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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

#171

Post by ramses0 »

inthewoods wrote: post #131
ramses0 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 countrie…

>This allowed them to _SCALE_ revenue because they're basically dividing by zero (Income v. Expenses) Don't disagree with anything you said except scaling revenue. As far as I can tell they never really scaled revenue, but instead became such a threat to FB in terms of users that Zuck felt he had to give up a substantial portion of his company to own them. Or put another way, if FB (or anyone else) and not bought the…

Probably 20-50 people, 100-200 servers, and comfortably sitting on 10-30% of global instant messaging traffic running through their servers. If that's not somewhat interesting to somebody then I've got a bridge to sell you.

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

#172

Post by nihonde »

paganel wrote: post #161
chrischen wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 poin…

You can add Japan, South Korea, and China to the list of places that don’t use WhatsApp.

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

#173

Post by Markoff »

mereo wrote: post #165
chrischen wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

but China is, they have it literally in their name Zhongguo (Middle earth/country), although Whatsapp didnt caught there for other reasons, since it's very skewed market

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

#174

Post by wpietri »

sfifs wrote: post #125
wpietri wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxis were mostly horrible because of pre-mobile-phone dispatch systems and expectations. That would have gotten fixed with or without Uber, although Uber certainly did push it along. But taxi medallion systems served a number of purposes. One of the big ones is reasonable regulation of taxi and driver quality. Another was keeping supply and demand balanced at a level where people didn't have to cut corners on things…

Note that none of the reasons you listed for the medallion system was "for getting paying customers efficiently from A to B". They're all secondary objectives that have little to do with serving the customer. If it was not the government, medallion system could be called a protection racket. That's why Uber succeeded.

Not really. Even if we accept your frame of analysis, which begins the moment somebody starts a trip and ends the moment they're done, then regulating taxi quality, driver quality, passenger safety, and paying for effective roads are all relevant factors.

But if the system isn't sustainable, then in the long term customers don't get what they want. So when we're designing society-level systems, we need to think about society-scale sustainability.

Personally, instead of our hodgepodge of retirement and health insurance systems, I think we should just fund a strong safety net out of taxes. That minimizes barriers to entrepreneurship and avoids distortions. But that's not what America had when the medallion system was being developed, so we got what we got. You can certainly propose a change to that, but if you want to be taken seriously, you have to explain how you'll solve the problems the existing system solves, or at least be honest that you're not solving them.

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

#175

Post by tinus_hn »

posguy wrote: post #118
frozenport wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skype

Total PITA to use, didn't work well on even decently spec'ed machines at the time, and required extra hardware that was of varying quality.

And that's before Microsoft sprinkled their 'special sauce' on it. Now it's even worse.

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

#176

Post by Markoff »

krrrh wrote: post #137
jacalata wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Humanity" may be overstating it. In Brazil people very commonly use WhatsApp to send short spoken messages, for instance.

You're right, China too. I should have said asynchronous messaging rather than text messaging. Whether short voice, text, gif, or emoji messages, the synchronous phone call is increasingly secondary.

but reason in china is overcomplicated writing system. now young people have no problem to write in pinyin, but older generation will rather send voice message, since it's the easiest way to communicate, 2nd would be handwriting, my father in law is exactly like this, not sure what kind of keyboard use my MIL, my wife is fully westernized in this aspect using google pinyin with QWERTY (!) keyboard, which is rare even by CN standard when most young people still use T9 keyboard

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

#177

Post by Markoff »

tim333 wrote: post #148
somberi wrote: post #143

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…

>so much business is conducted on it 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.

just copy what WeChat did, when in China you have no problem to pay to beggar by scanning his QR code, pay for 1RMB (0.15USD) ice cream in corner shop or to any illegal street food vendor, it's really embraced everywhere since all both parties need is phone and no needd to pay any fees to bank for POS terminal

not saying it's necessarily better than cards, since it came out of necessity when POS terminals are not as widespread as in west, but it's interesting alternative

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

#178

Post by Markoff »

sumedh wrote: post #126
inciampati wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if they also cut themselves a raw deal in selling. They could have built a whole platform on top of WhatsApp without any innovation more subtle than copying WeChat.

> They could have built a whole platform on top of WhatsApp What if it failed? A bird in the hand is worth more than 2 in the bush.

then just platform would be ignored, but it would have no impact on messaging

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

#179

Post by Markoff »

skore wrote: post #83
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…

why not provide link to Google photos shared album?

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

#180

Post by chrischen »

nihonde wrote: post #172
paganel wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 poin…

You can add Japan, South Korea, and China to the list of places that don’t use WhatsApp.

Also North Korea, Taiwan, Canada.
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