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Numbers That Explain Why Facebook Acquired WhatsApp

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Re: Numbers That Explain Why Facebook Acquired WhatsApp

#21

Post by Irishsteve »

America Online President and Chief Operating Officer Bob Pittman said: "Acquiring ICQ fits perfectly into our multiple-brand strategy. Like CompuServe, ICQ substantially broadens our reach in important markets not served by AOL-branded products. In addition to its international reach, ICQ has tremendous appeal among young, technically sophisticated Web users and there is remarkably little overlap with AOL."

Re: Numbers That Explain Why Facebook Acquired WhatsApp

#25

Post by mverwijs »

rwissmann wrote: post #12
josephjrobison wrote: post #7

From 5 minutes of reading it seems that it's huge in overseas markets where people want to avoid the cost per SMS message fee, am I correct? If you have a standard plan with the phone giants in the US, all calls and texts are generally unlimited, but you pay for data now. Is that why it's not as big in the US?

Not that alone. Here in the UK SMS is often unlimited. People still prefer to use Whatsapp. I and most of my friends have virtually stopped using SMS. Another advantage are international SMS. Again more relevant for say Europeans than for Americans.

Plus: groupchat. And sending images.

Re: Numbers That Explain Why Facebook Acquired WhatsApp

#26

Post by RandallBrown »

locusm wrote: post #22

My experience when I first used WhatsApp on a droid phone was... * Absolute piece of cake to get started/configured * Absolute piece of cake to message friends * No 22c charge from carrier per SMS Pretty good recipe for success.

Are you outside the US?

I haven't paid 22 cents for a text message in YEARS.

Re: Numbers That Explain Why Facebook Acquired WhatsApp

#27

Post by ardacinar »

I think the most important of those numbers is the last one, 0 marketing/pr budget. I've seen ads for viber and line on tv/newspapers etc. and the ads immediately discredited those services for me, as in, if they had enough cash to broadcast TV ads in Turkey(I live there), they were probably handing my data over to anyone for cash, probably (and quite a few of my friends thought similarly). So, for such a service, having no ads/pr might actually be more beneficial.

Re: Numbers That Explain Why Facebook Acquired WhatsApp

#28

Post by sjg007 »

rwissmann wrote: post #12
josephjrobison wrote: post #7

From 5 minutes of reading it seems that it's huge in overseas markets where people want to avoid the cost per SMS message fee, am I correct? If you have a standard plan with the phone giants in the US, all calls and texts are generally unlimited, but you pay for data now. Is that why it's not as big in the US?

Not that alone. Here in the UK SMS is often unlimited. People still prefer to use Whatsapp. I and most of my friends have virtually stopped using SMS. Another advantage are international SMS. Again more relevant for say Europeans than for Americans.

Also SMS is effectively broken. SMS was a useful for the non-smart phone crowd. Twitter initially was a way to get global free status updates via SMS. Now it has reversed.

Re: Numbers That Explain Why Facebook Acquired WhatsApp

#30

Post by amirmc »

ardacinar wrote: post #27

I think the most important of those numbers is the last one, 0 marketing/pr budget. I've seen ads for viber and line on tv/newspapers etc. and the ads immediately discredited those services for me, as in, if they had enough cash to broadcast TV ads in Turkey(I live there), they were probably handing my data over to anyone for cash, probably (and quite a few of my friends thought similarly). So, for such a service, ha…

> "...they were probably handing my data over to anyone for cash..."

How ironic.

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