $1 million ? Become great in a particular subject, and consult.
You want to make $10-$100 million ? Start a company with a niche product, and do it really well.
Want to make $100 million - $1 billion ? Start a company and bribe the government, so that it either pays you directly or forces loads of people to pay for your services (lots of these in Washington and Brussels)
You want to make $1-$10 billion ? Make some stupid ubiquitous product cheaper. Think the most moronic normal things in existence. Breakfast cereal. Grapes. Web search.
Whatsapp probably has about 220 million users in India[1] and also because of dwindling mobile data prices, it also has now become the alternate voice channel [2]. Also I read that 90% of all smart phones in India have Whatsapp installed.
(1) http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/info-tech/whatsapp-hits-... (2) https://www.medianama.com/2017/05/223-indian-whatsapp-users-...
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Whatsapp is no 1 market share in every country. If not no 1, only lost from wechat
While I agree that Whatsapp is the dominant chat app in Asia, it's not number 1 everywhere. Notably - as you mentioned - Wechat in China, but also Kakao in Korea, Zalo in Vietnam and Line in Japan and Taiwan, where very few people use Whatsapp.
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Your list is preposterous. Even if you take all your other items at face value, you make it sound like "circumventing cellphone texting charges" is breaking the law or something, as if ridiculous texting charges are set up for the good of anyone besides big telcos.
It's not preposterous, it's exactly right. SMS text messages were a something like $15bn industry before whatsapp got between them and the customers, and that has value.
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…
WhatsApp's UI is a complete mess. Trying to explain it to my mum has been near-impossible. Starting a new conversation is done with an unlabeled FAB on the main-screen. She had no idea that that was even a button. Then there's four tabs across the top. One for taking pictures, because the Camera-App and the camera-shortcut in the conversation view apparently weren't enough, one for actual chats, one for setting your…
The app is quite streamlined, especially compared to other apps like Facebook Messenger or Skype. I think if you were to remove any of the main features at this point, people would complain and jump ship to another app.
In India, Whatsapp is HUGE. I would go as far as to say if it were to go down for a day, we will see a dip in the per-day GDP. It is not that so much business is conducted on it, but also it is the dominant social messaging glue. Whatsapp probably has about 220 million users in India[1] and also because of dwindling mobile data prices, it also has now become the alternate voice channel [2]. Also I read that 90% of al…
WhapsApp could probably monetize there by tacking on a payments system, possible a bit paypal like. Could make money and not annoy existing users much beyond an extra button they don't use.
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Even though it was not free until some years ago, the price was so ridicolous that people were happy to pay for the service.
They never actually charged it though, you didn't actually have to pay it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It's funny that facebook is amongst the biggest on that list, when they don't actually seem to provide anything of use to the end user.