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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

#161

Post by paganel »

chrischen wrote: post #128
avip wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People wanted free text messaging, so they used whatsapp. If they were so great it would have caught on in the US, but it didn’t.

It caught on in almost all the rest of the world but because it didn't catch on in the US it means that it is shit. Yeah, talk about living in a bubble...

Back on topic, I've avoided using WhatsApp for about a year, even though everyone around me was using it. When I've finally gave in I found out that it was really, really easy to use, even on my relatively crappy iPhone4 (I'm talking about ~2014-2015, at which point that type of phone was seen as a museum artifact; I'm still using it). Sending photos was damn easy, notifications were always "right" (not the crappy shit that Skype calls "notifications") and the "last seen" future was the central point of many personal relationships (still is). Unfortunately WhatsApp stopped functioning for me about one year and a half ago (after the FB acquisition), but you can't dismiss it just because it hasn't caught up in the States.

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

#162

Post by mercer »

newscracker wrote: post #95
hiq wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> I don't see any undoing in sight, unless the competition steps its game up a whole lot. Due to network effects, competitors can't really have a big impact on reducing WhatsApp usage unless something scandalous and hugely worrisome (to the general public) happens with WhatsApp, which then causes many people to ditch it. I don't use WhatsApp because it's owned by Facebook. So my following comments here should be take…

Telegram has become more and more popular in my network, and part of what makes it work is that for the most part it doesn't really complicate things too much to use both WhatsApp and Telegram. It's not ideal, but largely frictionless.

The one issue I have with Telegram is that starting at least six months ago there can be a huge delay in message delivery. Sometimes easily half an hour after a message was sent. Does anyone else have this experience?

Only thing I can think of other than Telegram just getting worse in this regard is that perhaps they 'punished' me because I've been experimenting with bots. It's almost enough to make me stop using it though, as push (or near-instant) message delivery is rather important...

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

#163

Post by sadlyNess »

I think WhatsApp is where Twitter was during their Ascend-to-protocol Vs Just-push-Ads phase[1], only that WA is dead-set on not going down the Ad route. IMO their options are whether to become an app platform for businesses(Service delivery, payments, shopping) or to become a user-data source for FB. KIM that they are naturally competing with IG & FB.com in generating revenue for FB Inc and subscription isn't working for them(mostly because of almost zero app-buying & digital payments culture in places where WA is popular).

[1] http://daltoncaldwell.com/what-twitter-could-have-been

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

#164

Post by sim0n »

smeroth wrote: post #108
rvr_ wrote: post #101

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…

Regarding its availability, I think it's sad that they dropped support for Symbian OS. I wonder what made them drop an existing platform - I would've understood not bothering to develop for a new one, but not drop an existing.

Is Symbian OS still a thing? From Wikipedia:

> Nokia terminated its support of software development and maintenance for Symbian with effect from 1 January 2014, thereafter refusing to publish new or changed Symbian applications or content in the Nokia Store and terminating its 'Symbian Signed' program for software certification. (http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/18502_New_Symbian_a...)

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

#165

Post by mereo »

chrischen wrote: post #128
avip wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People wanted free text messaging, so they used whatsapp. If they were so great it would have caught on in the US, but it didn’t.

> If they were so great it would have caught on in the US, but it didn’t.

The US is not at the centre of the world.

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

#167

Post by [deleted] »

chrischen wrote: post #128
avip wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People wanted free text messaging, so they used whatsapp. If they were so great it would have caught on in the US, but it didn’t.

[deleted]

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

#168

Post by newscracker »

mercer wrote: post #162
newscracker wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see any undoing in sight, unless the competition steps its game up a whole lot. Due to network effects, competitors can't really have a big impact on reducing WhatsApp usage unless something scandalous and hugely worrisome (to the general public) happens with WhatsApp, which then causes many people to ditch it. I don't use WhatsApp because it's owned by Facebook. So my following comments here should be take…

Telegram has become more and more popular in my network, and part of what makes it work is that for the most part it doesn't really complicate things too much to use both WhatsApp and Telegram. It's not ideal, but largely frictionless. The one issue I have with Telegram is that starting at least six months ago there can be a huge delay in message delivery. Sometimes easily half an hour after a message was sent. Does…

> The one issue I have with Telegram is that starting at least six months ago there can be a huge delay in message delivery. Sometimes easily half an hour after a message was sent. Does anyone else have this experience?

I haven't experienced such long delays with Telegram. It takes a few seconds, though I will admit that message delivery seems to have slowed down compared to how it was a few years ago.

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

#169

Post by rvr_ »

seppin wrote: post #138
mattbettinson wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in Brazil during the WhatsApp ban last summer. It crippled communication, it was fascinating to see.

was there ever a reason give for it?

Brazil has a fair new "Internet law" [1] that states, among other things that:

1) Internet providers must not log any information about users traffic, except information related to the network access itself (like the IPv4 dynamic address attributed to the user's modem)

2) Application providers must log all actions performed by its users and retain for at least 6 months.

3) Any judge can request to an application owner the complete access log of anybody.

4) If the company does not comply to the request it can be fined up to 10% of its local revenue; face temporary or permanent shutdown.

WhatsApp ignored the law for two times and a 1st instance judge ordered the temporary ban to be performed by the major network providers. In both cases the order was latter revoked by 2nd instance judges.

Keep in mind that our "Internet law" was praised by everybody, including the international community, for its explicit creation of rules for internet neutrality. Turns out that the price for internet neutrality was mandatory massive surveillance

[1]: PT-BR source: http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2011-2014/2014/lei/...

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

#170

Post by danneu »

elboru wrote: post #133
rvr_ wrote: post #101

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…

Same scenario in Mexico, people in the US didn't leave SMS as fast as us because they had unlimited SMS plans. A lot of people in our countries didn't have that option, we had to pay around 20 US cents per SMS that was just insane

The big telecom companies in Mexico like Telcel also don't charge you for WhatsApp data usage which showstops any potential competitors.
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