Facebook’s New Message to WhatsApp: Make Money

Post by brisance » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 3:16 AM UTC

sreyaNotfilc wrote: post #40

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'm wondering if this pressure was in response to the 20% decline on FB stocks. Its as if the shareholders looked at their portfolio in search of companies acquired that could fill that void.

Post by yalph » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 3:19 AM UTC

akchin wrote: post #248

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,…

I don’t understand the MBA hate here. The WhatsApp founders don’t have MBAs and sold their company to Facebook for 19 billion. They wanted to be that rich. Nothing to do with MBAs. Also let us be clear. Engineers are no saints either. Case in point Anthony Levandowski of Otto. Orchestrating one of the shadiest acquisitions to make a quick buck. Folks have pointed out below that the issue of growth is not necessarily…

Post by brisance » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 3:23 AM UTC

pishpash wrote: post #136

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…

WhatsApp provides more than $1 of value to me in a year, provided I have already decided to use it . But paying a subscription also represents a psychological commitment, a loss of choice for a year, a mental tracking cost if I should reevaluate annually, an effort cost to convincing others to use it if I want to communicate with them, and an opportunity cost. Because I'm certainly not going to pay $1 to 10 different…

Post by cheeze » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 3:26 AM UTC

romwell wrote: post #198

mynewtb wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- 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, a…

Post by Zhenya » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 3:28 AM UTC

randomsearch wrote: post #178

bad_user wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My non-tech friends can and have and do install signal, I’m pleased to say! It costs nothing, takes them a few minutes, and there’s no downside for them. I use it all the time.