191–200 of 413 posts
Are Matrix clients reliable and fast enough to use them? I am looking forwards to install them to my family but last time I tried they were a little bit unresponsive.
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What year would it be ok to be naive enough to think that any for profit company’s main motivation is not to make as much money possible?
It hasn't been always true, historically, that for-profit companies seek only to enrich their shareholders at all cost. https://www.boston.com/news/policy/2018/08/16/elizabeth-warr... "Warren attributes those problems to a shift, which she says dates back to the 1980s, in the obligations of corporations — from balancing responsibilities to all their stakeholders — including both employees and stock owners — to priori…
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Come. On. You don’t get to that kind of valuation with a basically free product without ad targeting. An accelerated vesting clause is not an assurance. If they wanted assurances they could have made it a condition of the deal, ok? They didn’t. Accelerated vesting just means they were telegraphing that they wanted to leave before the shit hit the fan.
Pre-Facebook, WhatsApp's monetization strategy has been to charge users a nominal fee for usage ($1/year). And $1/yr with 1B users doesn't justify the price tag for Facebook. So Facebook wanted to introduce advertising. PS: I'd be happy to pay them $1/month because a significant part of my communication happens over WhatsApp. The challenge is $1/month is probably too pricey for most of their user base.
Most WhatsApp users aren't American, and in a lot of places $1 is a more significant price tag. That aside though, some places don't have the infrastructure or trust to even allow any sort of online payment to happen: a lot of people in India don't have credit cards, and being from Mexico myself, I know a lot of people who do don't trust online transactions enough to pay with it online.
Acton: I'm not taking it.
Z: Just take it.
A: No!
Z: Look, I don't give a fuck, but the boys'll feel better.
A: Fuck their feelings!
Z: [Brian], we're a team.
A: A team? You guys are fucking insane. I'll go back to the Valley, I'll [create messaging apps]. It can't be like this.
Z: It is. I'm sorry, but it is. It's ugly, but it's necessary.
A: I became a [developer] to put away dealers and criminals, not to be one.
Z: You sound just like me. I know what you're going through and feeling. You're scared.
A: I'm not.
Z: Yes, you are. Everyone goes through that the first time. I did. The sooner you match what's in your head...with what's in the real world...the better you'll feel.
Z: In this business...you gotta have dirt on you to be trusted. When all this is behind you, a whole other world will open up for you.
Z: I walk a higher path, son.
Z: I have the keys to all the doors.
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Yes and the only way you can “require” anything when doing business is through a written contract with clauses that specify what happens when the contract is breached and the jurisdiction where the breaches will be adjudicated.
> Yes and the only way you can “require” anything when doing business is through a written contract with clauses that specify what happens when the contract is breached and the jurisdiction where the breaches will be adjudicated. I expect/require that people not steal from me even though I don't have a contract or prior agreement with them, and I also predict that some people won't respect my property.
How does this apply to the founders though. They sold, so isn't WhatsApp now not their property?
This article seems a little unfair to the WhatsApp founders when it suggests they should have known that any assurances Facebook made to them as part of the acquisition were obviously lies. Sure in 2018 it might be obvious to most of us that nothing Facebook says or promises can be trusted but I don't think that was necessarily as obvious when the acquisition happened and they can be forgiven for thinking they weren'…
Well, yes and no. Back the day, Facebook and Zuckerberg were the shining examples of successful Silicon Valley companies and founders with a good mission. That Zuckerberg, at the young age, managed to retain control of facebook all the way up to, and beyond, the ICO should have given them pause so. That hints a certain personality (no judgement intended in that assessment). But that is 20/20 hindsight which is always…
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Pre-Facebook, WhatsApp's monetization strategy has been to charge users a nominal fee for usage ($1/year). And $1/yr with 1B users doesn't justify the price tag for Facebook. So Facebook wanted to introduce advertising. PS: I'd be happy to pay them $1/month because a significant part of my communication happens over WhatsApp. The challenge is $1/month is probably too pricey for most of their user base.
If you think that even the friction alone of charging $1/yr isn't enough to shove the vast majority of users off the app, you haven't been paying attention to consumer expectations.
This article seems a little unfair to the WhatsApp founders when it suggests they should have known that any assurances Facebook made to them as part of the acquisition were obviously lies. Sure in 2018 it might be obvious to most of us that nothing Facebook says or promises can be trusted but I don't think that was necessarily as obvious when the acquisition happened and they can be forgiven for thinking they weren'…
Who's PR firm is behind this and the originally posted TC piece [1]? What's their angle? And Why?
[0] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/26/whatsapp-founder-brian-act... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18076008