Facebook’s New Message to WhatsApp: Make Money • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by drspacemonkey » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 10:41 PM UTC

owaislone wrote: post #146

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…

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 m…

Given their market penetration in India, it wouldn't surprise me if they went so far as to set up in-person payment infrastructure. Wouldn't have to be complicated - it could even be like the Steam or Hulu gift cards you pick up at BestBuy. Any shop or market stall could sell them, just ship 'em out en masse and charge the store when they activate, possibly via the app.

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

#192

Post by Marsymars » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 10:45 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #113

Marsymars wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because as someone who's willing to pay to not have ads, ads are a non-starter for me. If they're forced upon me, I'll switch products, and force anyone I communicate with to switch products to continue communicating with me. (If an individual won't install Signal, I'll drop down to SMS/email for them.)

In my experience, no, you can’t force alternatives on your friends and family, unless it’s an alternative they already have. No, they won’t install Signal. If that were a real possibility, you would have done it already. So SMS it is. But I wonder, isn’t SMS more expensive than $1 / year? SMS has had outrageously high rates compared with 3G. In some parts of the world that’s precisely the reason for WhatsApp’s popula…

> If that were a real possibility, you would have done it already.

Well, no, because I'm perfectly happy using WhatsApp in its current state.

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

#193

Post by kawera » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 10:47 PM UTC

iraphael wrote: post #129

balls187 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it 1 Brazillian Real or 1 USD? In many countries, WhatsApp is the defacto communication platform for businesses to communicate with customers.

I don't actually remember. I used to set all my settings to US/American ones because some apps were only in the US app store, so there's a good chance I was looking at the US$1 price. Not sure what my friends saw in the Brazilian app store.

It was the equivalent of US$1 in reais.

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

#194

Post by jadedhacker » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 10:48 PM UTC

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…

[flagged]

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

#195

Post by romwell » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 10:50 PM UTC

pmlnr wrote: post #145

agentdrtran wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SMS sucks, though.

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

And not just a phone number, but a phone number in a specific format.

It took me more than 10 minutes to figure out how to add a friend with a phone number from Spain. The trick was adding a space in the right place. In the meantime, she couldn't find me by my US number.

Turns out, different countries format the phone numbers differently, and Whatsapp gets confused. Just for US numbers, you have +1(xxx)xxx-xxxx, xxx-xxx-xxxx, 1xxxxxxxxxx, xxxxxxxxxx,(xxx)xxx xxxx, xxx xxx xxxx - and I don't know which one Whatsapp uses internally for ID.

For what it's worth, entering the phone number exactly as it shows up on my account info didn't work.

TL;DR: a phone number does not a good ID make.

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

#196

Post by alach11 » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 10:57 PM UTC

xkjkls wrote: post #91

TillE wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Popular games like Dota 2, Fortnite, and League of Legends are free to play but charge for in-game cosmetic changes.

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

#197

Post by davchana » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 10:57 PM UTC

balls187 wrote: post #119

iraphael wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The power of mass usage comes into play here. IIRC, when WhatsApp launched, I was one of the early adopters. As it grew (and it became hugely popular in Brazil, where I lived) they switched to the $1/year model. Current users were auto-enrolled in a "free-for-life" plan. My friends who didn't have WhatApp would still sign up because everyone else was using it and, besides "$1/year? it's almost nothing".

Was it 1 Brazillian Real or 1 USD? In many countries, WhatsApp is the defacto communication platform for businesses to communicate with customers.

At least in India, it was equivalent of $1 in my currency, i.e. Indian Rupee.

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

#198

Post by romwell » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 10:57 PM UTC

mynewtb wrote: post #152

moe_32 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

E-mail. It's pretty amazing.

- You are lucky of your provider does push notifications - no presence or typing indicators - no working end to end encryption, definitely so for group threads - no reasonable concept of managing groups - no standard way of quoting - inefficient or unsafe media sharing - insane amounts of spam - no lightweight formatting - no avatars And that's just what randomly came to mind. E-mail sucks for almost anything .

>E-mail sucks for almost anything.

Ever tried sending a message that's several pages long on anything but email? Go ahead, do it. See how hits the ground face down on that.

Even your short comment is too long to be comfortably read in most IM apps.

>- no standard way of quoting

Using > is a de-facto standard. Now, I know, you have objections. Before you voice them, try receiving a long message in your IM of choice, and try writing a response quoting parts of the long message you just got. Could you manage to do it in a single message? Ah.

Some of use like to write, you know. And email is good for that.

Almost anything else sucks.

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

#199

Post by m45t3r » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 11:14 PM UTC

kawera wrote: post #193

iraphael wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't actually remember. I used to set all my settings to US/American ones because some apps were only in the US app store, so there's a good chance I was looking at the US$1 price. Not sure what my friends saw in the Brazilian app store.

It was the equivalent of US$1 in reais.

> It was the equivalent of US$1 in reais.

I think it was R$1,99, that was not exactly US$1 (even considering the stronger Real in the period), however it was not exactly equivalent to US$1 either.

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

#200

Post by point78 » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 11:25 PM UTC

nickthemagicman wrote: post #157

Smirnoff wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Craigslist isn't playing the game and doing fine. The game is all in your head. Feels like even the IDEA that there's a game is MBA hogwash they're trying to sell you.

Craigslist is doing amazing, but they are definitely an outlier