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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

#141

Post by rebelidealist »

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…

$1 - (2% fee + 30c card fee) leaves them with very little. I wonder how they get around the credit card fees. Supposedly Apple would want their 30% cut as well.

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

#142

Post by agentdrtran »

pmlnr wrote: post #57
enitihas wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are an outlier in that regard. Almost nobody I know is using any other messaging app instead of WhatsApp, and I just graduated out of University so my social circle consists of a lot of fresh engineering grads. It is hard for me to convince even my batchmates to install signal. I think people don't want to install anything else as none of their contacts are on any other platform.

Everybody has a certain messaging app on their phone: it's called SMS. Add one more, that's already two.

SMS sucks, though.

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

#143

Post by blub »

Rescis wrote: post #68
EduardoBautista wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thousands of corporations have survived without having to worry about markets that don't have disposable income. You don't see Apple hurting because they aren't successful in the poorest areas in the world. It may sound cruel, but is it crueler than saying "Since you can't afford to pay, just give us access to your emails and private messages"?

Applications like WhatsApp noticeably improve the standard of living for people in WhatsApp, as they allow them to communicate with people far easier, cheaper, and faster than otherwise would have been possible. It really is more cruel to say that because you, in a first world country, can pay 1 dollar much easier than they can pay 1 dollar, you should decide that they're not allowed to pay with their data if they de…

If someone can't afford to pay $1 per year for something that allows them to communicate faster and cheaper then they are so fucked it's not even funny.

We're talking mind-boggling levels of poverty. How are they able to even pay for a phone and mobile subscription? Where do they live? How do they eat?

It sounds to me like a made-up sad story used as an excuse for rich corporations. If there are people that poor out there, Facebook could charge the rest of the world while offering the service for free to those that really can't afford it.

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

#144

Post by pishpash »

Smirnoff wrote: post #115
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,…

Ok, I agree that some MBAs can be full of it but can we already stop this MBA hate on HN? I feel like lots of people here think that if you build something then customers will surely come. I've got a huge surprise for you. You will have to sell your product and some of the MBA's are really great at that. In B2B a single sale can make or break your company when you're low on cash. You do your job and let them do their…

But OP is hating the game, the game that is developed collectively by MBA's who dehumanize business from what was a human endeavor into a marketplace of exchangeable values and exploitable externalities.

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

#145

Post by pmlnr »

agentdrtran wrote: post #142
pmlnr wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody has a certain messaging app on their phone: it's called SMS. Add one more, that's already two.

SMS sucks, though.

Sure. So do centralized, mobile-only systems, where your id is a phone number.

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

#146

Post by owaislone »

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…

Probably not representative but in my circle, 90% people did pay for whatsapp before FB bought it out. The rest either had lifetime subscription through iOS AppStore or changed their phone numbers every year just to use whatsapp.

Whatsapp is the only software I've seen Indians pay for without thinking twice. 60 rupees per year is very easy to shell out especially when it replaces SMS which would cost you many times more.

The problem in India is not that people won't pay for whatsapp, it's that majority of the people don't have a way to pay. Very small percentage of whatsapp users own credit/debit cards. If a service could integrate with telcos and let users pay through them, I'm sure a lot of Indian users would pay for a lot more services than they do right now.

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

#147

Post by pishpash »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #126
ng12 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but who do you think is pushing the company to bow to the shareholder pressure?

It could very well be the engineers looking to make a lot of money with their stock options after all their hard work.

It could very well be the MBA's who designed the incentives program.

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

#148

Post by wolco »

kosei wrote: post #92
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 c…

I would rarely use a product I needed to pay for. On the other hand the products I pay for I usualu get more enjoyment and/or more productivity.

If I was using it and the price went to a dollar I would probably continue.

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

#149

Post by Moru »

balls187 wrote: post #123
RestlessMind wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Getting users to pay for a service that was previously provided to them for free is probably the #2 hurdle for all Freemium products.

In retail it has long been known that when you sell a new product or service you allways start high and go down in price.

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

#150

Post by blub »

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 can't think of anything that's for purchase on this planet that is actually cheaper than one freaking dollar per year.

If someone can't pay that they're a waste of bandwidth for facebook's ads, since they can't afford to purchase anything at all.

If what you say is true Facebook can pull the plug on India completely and save money. I doubt that what you say is true.

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