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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

#351

Post by thirdsun »

chosenbreed wrote: post #350
thirdsun wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to know WhatsApp's user base to understand this. Here in germany it's the de-facto standard communication platform. Everyone and their mother uses WhatsApp - and I mean that literally: Lots of old, non-tech-savvy folks use the service - the kind that even see creating an account as a barrier big enough to not use the service. I still think using the phone number as account was a genius move that enabled wide…

Okay. But not so long ago people had to pay for WhatsApp, no? Has the user base grown tremendously since it became free (i.e. because it became free)? One of the points made earlier is that before being bought by Facebook WhatsApp was a profitable operation. If that was the case then there is clearly an argument for having a relatively low cost subscription based offering...

I'm not sure if they actually ever enforced their payment/subscription. I certainly haven't been charged, but I was a user before that started if I remember correctly.

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

#352

Post by randomEntity22 »

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…

>If a service could integrate with telcos and let users pay through them, I'm sure a lot of Indian users would pay for a lot more services than they do right now.

Many of the telecos, however don't want their user's on WhatsApp, they want them to use SMS, I remember Airtel and other's complaining to the government about OTT services, and trying to force the government to introduce a licensing regime for them.

If WhatsApp has to depend on telecos, they for sure will screw it.

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

#353

Post by randomEntity22 »

pnloyd wrote: post #274
anuragbiyani wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talk about living in a bubble. +everything drdaeman@ said above. There are more people using WhatsApp in India (thanks to popularity of image/video/voice-messages) than who can actually read or have usable Bank accounts. If you think they can pay "$1" for something they can get for free (and have been using for free in past), then you are completely out of touch of reality. Apart from the amount (which is not trivial…

So what's a dollar to an average Indian whatsapp user. An hour's wage, a day, week?

The average wage for most kind of hard labour is around ₹200/hour or ₹600/day in cities, which will be around $3/hour or $10/day. I believe the bigger issue is the payment system rather than money, most Indians don't use digital payments

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

#354

Post by baud147258 »

volgo wrote: post #293
storgendibal wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Just because it's hard, and the people running them are sharp and smart, doesn't make it any more righteous or normal. Back in the Colonial times, sharp smart lads went to prestigious military schools and learned the complexities of how to subjugate conquered people. How to efficiently run a slave camp. How to squeeze every unit of labor off the peasants, etc. People went to these schools were probably very cultured,…

Well, the prestigious school also taugh all the persons who then led the colonized people to independence, there's that too.

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

#355

Post by edanm »

lx3459683 wrote: post #273
Synroc wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious in your path. What made you decide to get an MBA being an engineer, and what are you doing now with that degree?

It's the path people take when they're not very good at engineering but want the medium bucks.

This is both ungenerous to parent, and ungenerous to anyone who does an MBA.

Just because you don't see the value in something, doesn't mean it doesn't have value.

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

#356

Post by lx3459683 »

ramsr wrote: post #349
lx3459683 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our ability to generalize is one of the key traits that makes us the dominant species on this planet. Describing that particular commenter's path is not nearly as informationally useful as describing the most common path. MBA is the business equivalent of " Specialist Certification" in engineering. It's for the second-rate.

Can you please point me to your research/rationale on why you think it's for the second rate?

I hold an MBA from one of the top schools in my country. It was a waste of time.

MBA is highly dogmatic and highly prescriptive. It does not delve into the why. I can't draw a better analogy than the worthless certification courses that you'll find on the CVs of second-rate engineers.

If you want someone who is leading their field in some technology, you look for researchers, people with significant on the ground experience, people who understand the first principles, limitations, and capabilities of that technology. If you just want to fill the job slot with some rando, you'll settle for someone who has some stupid certification in said technology and thinks there's only one right way to use it because that's all they've been taught. MBA is the same thing but with a lot more self-congratulatory jerkoff. If you're in the right industry, it becomes easy to spot recent MBA grads. The way they talk to their subordinates, the way they talk to their superiors, even the way they act during downtime around coworkers - it's all part of the cookie cutter recipe they were fed and blindly follow. It's nauseating.

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

#357

Post by storgendibal »

Synroc wrote: post #236
storgendibal wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I’m curious in your path. What made you decide to get an MBA being an engineer, and what are you doing now with that degree?

I grew up programming and always assumed I'd be a software engineer, without really considering other career paths. After six years of of software engineering (mainly operating systems and cloud infra), I thought it might be valuable to do a breadth-first search for a short period of time, and an MBA seemed a decent route to do that search. In retrospect, I use some of what I learned in bschool in my current job, but largely, the mind expansion was worth it. There are many perspectives and b-school exposed me to a lot more points of view than I had before.

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

#359

Post by wadkar »

baud147258 wrote: post #354
volgo wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because it's hard, and the people running them are sharp and smart, doesn't make it any more righteous or normal. Back in the Colonial times, sharp smart lads went to prestigious military schools and learned the complexities of how to subjugate conquered people. How to efficiently run a slave camp. How to squeeze every unit of labor off the peasants, etc. People went to these schools were probably very cultured,…

Well, the prestigious school also taugh all the persons who then led the colonized people to independence, there's that too.

Nope, the oppressors destroyed the native culture, robbed them off their wealth, social structures, and (however) evolved systems of institutions while leaving no venue for the colonized people to prosper. Few who managed to survive and climb through the inevitable mixing of peoples learnt some of the tricks from their oppressors and fought back for independence.

I am afraid your comment sounds like it is trying to find some silver linings in the oppressors malevolence but please try to sympathize (if you cannot empathize) with those colonized.

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

#360

Post by baud147258 »

wadkar wrote: post #359
baud147258 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the prestigious school also taugh all the persons who then led the colonized people to independence, there's that too.

Nope, the oppressors destroyed the native culture, robbed them off their wealth, social structures, and (however) evolved systems of institutions while leaving no venue for the colonized people to prosper. Few who managed to survive and climb through the inevitable mixing of peoples learnt some of the tricks from their oppressors and fought back for independence. I am afraid your comment sounds like it is trying to f…

Well, in some case it was a culture of slavery and piracy, so in those case it was an improvment. Infrastructure, education and sanitation were improved in some cases too.

> I am afraid your comment sounds like it is trying to find some silver linings in the oppressors malevolence but please try to sympathize (if you cannot empathize) with those colonized.

No, I was pointing that the schools decried by the parent were also where the persons who led some of the conflicts for independence were taught in the same school; I was defending those schools.

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