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

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

#261

Post by wybiral »

cm2012 wrote: post #82
rm999 wrote: 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).

Are those statistics a direct result of promoted content on those platforms or a combination of that with normal word of mouth from peers on those platforms?

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

#262

Post by diogenescynic »

chinhodado wrote: post #95
cma wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine how useful it would be if when there is a notification about a friend on Facebook, you could peek it by swiping on the notification in the android drawer like you can with texts, without entering the Facebook app. Nope. Engineers are dedicated there to increasing other things than the utility of the app. Interests aren't aligned with the users. Same with removing chronological feeds. Turn things more and more…

The most frustrating change for me was FB (or Messenger later) used to send me an email when I received a message, with the message content inside the email. A few years ago they removed the content from the email and forced me to log into FB or Messenger to see the message. It's extremely user hostile.

They won’t even let you view messages on the mobile website either. Instead they restrict that and force you to install the Messenger app. Yelp does the same thing and feels just as scummy of a tactic. Basically both companies try to force you to install an app you don’t actually need so they can mine your contacts and personal data. No thanks to your tricks and traps business model.

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

#263

Post by doctorsher »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #243
doctorsher wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally understand. You are facing the classic dilemma of privacy vs convenience. Personally, I distrusted facebook so much that I have avoided any of their products since 2013. Obviously a major win for my privacy, but it sacrificed some convenience -- then I had no real-time way to communicate with my relative in India. In the end, you'll have to do some introspection to see if the convenience gained is worth the…

At this point, it isn't about privacy vs. convenience, it's about privacy vs. being able to have a social life. People aren't going to install a more privacy-supportive messenger just for you, they'll gradually let you drop out of their lives just like you would with a friend that you can only reach by driving to their farm 6 hours away.

Replace convenience with whatever benefit you see most pertinent. That is your trade-off. For me, convenience is the most frequent benefit.

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

#264

Post by ntlve »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #232
cma wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine how useful it would be if when there is a notification about a friend on Facebook, you could peek it by swiping on the notification in the android drawer like you can with texts, without entering the Facebook app. Nope. Engineers are dedicated there to increasing other things than the utility of the app. Interests aren't aligned with the users. Same with removing chronological feeds. Turn things more and more…

Except to show that notification on your phone, Facebook needs to give a 3rd party (Phone Manufacturer) access not only to your data, but data about your friends. This is something people are currently very upset with them for doing. So they can make things convenient, or keep your data safe, but its hard to do both.

Their code is executing with a third party kernel, trusting that but not trusting the notification system which sits way above hierarchically seems like a very arbitrary delineation.

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

#265

Post by xkjkls »

rmsaksida wrote: post #120
xkjkls wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't scale nearly to the $20 billion they were bought at. Yelp, which has a similar business model to what you quoted, and is more essential to businesses than WhatsApp, only has a market cap of $3.6 billion.

I'm not sure you understand how popular Whatsapp is outside the US. No one in my country has heard of Yelp (201 million population). Everyone uses Whatsapp daily. Whatsapp has 1.5 billion active users.

Yeah, but if we're going by a business features monetization model, what would matter is the number of businesses that are signed up, not the number of users.

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

#266

Post by sizzle »

cma wrote: post #64
rm999 wrote: 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…

Imagine how useful it would be if when there is a notification about a friend on Facebook, you could peek it by swiping on the notification in the android drawer like you can with texts, without entering the Facebook app. Nope. Engineers are dedicated there to increasing other things than the utility of the app. Interests aren't aligned with the users. Same with removing chronological feeds. Turn things more and more…

" Engineers are dedicated there to increasing other things than the utility of the app"

I'll qualify that statement by adding that product management/design team is optimizing for engagement metrics and the engineers are developing from those blueprints. Blame product management for anti-UX decisions. No PO/PM is going to risk their career by spearheading an effort to lower app engagement metrics which results in a loss of advertising revenue.

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

#267

Post by cm2012 »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #190
simonbarker87 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mu…

You can test this yourself easily on facebook. Just target a blank audience of all users vs a lookalike audience FB builds for you algorithmically. The latter works much, much better at generating sales for almost everyone.

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

#269

Post by megablast »

drb91 wrote: post #241
bald wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying I support the original idea, but there's objective, widely agreed-upon definitions for poverty, so it should be possible to transfer these to define low income.

> objective, widely agreed-upon definitions for poverty No, there aren’t; this is a political line that doesn’t make any sense at all. This is why “livable wage” is a phrase: just getting above the poverty line does not imply you can live on your income. The poverty line is pegged too low to be meaningful, at least here in US.

Like everything that exists in the real world, it doesn't have to be perfect.

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

#270

Post by rmsaksida »

xkjkls wrote: post #265
rmsaksida wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure you understand how popular Whatsapp is outside the US. No one in my country has heard of Yelp (201 million population). Everyone uses Whatsapp daily. Whatsapp has 1.5 billion active users.

Yeah, but if we're going by a business features monetization model, what would matter is the number of businesses that are signed up, not the number of users.

I agree. My point is that a large number of businesses are likely to sign up because the service has a large number of users.
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