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Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

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181–190 of 372 posts

Re: Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

#181
post #57

I've had a tremendous amount of respect for Mark Zuckerberg as a leader, and have gone out of my way to defend him in the past ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17128369 ). I always envisioned whatsapp as a defensive purchase that would stay true to its initial vision (perhaps being used to prop up their other products in an unintrusive manner). But this article makes me realize Mark is s a one-trick advertising…

To be honest all of the Silicon Valley innovators have this cult of personality that once you look behind the curtain they act in their own self interest (which isn't a bad thing). For example Elon Musk has his "Iron Man" persona that puts himself on a pedestal and projects an ideal that his companies will solve the worlds problems. Once you look behind the curtain you see that he uses this to justify long hours by h…

Elon Musk is probably the easiest person to point at because he’s worst at it. He has a novel approach of talking down the odds of success of any newsworthy rocket launch and he clearly doesn’t understand that criticising journalists’ reporting of Tesla autopilot issues isn’t going to encourage good reporting.

He looks and sounds so awkward in interviews that he may have as little charisma as I do… at least, if you can ignore the fact he’s a billionaire, which some people find very charismatic in itself.

Re: Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

#182
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever called to cancel the WSJ? I have stopped the WSJ three times and the FT twice (same phone service.) It’s easy to do. They will make a retention offer but will not do things like hang up on you, require you to have moved out of your area, make you wait, etc. Of course I prefer self-service cancellation to be an option, but if the personal service route is handled well, it’s a small negative in my book, n…

Oh wait. >They will make a retention offer but will not do things like hang up on you, REQUIRE YOU TO HAVE MOVED OUT OF YOUR AREA You're stating this like it's a normal requirement for canceling subscriptions. I understand you're praising WSJ for not doing that but... Do you accept treatment like this in the US? Are press subscriptions a lifetime commitment over there? Do I need to indenture my firstborn to any magaz…

No, I don’t accept treatment like that when possible — I listed things that Comcast has done to me on the phone. :)

Re: Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

#183
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever called to cancel the WSJ? I have stopped the WSJ three times and the FT twice (same phone service.) It’s easy to do. They will make a retention offer but will not do things like hang up on you, require you to have moved out of your area, make you wait, etc. Of course I prefer self-service cancellation to be an option, but if the personal service route is handled well, it’s a small negative in my book, n…

You're nice to them, but I maintain this is lack of respect for the customer. This is 2018 and we have the internet for such processes that can be automated, not 1965. Perhaps they wouldn't need to make retention offers if they didn't have to pay the staff that makes the retention offers? Bonus, I'm not in the US so that number is an international call for me. Besides, subscriptions are only useful if you actually re…

I didn’t downvote you. You have a point about the international call. Edit: actually, they seem to have a different phone number for many countries. Is the country you live in covered? How is the phone service quality if you make a test call? https://customercenter.wsj.com/contact

I liked my WSJ subscription and it really helped me at my first job out of college. It was the print subscription and I’d supplement by reading their blogs online.

Re: Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

#184
post #82
post #57

I've had a tremendous amount of respect for Mark Zuckerberg as a leader, and have gone out of my way to defend him in the past ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17128369 ). I always envisioned whatsapp as a defensive purchase that would stay true to its initial vision (perhaps being used to prop up their other products in an unintrusive manner). But this article makes me realize Mark is s a one-trick advertising…

Facebook ads genuinely add value though. 78% of randomly polled US consumers discovered a new product that interested them on Facebook: https://image.slidesharecdn.com/internettrendsreport2018-180... (From Mary Meeker's 2018 report).

The net value of Facebook ads would roughly be taking some measure of how much it helps minus some measure of how much it hurts.

You posted some way of roughly approximating how much it helps. But looking at metrics like this in isolation is meaningless and there's no useful interpretation except for people (such as in the ad business) whose utility function for this topic only depends on the upside component.

Society at large also depends on downside components, like how much psychological drag the pervasive ads generate, how many people are deceived or manipulated into mis-wanting something purely because of ad repetition, how many times are ML-based personalized ads miscalculated, leaving a consumer to experience inappropriate or irrelevant ads because of algorithm malfunction. How much extra cognitive effort is required to maintain browsing solutions that mitigate tracking. How much of the ad experience facilitates addiction to mobile phones. And so on.

I am not claiming that I have a great way to roughly quantify these, but you could. For example, you could do eye-tracking and phone usage studies and try to roughly compute the amount of extra app time that is attributable to dealing with unwanted ads or app time attributable to ad-linked addictive behavior, and then estimate up what some average case cost of that time would be at a median salary or something, to roughly value that time. Or you could gather statistics on how accurate data-based ad personalization is and how often someone spends time costs processing misclassified ad categories they self-report as not relevant.

I conjecture that the financial cost of that lost time (which is an under-estimate that doesn't factor in other psychological drag or second order effects) would, when aggregated over hundreds of millions or billions of people, add up to waaay more cost that what the offsetting value from effective ads and product discoveries offered, meaning that from a perspective other than the consumer corporations that profit from the transactions, it would look like a giant net loss for society.

Re: Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

#185
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I installed Signal a while back and tried to convince as many people as possible to switch. But only 7 people in my contact list have Signal installed. Even when communicating with those 7 people i tend to use WhatsApp because i tend to process all my messages at once without switching apps.

I'm doing the same, and I only have 10 people. They happen to be my favorite 10 people, but still only 10. I think Signal or something of that nature will be the ultimate endgame for communication systems. They're way too easy to make, they're cheap to maintain, and they're hard to monetize without being scummy. This is the perfect formula for a non-profit to step in. I think the WhatsApp founders alone could maintai…

It seems to be inevitable that the "scummy" ones finish first. Deskop Linux could have been more popular than Windows, GIMP more popular than Photoshop and Signal more popular than WhatsApp if only they where first. But the Open Source world always lags behind when it comes to developing new stuff for ordinary consumers.

Re: Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever called to cancel the WSJ? I have stopped the WSJ three times and the FT twice (same phone service.) It’s easy to do. They will make a retention offer but will not do things like hang up on you, require you to have moved out of your area, make you wait, etc. Of course I prefer self-service cancellation to be an option, but if the personal service route is handled well, it’s a small negative in my book, n…

If you are from outside the USA, those phone numbers are not free. So it actually costs money to cancel, if they even accept payment options outside the USA?

Are you in one f these countries? I would venture most of their subscribers can make a domestic call after reading the list on the support page. https://customercenter.wsj.com/contact

Re: Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"supported by grants and donations" according to their site.

Why is everyone doing business with a black and white strategy? On one extreme, everything is free and funded by selling user information and on the other extreme, everthing is free but funded by donation. What is wrong with 2$/year model? Everyone (I mean truly everyone) is willing to pay that.

I disagree, some very poor people most likely prefer the ads then parting with 2$. One thing people forget about advertising it is a pretty good at price discriminating. Ads to rich people are worth more than ads to poor people so advertisers can make more money from those with more money to spend while still serving everyone.

Re: Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

#188
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know how old you are, but phone calls were really expensive in the decades before 2000. It’s not something low income people could afford to do very often.

I expect this depends a lot on where you were living in the decades before 2000 and what you mean by "phone calls". In much of the US, in the 70's, 80's, and 90's a telephone had a fixed monthly fee and 'free' calling to any other phone in the local area. Phone penetration was over 90%[1] in 1970 and rose to over 95% by 1980 suggesting that even those at 50% below the poverty line in 1980 (roughly 6% of the US popula…

My first boyfriend was born in the late 70s (UK) and hos family didn’t own a phone — not one landline phone between them — because phones were too expensive.

I was early 80s, and watched landline and mobile costs fall to negligible levels.

My current girlfriend was born in the late 80s (USA, but world traveler with family work), and I think from the start of highschool onward pretty much always assumed there was an internet connection and too-cheap-to-care calls even before everyone made their own VOIP/video chat messengers.

Re: Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

#189
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know how old you are, but phone calls were really expensive in the decades before 2000. It’s not something low income people could afford to do very often.

I expect this depends a lot on where you were living in the decades before 2000 and what you mean by "phone calls". In much of the US, in the 70's, 80's, and 90's a telephone had a fixed monthly fee and 'free' calling to any other phone in the local area. Phone penetration was over 90%[1] in 1970 and rose to over 95% by 1980 suggesting that even those at 50% below the poverty line in 1980 (roughly 6% of the US popula…

I grew up in LA in the 80s. Yes, "local" calls were free and that probably covered most of the people you went to school with. If you had friends or family members 20+ miles away (commonplace for car-centric LA) it was pretty easy to rack up huge bills.

Re: Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

#190
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook ads genuinely add value though. 78% of randomly polled US consumers discovered a new product that interested them on Facebook: https://image.slidesharecdn.com/internettrendsreport2018-180... (From Mary Meeker's 2018 report).

They are also phenomenally effective for retailers selling products, if you are slightly out of the mainstream and people aren't Googling you then your only web option is facebook and we have found it gives an excellent ROI.

This would not distinguish whether behavior tracking to algorithmically personalize ads ends up being better than just naive ads based on page-level content or other data unrelated a person or the person's behavior.

What you're describing for non-mainstream sellers is just gains from internet-scale distribution platforms, whether it's Facebook or Reddit or whatever. It lets the little guy reach lots of people on a much smaller ad budget because of the distribution technology and a platform's ability to grow a large network of users.

Whatever benefit there is might have nothing to do with Facebook (or any specific company) and have nothing to do with tracking users to target ads at them.

It might just be "the internet is a big lever" that lets smaller sellers more easily reach people generally.

That might be argument that ads, in general, can be valuable on Facebook. But it might be the case that the extra effort of personalizing them does not add further value, while it does have downsides with data privacy, tracking, unwanted ads, etc.

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