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

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

#331

Post by sah2ed » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 9:17 AM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #298

pmontra wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't enforce payments. I remember they asked me money but the app still worked when I didn't pay. I was surprised, so when they asked me money again many months later I didn't pay again to see what happened. The app kept working. Months later they asked me money again and this time the app stopped working. But back then whatsapp was not as popular as it is now. I was still using SMSes with most of my contacts…

I wonder how many people paid anyway. Maybe their tactics would get enough payers to support the whole thing.

Here is Jan Koum, at Startup School SV 2014 [0]: "... our iPhone app was paid and our other platforms were free." Other platforms being Nokia and Blackberry.

He further explained that it may sound somewhat counter-intuitive: the reason why they made the app paid for some users was to slow their growth (similar to Facebook's college-only focus) so they could properly build out infrastructure and improve on the user-experience [1].

[0] https://genius.com/Jim-goetz-jim-goetz-and-jan-koum-at-start...

[1] https://youtu.be/8-pJa11YvCs?list=PLQ-uHSnFig5OyY5JWSQrl_gES...

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

#332

Post by shafyy » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 9:20 AM UTC

mrweasel wrote: post #297

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…

If you can't charge people even $1 for your product, then I would argue that you might as well close up now. As others pointed out, ads won't work either, because if you can't afford to pay $1 for WhatsApp, then I'm not going to be able to profit from showing you ads. Ads aren't magical things you can slap on a product to make it profitable. For ads to work you need an audience that technically could pay for you prod…

Most insightful comment here

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

#333

Post by PunchTornado » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 9:20 AM UTC

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #317

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"if you can't charge people even $1 for your product...." Only folks aren't always just paying $1. He's describing folks needing to set up a freaking payment system for a small amount of money - and that some folks aren't going to be able to do that and others aren't going to be willing. That's even before you get into the actual payment of $1. And this is before even considering there are other free apps that will w…

I don't understand all this talk of "setting up a freaking payment system" like it's some huge technical hurdle? Do the vast majority of people not get WhatsApp through the Play Store / App Store? Isn't adding a debit / credit card or purchasing a topup card for these trivial? All this is besides the fact that we're talking about making the subscription model an option in addition to the ad-supported model, not forci…

no way. I've been using android for years but never added my card details on play store. although I have a 700£ phone, I intend to spend 0£ on play store.

I would pay for whatsup through paypal or something like that.

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

#334

Post by lloeki » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 9:20 AM UTC

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #329

smoovb wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram just raising $1.7B in a crypto sale, which means it is the largest chat app not owned by a major corp or government. Plus familiar interface to Whatsapp, they won't even know you switched them.

If you are ok with your traffic routed being to russia (and recently, Iran), not having default encryption on 1on1 chats and no encryption whatsoever on group chats - sure, choose Telegram. Not even counting the ICO, which is suspect in itself.

> If you are ok with your traffic routed being to russia (and recently, Iran)

Where does that come from? Because from what I gather it's precisely the opposite: Telegram users in Russia and Iran are leveraging proxies (sometimes run by volunteers) to get around their nations filtering.

When you're using someone else's platform it all comes down to trust, and I'd rather trust an expat Russian that left his home country on grounds of being coerced into handing over user private information to his then nation's surveillance strike force and refused to bow down on that same nation's attempt to subvert his new platform then blocking half of the Internet's servers, than an app claiming to be end-to-end encrypted under the helm of a company that has time and time again been caught red-handed invading everyone's privacy and lying barefaced about it and whose monetisation and privacy strategy is denounced by the very founders of said chat app to the point of dropping everything on the floor and leaving said company.

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

#335

Post by lordgrenville » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 9:21 AM UTC

ng12 wrote: post #120

ythn wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my perspective, any company that goes public will eventually turn to crap (or go through decades-long crap/good cycles). It's not MBAs that drive for growth at all costs - I would argue it's shareholders. Shareholders are greedy and don't care about anything else besides ROI. Even if that means throwing the consumers under the bus in the long run to achieve that.

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

A company has a fiduciary duty to the shareholders, who bought the stock on the assumption that the company will be run in their best interests. If they do't do that they are open to shareholder lawsuits. (This is the way that activist investors often work.)

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

#336

Post by jf- » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 9:23 AM UTC

xg15 wrote: post #326

jf- wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the parent’s point was that running a business that is self-sustaining is actually a difficult endeavour, and doing what looks like ‘squeezing customers’ from the outside is actually what the business needs to do to survive. I think this is a reasonable point, considering that no matter what price point many services are offered at, customers will still complain that it’s too high. Leading me to my question…

But this implies that "squeezing the customer" tactics - where you first focus on growth at all costs, then later find how far you can degrade the service before a critical number of customers quit - is the only way for a company to survive. I don't see any evidence for that - and in fact, GP proposed/reminded of an alternative business model for WhatsApp.

Actually what I was getting at was pricing - customers who are used to getting something for free will always think that any charge is outrageous. In non-tech examples people think that what are reasonable prices are gouging etc. Not that gouging doesn’t happen, but the public is bad at judging what a reasonable price looks like.

In the specific case of whatsapp, it would be interesting to see what would happen if the service did offer a $1 a year subscription. I’d pay, assuming that data wouldn’t also be used or sold for advertising. But I have a gut feeling that most wouldn’t, they’d rather switch to something that cost nothing, even over something that was very cheap.

Psychologically the gap between free and any cost is large. Which means that for a business, people are either willing to jump that gap or not. The price itself isn’t really a huge factor, it’s free vs not free, so the price may as well be higher than $1, or whatever the minimum viable amount is.

Also the post above was making some wild comparisons that I wanted to point out are silly.

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

#337

Post by lordgrenville » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 9:30 AM UTC

storgendibal wrote: post #201

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,…

Engineer with an MBA here. My two cents: Back when I was writing code, my worldview was that if engineers ran every company, then the world would simply be a better, more rational place. Because engineering is hard and everything else is easy/squishy/learnable. During my b-school classes, it dawned on me that things are much more complicated than I had thought. Marketing and sales are very hard, very quantitative, an…

A lot of the debate in this thread is conflating two questions: are engineers more capable than MBAs? (Answer: of course not, in the sense that MBAs can do things that engineers can't, and are often very smart and technical people). Secondly, are MBAs less ethical than MBA, or do they make the decisions they do because they are exposed to market realities that engineers aren't? This is a tough and abstract question, and I think the answer depends largely on your feelings about capitalism and economics in general.

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

#338

Post by andyn » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 9:37 AM UTC

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 don't think there are so many ads on Youtube that it's enough of an annoyance to subscribe.

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

#339

Post by lloeki » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 9:40 AM UTC

pmontra wrote: post #312

_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You can't beat free. That would result in a huge migration to FB Messenger (does it have groups?) and Telegram (which has much better groups anyway) and others.

> Messenger (does it have groups?)

Yes, and they're a PITA on so many levels. Also, Messenger already has ads.

> Telegram (which has much better groups anyway)

Yes, groups, and especially supergroups (which are highly reminiscent of IRC) are downright awesome.

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

#340

Post by lloeki » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 9:46 AM UTC

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #122

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.

Are there good apps that support "chat room" style activities? Google Messages falls over when you try to send out mass messages. I'd like to see a sms app that allows one to have mass messaging - it's the only reason I keep WhatsApp around - coordinating with a group of friends.

Do Telegram groups, supergroups, or channels fit the bill?

https://telegram.org/faq#q-what-39s-the-difference-between-g...