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

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

#211

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 11:58 PM UTC

noncoml wrote: post #15

Almost everybody I know has at least 2 messaging apps installed on their phone. What's to stop people start migrating to Signal/Telegram/Viber/Keybase/etc.. once WhatsApp starts displaying ads?

> What's to stop people start migrating to Signal/Telegram/Viber/Keybase/etc.. once WhatsApp starts displaying ads?

The same thing that is currently forcing them to use more than one chat app, no matter which one they prefer: Network effect. If you can't convince all your friends to switch at once to one system, you'll be stuck between a rock (e.g. ad-infested/data-leaking WhatsApp) and a hard place (friends reaching out to you much less frequently because it's a PITA to reach you).

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

#212

Post by white-flame » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 12:16 AM UTC

xkjkls wrote: post #80

rbreve wrote: post #75

They should try to apply the fortnite strategy, and charge for cosmetic features such as premium emoticons, and profile photos

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.

Low single digit percent of 1.5 billion is still tens of millions. Certainly you can make money with that size of a willingly paying customer base.

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

#213

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 12:17 AM UTC

concretethrow wrote: post #207

drb91 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You will have to sell your product and some of the MBA's are really great at that. I'd bet that this is true of any degree. Not saying MBA providers don't teach useful stuff, but the degree is a terrible signal of quality--after all, it is by far the most popular graduate degree. I'd much rather work with someone who can state business options articulately and intelligently than someone with degree X; if this artic…

Here is a good example of what MBA's can do. First, go to Disneyland and look at the ticket prices. They're really high, right? On a per-day basis? So next you price out the season passes. You do the math and you find that if you are going 6 or 7 days in a year or less, you are better off without the season pass. If you are going 8 or more days ( for instance ), the season pass makes more sense. So you do the math an…

[deleted]

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

#214

Post by drb91 » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 12:19 AM UTC

concretethrow wrote: post #207

drb91 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You will have to sell your product and some of the MBA's are really great at that. I'd bet that this is true of any degree. Not saying MBA providers don't teach useful stuff, but the degree is a terrible signal of quality--after all, it is by far the most popular graduate degree. I'd much rather work with someone who can state business options articulately and intelligently than someone with degree X; if this artic…

Here is a good example of what MBA's can do. First, go to Disneyland and look at the ticket prices. They're really high, right? On a per-day basis? So next you price out the season passes. You do the math and you find that if you are going 6 or 7 days in a year or less, you are better off without the season pass. If you are going 8 or more days ( for instance ), the season pass makes more sense. So you do the math an…

I’m having difficulty understanding you. Is this a scenario where you’re arguing for or against MBAs? It either sounds like you’re arguing a) MBA teaches you grade school reasoning or b) an MBA teaches you to maximize your revenue stream by providing pricing structures that encourage people to spend more than they want. In either case I’d rather work with someone with a wider skill set providing someone people do want and are willing to pay for.

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

#215

Post by baddox » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 12:20 AM UTC

concretethrow wrote: post #207

drb91 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You will have to sell your product and some of the MBA's are really great at that. I'd bet that this is true of any degree. Not saying MBA providers don't teach useful stuff, but the degree is a terrible signal of quality--after all, it is by far the most popular graduate degree. I'd much rather work with someone who can state business options articulately and intelligently than someone with degree X; if this artic…

Here is a good example of what MBA's can do. First, go to Disneyland and look at the ticket prices. They're really high, right? On a per-day basis? So next you price out the season passes. You do the math and you find that if you are going 6 or 7 days in a year or less, you are better off without the season pass. If you are going 8 or more days ( for instance ), the season pass makes more sense. So you do the math an…

That calculation sounds extremely obvious to someone with no MBA or sales/marketing experience whatsoever. I’m confident that MBAs or experiences people in those roles do a heck of a lot more than calculations like that.

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

#216

Post by fraudsyndrome » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 12:24 AM UTC

If they want to charge for it they better make it easier than it is currently to migrate over chats from iOS to Android and vice versa.

iOS to Android was okay, still had to pay ~$10 for it. Going from Android to iOS was very difficult so I lost a lot of my chats.

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

#217

Post by nickthemagicman » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 12:26 AM UTC

point78 wrote: post #200

nickthemagicman wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They're an outlier by not being greedy.

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

#218

Post by hw » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 12:33 AM UTC

salex89 wrote: post #173

There is nothing I would like more than Facebook to sell WhatsApp, so I'm at least a bit more out of their claws or, alternately, for WhatsApp to be ruined and all my friends go to some other messaging app. I've been a long user of WA and really love it, but I'm not a fan of FB, although I do have an account, but rarely use it for messaging.

I can't agree more here. So far Whatsapp and Instagram hasn't been interfered with too much by Facebook, aside from FB completely turning off Instagram API and forcing everyone to upgrade to the IG Graph API way ahead of the deprecation schedule.

API support for Instagram DMs is also something that's been long requested for, but ever since FB bought Instagram, there hasn't been any work on the API side. Sometimes I wonder if Instagram would have been better off as its own platform free from the crutches of Facebook.

While I'm hoping that it'll stay that way, it's only a matter of time before core Facebook starts to go the way of Myspace and they realize that IG/Whatsapp is the future.

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

#219

Post by Barrin92 » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 12:41 AM UTC

freyr wrote: post #100

eitally wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

They're planning for the future. Those people will be the major consumers of the world. The companies that can gain market share in emerging economies now will reap the rewards.

https://ec.europa.eu/knowledge4policy/sites/know4pol/files/o...

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

#220

Post by xkjkls » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 12:56 AM UTC

natbobc wrote: post #185

xkjkls wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just before WhatsApp was bought by Facebook, they were asking for that $1 per year (I remember paying it) and they had 450 million users, in spite of plenty of chat alternatives being on the market ever since the 90s. How many of those users were actually paying at the time? IIRC they allowed 1 year of free use (even more depending on your country). I don't know what the churn is going to be the moment a currently…

They had something like 50 employees didn't they? Back of napkin I'd say probably around $10,000,000 for employee packages. Multiple that by 3-5x for total operating costs and I'd speculate they'd need $30-50m to break even which is about 3% of their subscribers paying $1.

The problem is that in order to maintain their position as an app everyone can communicate on, they need everyone paying the subscription fee. Once people realize not everyone is on the app, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

There’s a huge difference in the number of people willing to pay for an app “that I can connect to everyone with” and those willing to pay for an app “that I can connect to only the other people willing to pay $1 for”.