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Facebook’s New Message to WhatsApp: Make Money

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

#221

Post by xkjkls »

white-flame wrote: post #212
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.

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.

Ok, but if you’re kicking off those that are unwilling to pay, you’re automatically decreasing the value of your app every time you try to charge people. You can make money — for a time. If the purpose people joined in the first place “I can connect with all the people I know” changes, then you start seeing the growth move in a very negative direction

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

#222

Post by xkjkls »

alach11 wrote: post #196
xkjkls wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Huge differences in engagement. Video games end up with small numbers of people who spend insane amounts of time with their product. Social media is large numbers of people spending small amounts of time. Because the customers aren’t nearly as engaged, they aren’t as willing to spend for extra goodies

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

#223

Post by squarefoot »

drb91 wrote: post #214
concretethrow wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wan…

I think the context is vital here. In the ideal situation of 5 people hungry and the only shop in town with exactly 5 sandwiches ready, nobody loses: shop sells, people eat, workers get paid. But in this world there are more products and services around than people wanting to buy them, so people have to be convinced, and engineers usually are really poor at lying.

A revealing sign that an engineer isn't running that shop would be the production climbing to 50 sandwiches. The same 5 people would be fooled into buying all of them by advertising, special discounts etc, then they would eat 5 each instead of 1 becoming obese, thus helping the medical business, and throw away the rest helping the trash collection and disposal business.

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

#224

Post by xkjkls »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #179
xkjkls wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If WhatsApp decided to move to payments, it is the closest analog.

No, square is fundamentally geared towards long-tail consumer retail, not peer-to-peer payments, and it's very credit card oriented. They still would not even be comparable.

What is the Cash app then?

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

#225

Post by xkjkls »

QML wrote: post #209
xkjkls wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If WhatsApp decided to move to payments, it is the closest analog.

Wouldn’t the closest analog be WeChat? Square isn’t a messaging platform.

I was referencing the guy above who suggested WhatsApp become a commerce platform, and why that is hard.

WeChat definitely does many of those things, but that’s far from it’s only monetization Model

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

#226

Post by danShumway »

RestlessMind wrote: post #94
EduardoBautista wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I use Youtube Red. Part of the reason no one uses it is because it's not a very good service.

Because I have Youtube Red I don't have ads, and I can download videos on my phone. Except I can't really download videos, I just kind of cache them in an inaccessible format that randomly fails. Seriously, it's very common for me to go back to older downloaded videos and have Youtube randomly tell me, "well, it's messed up, we'll have to redownload it later."

On top of that, using Youtube Red means that I have extra ads for Youtube Red specific channels that I can't permanently get rid of. On top of that, using Youtube Red means that Google will occasionally decide that I'm not allowed to watch videos on my phone and computer at the same time, because that's "using the account in multiple places."

What I should be doing is using youtube-dl to auto-download playlists without ads and then sync them to my device. But I'm still paying for it, because... I don't know why, I guess I'm lazy. But there's very little reason for anyone to purchase Youtube Red when they can get a better, more private experience by downloading an ad blocker.

The problem is that Youtube offers both a free tier and a paid tier, right next to each other, with no signficant improvements to the paid tier. You're still getting the same algorithmic, eyeball-grabbing, buggy crap in Youtube Red. So I'm skeptical that this is a good comparison - if your goal with paying for apps is to get away from the dirty feeling of having someone watch you and manipulate you, Youtube Red is never going to satisfy that, because it's always going to be developed alongside the free version and it's always going to be reusing that codebase.

Compare that to something like Netflix. Do you think it's a mistake that they don't offer a free tier?

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

#227

Post by xkjkls »

rhizome wrote: post #206
xkjkls wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Lots? Woudn't it fundamentally be a DLC strategy?

I’m talking a social media platform. Video games are fundamentally different because the goal is to get a small number of highly engaged users. Social media drives value from having huge networks of large numbers of people.

There are people who spend 10 hours a day playing Fortnite, and are perfectly willing to spend gobs of money to make that experience better. There aren’t the same sort of “whales” in social media.

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

#228

Post by drb91 »

squarefoot wrote: post #223
drb91 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wan…

I think the context is vital here. In the ideal situation of 5 people hungry and the only shop in town with exactly 5 sandwiches ready, nobody loses: shop sells, people eat, workers get paid. But in this world there are more products and services around than people wanting to buy them, so people have to be convinced, and engineers usually are really poor at lying. A revealing sign that an engineer isn't running that…

> But in this world there are more products and services around than people wanting to buy them, so people have to be convinced

Or, the products could shut down, or lower their prices. If there’s no demand, why put energy into making demand rather than making something people want? It’s the lowest bar of achievement in this society; while I understand money can be a powerful motivator, this lowers the value of the entire work force.

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

#229

Post by iamgopal »

blub wrote: post #150
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…

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.

Problem is how to collect that dollar. Appstore model will not work. I think they will need to partner with telecoms provider for this.

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

#230

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

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…

Then have it be regional and have European users pay 1 $/€.
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