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Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App

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Re: Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App

#141

Post by cgrand-net »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #110
joelthelion wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also plenty of companies targeting the US market. The rest of the world? Not so much. To give you an example: there is no reddit equivalent in French. The closest things we have are a few French-speaking subreddits that have very few subscribers since reddit scares people who don't speak English before they can reach the French-speaking subreddits. We also have a few very poor quality reddit rip-offs with n…

What happened to the French minitel users; where are they now? Was there a particular social forum that ruled minitel - did it transition to the web?

Minitel killer app was the yellow pages. The other predominant usages were mail order and sex chats/porn. Some games too but nothing significant and nothing social, at scale at least.

Re: Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App

#142

Post by Pxtl »

joelthelion wrote: post #99
jrockway wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is a pretty big market. 320,000,000 people, most with at least some disposable income. There are also plenty of advertisers that want to market their products to Americans, which means you can choose between ad-sponsored or for-pay business models.

There are also plenty of companies targeting the US market. The rest of the world? Not so much. To give you an example: there is no reddit equivalent in French. The closest things we have are a few French-speaking subreddits that have very few subscribers since reddit scares people who don't speak English before they can reach the French-speaking subreddits. We also have a few very poor quality reddit rip-offs with n…

That's surprising since Reddit at least translates their site into every language - how many times have you googled something and gotten back a reddit hit for an English language reddit page but with Portuguese UI? so reddit has done more than many to internationalize their site.

Probably a strip of language names along the top, taking you to language-filtered frpnt-pages would help. It would be ugly, but it's Reddit.

Re: Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App

#143

Post by stefan_kendall »

corresation wrote: post #129
netcan wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One such "platform" is made up of the 80% of android phones that are cheap and basic with small data plans and limited access to slow wifi. The anecdotes from the 80s & 90s when annual PC sales for any given year were a substantial portion of the overall PCs in use at the time are interesting. The realization that software could be written for the newest machine and it would run everywhere soon enough is not directly…

the 80% of android phones that are cheap and basic with small data plans and limited access to slow wifi Ignoring the fictional statistics, the cheap devices (e.g. Xiaomi) in countries like China still tend to be surprisingly powerful, and you hardly need to design down to them. And it's a rare app, beyond something like video conferencing, that puts any real burden on connectivity.

You absolutely need to "design down" if you want to support all of android. Go build an app with a reasonable number of users and you'll learn this the hard way.

Re: Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App

#144

Post by drieddust »

adventured wrote: post #135
keerthiko wrote: post #69

This. This is the answer I have always looked for. > "But, but, how is WhatsApp any different than iMessage / Facebook Messenger / Hangouts?" I have made this exclamation multiple times, and my friends in India and Singapore and other parts of Asia just turned up their palms with a "I dunno, everyone uses it and told me to get it." I refused to use it since I like to use as few messaging platforms as possible (just G…

"how is WhatsApp any different than iMessage / Facebook Messenger / Hangouts?" That's not the right question to begin with. The right question on this is: are those instant messenger users on WhatsApp worth much financially, will they ever produce financial returns, such that you justify $19 billion in any respect. I say no, the value of messenger bytes is nearly zero unless you can hold the users hostage and extract…

You are spot on. A major reason whatsapp's popularity because its free a free/dirt cheap service.

Facebook who have not recovered even fraction of money they have got from the market is spending billions on buying more non performing business.

Seems like a great ponzi scheme in which investor will be the ultimate suckers.

Re: Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App

#145

Post by gazarsgo »

mattsyd wrote: post #25
cturhan wrote: post #19

Facebook paid 16B Dollars for 400,000,000 active phone numbers and all the personal info bound to them. It's not the app itself it's the data, you know it well too.

That's not the case. WhatsApp barely holds any data. The user doesn't have to give over their personal details. It ties them to their mobile number & messages are stored only until they're pushed to the client. Once pushed they are then removed from WhatsApp servers.

You underestimate the value of the graph data.

Re: Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App

#146

Post by JetSpiegel »

pjmlp wrote: post #137
JetSpiegel wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think so, but having a little more RAM can't hurt. I can't even load up 2 HN pages at the same time.

Do you also read both at the same time?

No, it's just convenience. :)

Caching 2 pages in RAM also means instant undo when I open the story link.

Re: Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App

#147

Post by chiph »

sspiff wrote: post #133
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened to the French minitel users; where are they now? Was there a particular social forum that ruled minitel - did it transition to the web?

Minitel adoption was never as big as with the current Internet, and users didn't suddenly migrate from one to the other. Minitel mostly bled to death as the Internet grew in popularity.

So... the French AOL then.

Re: Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App

#148

Post by sandeepspatil »

The article makes it sound a big deal to develop J2ME app. This app basically has just 2 screens, so I wouldn't think it would be any big deal to replicate those screens across platforms. Their challenge is more on the server-side, scaling for all the billions of users that they have - again, no big deal for plain text but mostly the pictures and the videos that are shared ...few big datacenters somewhere...again, nothing great. And hey, they dont even support voice calls. I dont buy that the app itself is a deal breaker. It's mostly their user base that they have been paid for.
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