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Facebook’s New Message to WhatsApp: Make Money

wsj.com

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Re: Facebook’s New Message to WhatsApp: Make Money

#91

Post by xkjkls »

TillE wrote: post #89
xkjkls wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engagement is not nearly the same. There are 1.5 billion WhatsApp users, but how many would actually convert. I'd find it hard to see numbers higher than the low single digits.

Apple and third-parties have obviously seen value in selling those stickers and crap. I think there actually would be a decent market for premium emoji. It's not too difficult to imagine all sorts of fun bonus features in a chat app.

For whom is that the primary business model, instead of an addition though?

Re: Facebook’s New Message to WhatsApp: Make Money

#92

Post by kosei »

russellbeattie wrote: post #78

Whatsapp had a great business model: $1 a year. With their current 1.5 billion users, that's nothing to sneeze at. It doesn't cost them $100M a month to provide the service. I wish more companies were like Craigslist - happy to make an great profit and a lasting business by providing basic information services for a reasonable price. Instead, a bunch of MBAs want to rule the world by focusing on growth at all costs,…

The vast majority of customers would switch off Whatsapp to free competitors if the service had a price. If more companies go this path, sure, but the market has shown so far that people are willing to put up with ads in exchange for not paying money. We see this in pretty much every industry from TV to online content. Whatsapp does not have enough of a competitive advantage to charge a premium and hope to keep its customer base.

Re: Facebook’s New Message to WhatsApp: Make Money

#94

Post by RestlessMind »

EduardoBautista wrote: post #56
danirod wrote: post #14

Remember when WhatsApp required a subscription? One of the first changes made by Facebook after purchasing WhatsApp was to make it available for free. And now they're complaining they can't milk it enough? Oh dear. I know that a percentage of WhatsApp users would stop using the app if they started requiring a payment again –because apparently paying $1 per year for using an application on your $999 phone is outrageou…

I wish I could upvote your comment more than once. We need to recognize companies like Facebook and Google for what they really are, ad companies. I fear that Microsoft might start taking a similar path with what has happened with Windows 10. I wonder if the products that Google and Facebook offer would actually be of better quality if they actually charged a certain amount to access their services. They have become…

I would like to challenge you on your belief - YouTube offers an Ad-free mode and the subscriber numbers are still considered to be abysmal [1], considering that it has 1B+ total users. What makes you think charging $5 to $10 per month would retain enough users?

Moreover, Google made ~$15B in Q2 2018 in USA alone[2]. 86% came from ads, so let's assume Google made ~13B from ads in the USA in Q2-18. Even if we were to assume that each of the 240M internet users in the USA pays $10/mo to Google (an obviously false assumption), that is still only $7.2B for Q2-18, or half the revenue they are making from ads.

[1] https://9to5google.com/2018/01/22/youtube-tv-300k-subscriber... [2] https://abc.xyz/investor/pdf/2018Q2_alphabet_earnings_releas...

Re: Facebook’s New Message to WhatsApp: Make Money

#96

Post by [deleted] »

RestlessMind wrote: post #77
anuragbiyani wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are completely mistaken if you think adding a subscription-only would not reduce usage of WhatsApp by 10x at least. I am an Indian (WhatsApp's biggest market by far), and know for a fact that hardly 1% of people using it right now in India would be able/willing to set up a payment system AND willing to pay $1 for it (which is not as inexpensive as you think) when there are so many free alternatives. And then it i…

But those who can afford to pay (either for WhatsApp or for YT Premium) are typically the ones most lucrative for the advertisers. So if I am in charge of such products, what is the incentive for me to invest into these efforts which are only going to add complexity while not making any extra money? What is the compelling reason for offering an Ad-free mode if it is going to be adopted by a tiny fraction?

[deleted]

Re: Facebook’s New Message to WhatsApp: Make Money

#98

Post by lakechfoma »

bassman9000 wrote: post #65
saagarjha wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phony in what way?

In the way that's not the result of a real pro-privacy strategy, but a unintended side effect of losing the voice assistant battle. Because Siri was getting behind, they now market themselves, directly or not, as privacy friendly . IMHO, they haven't yet found a way to market those vast amounts of tracking information without causing another scandal.

What do you think of choices like aggregating GPS tracks from Apple Maps to augment their map data like Google but with the key difference of removing the start and end points client side? Really going for the "we want the capability without the liability" angle here. Doesn't seem too phony to me.

Re: Facebook’s New Message to WhatsApp: Make Money

#99

Post by goodrubyist »

anuragbiyani wrote: post #66
danirod wrote: post #14

Remember when WhatsApp required a subscription? One of the first changes made by Facebook after purchasing WhatsApp was to make it available for free. And now they're complaining they can't milk it enough? Oh dear. I know that a percentage of WhatsApp users would stop using the app if they started requiring a payment again –because apparently paying $1 per year for using an application on your $999 phone is outrageou…

You are completely mistaken if you think adding a subscription-only would not reduce usage of WhatsApp by 10x at least. I am an Indian (WhatsApp's biggest market by far), and know for a fact that hardly 1% of people using it right now in India would be able/willing to set up a payment system AND willing to pay $1 for it (which is not as inexpensive as you think) when there are so many free alternatives. And then it i…

I don't know how you can seriously argue that $1/year is "not as inexpensive as you think." Even in poor countries, that subscription fee is ridiculously low.

Re: Facebook’s New Message to WhatsApp: Make Money

#100

Post by freyr »

eitally wrote: post #19
danirod wrote: post #14

Remember when WhatsApp required a subscription? One of the first changes made by Facebook after purchasing WhatsApp was to make it available for free. And now they're complaining they can't milk it enough? Oh dear. I know that a percentage of WhatsApp users would stop using the app if they started requiring a payment again –because apparently paying $1 per year for using an application on your $999 phone is outrageou…

Yeah ... but a huge fraction of Whatsapp users (in India & Africa especially) use $100 (or less) phones....

It surprises me that ad companies build their businesses around audiences who cannot afford $1/year for a useful service.

I'm not suggested that people in poorer economies should be deprived of targeted advertising. It's just surprising they wield such influence. I guess they make it up in volume.

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