Earlier quoted context omitted.
WhatsApp has about a quarter of a billion (with a 'B') users worldwide.
how much do they pay WhatsApp each month?
Approximately 10 cents.
Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B
201–210 of 239 posts
Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if that really matters all that much. It could be my limited perspective talking, but fiber seems pretty future-proof. Nothing is faster than light; the only conceivable improvement would be cables that can handle wider spectrum of light. (The nodes on the other hand, of course, are continually improving) Ethernet cable is a similar story. NICs have advanced tremendously, but Cat5 (defined in 1991) is still…
Fiber is future proof but most people don't have it. The process of getting it is called growth. If it's the case that making the "pipes" a public utility would have hindered growth, then you would never have got fiber. And 100M ethernet over Cat5e is pretty useless. Standard WiFi these days is 150-300 Mbps. I regret not running Cat6 in to my extension just to be safe.
Cat5e does do gigabit speeds. You might be thinking of it's predecessor Cat5.
Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not the least bit bizarre, but it is EXACTLY what people are (or should be) afraid of. The people who own the pipes should NOT own the content, or they will be incentivized to leverage their monopoly on our computer screens to provide unfair advantages to their content. The FCC should have drawn a line in the sand and been done with it before the Comcast deal was allowed to go through (but of course the head of…
Why not apply that to other things? Why is apple allowed to sell hardware then dictate who can sell apps for that hardware after it is sold? Why can google use its search engine monopoly to push chrome, android, maps, etc. etc.?
Neither of your examples are even close to monopolies.
Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry, but why do you believe WhatsApp is overvalued? They have an incredible mindshare, it is the only app (besides Facebook), that I see moms and grandmas using on a daily basis. Heck, my mom talk to me mostly through it. She evens send me emoticons, pictures and voice notes!
It's .. an IM app (and arguably it wasn't a good one/a broken one for quite a while). Like AOL offered? ICQ? MSN? Okay, all dead. Xmpp? Skype? Lync? Hangout? Telegram? TextSecure? etc. etc. I'm sure I forgot lots of somewhat sensible/popular options. Basically it's not doing a lot, there are lots of alternatives, I see no way to keep users - or make them pay anything. I mean, I guess they pay with their privacy and/o…
The two keys to understanding whatsapp valuation are that they had established ubiquitous cheap all-you-can-whatsapp packages with telecoms in developing markets, which quickly became all-you-can-whatsapp-and-Facebook, and are now being parlayed somewhat clumsily into Internet.org.
The second thing is the growth of messaging-as-platform in markets like China, where everyone is using wechat to query bank balances, order tickets, etc. It's a commercial platform, and to talk to young people in Shenzhen who's primary (maybe only) computer is a smartphone, the idea of having these interactions through a website is comical. It's really something to witness, and totally unexpected for those of us who grew up on desktop computers and laptops. FB is trying to turn messenger into a platform now in the U.S., and they have the whatsapp platform to fall back on or develop in other countries. Whatsapp could have become a threat to FB's growth in developing markets by adopting wechat's platform and timeline features, so the valuation was defensive. Time will tell if there is potential for messaging as a revenue generating platform outside of China/Asia.
The best counter-argument to the valuation is that Whatsapp had something like 20 engineers on staff when they were acquired. It's hard to imagine a future where a global messaging platform doesn't continue to need less employees to manage it. I figure that eventually, such important, but cheap-to-run infrastructure seems like something that will end up being run by a Mozilla/Wikimedia style foundation on donations.
Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
WhatsApp has about a quarter of a billion (with a 'B') users worldwide.
how much do they pay WhatsApp each month?
this reminds of a recent episode of Silicon Valley, the eccentric billionaire Hanneman says, "If you show revenue, people will ask how much, and it will never be enough, It’s not about how much you earn but what you’re worth.....”
Initially i didn't see the sense in the Whatsapp acquisition, i think it was purely defensive, as well as the data FB could get their hands on.
Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's .. an IM app (and arguably it wasn't a good one/a broken one for quite a while). Like AOL offered? ICQ? MSN? Okay, all dead. Xmpp? Skype? Lync? Hangout? Telegram? TextSecure? etc. etc. I'm sure I forgot lots of somewhat sensible/popular options. Basically it's not doing a lot, there are lots of alternatives, I see no way to keep users - or make them pay anything. I mean, I guess they pay with their privacy and/o…
The two keys to understanding whatsapp valuation are that they had established ubiquitous cheap all-you-can-whatsapp packages with telecoms in developing markets, which quickly became all-you-can-whatsapp-and-Facebook, and are now being parlayed somewhat clumsily into Internet.org. The second thing is the growth of messaging-as-platform in markets like China, where everyone is using wechat to query bank balances, ord…
I'm confused. I like your context, the explanation of why IM might be a big deal. I don't have that background and might be using IM in a weird/non-mainstream way and certainly don't get global trends.
But then you say 'wechat'. Note again: I don't use any of these apps. It seems that this is a competitor? How does "A competitor is really successful" translate to "you guys are doing something valuable"? And if you'd say "Well, any IM application with some traction can take away that spot again", how can WhatsApp make sure that a) it is the one to pull that off and b) it won't go away again when the next IM app comes around, and this time it's GREEN! And - I don't know - has cute cat and puppy images as part of the built-in 'emoticons'/icons to distinguish itself from the feature set of the inferior IM apps?
I understand that there might be a huge market for IM applications. I don't understand the market for any _specific_ IM application.
The way I see it? WhatsApp is boring. I can't do anything new or interesting. At all.
Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B
#207While many are seeing this as bizarre, it is not. This is a programmatic and verticalization play. Verizon has been investing in adtech companies and provides the means of distribution. The deal allows them to now own the content as well. As someone in the advertising agency, Verizon has been one of the few telecoms that have enabled advertisers to utilize their data. This deal furthers their ability to tie mobile da…
It's not the least bit bizarre, but it is EXACTLY what people are (or should be) afraid of. The people who own the pipes should NOT own the content, or they will be incentivized to leverage their monopoly on our computer screens to provide unfair advantages to their content. The FCC should have drawn a line in the sand and been done with it before the Comcast deal was allowed to go through (but of course the head of…
Comcast owns NBC, another content provider. I don't think there are any unfair advantages there.
Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. This. It's a reoccurring battle that all companies that build some kind of infrastructure and offer content/data services on that infrastructure end up facing. When they built the pipes, there was no data/content, so they had to create it. But now there is so much more content/data that is so much better, and people just want to use these companies as a dumb pipe to get to the good stuff. We see it now with cell…
I think you're underestimating several things: 1 - aol was quite expensive to use: it was a long time before they introduced flat rate pricing. When I got it in the mid 90s, you paid something like $20/mo for 15 hours (it's been a long time) and then paid something like $2/hour for every hour after that. I ran up a $60 charge and then had to be much more careful about how much time I spent online. Lesson: because aol…
> you paid something like $20/mo for 15 hours (it's been a long time)
I don't think it was that much, because when AOL first came out with their "$20/month unlimited plan" (years after the regular ISPs did), I remember thinking "this is great for people like me, but I kinda feel bad for people who only use their connection for an hour a week". I think it was more like $7/month for your X free hours (and I remember they kept bumping the X as more and more people began integrating AOL into their daily lives until they finally said "fuck it, we're going unlimited").
Also, people would get around it by using the crapflood of AOL CDs they got everywhere to register new accounts every month. They really started ramping up the free hours on those... when you got to "100 free hours", it made more sense to just make a new account and use a new AOL CD every month.
Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmm .. May be they could have bought sbc/att/Comcast/twc? Given their valuation at that time, they could have bought pretty much anybody.
> Hmm .. May be they could have bought sbc/att/Comcast/twc? They bought Time-Warner in 2001 for $164 billion to create AOL Time-Warner. The expected synergies of the acquisition largely failed to materialize, the AOL name was dropped from the combined entity in 2003, and AOL was spun back out of Time-Warner in 2009.
Interestingly enough, 2009 also saw Time Warner spin off TWC as an independent entity as well. They technically only use the Time Warner name under license now.
Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> They had years to invest in the open internet, buy out a successful internet venture, or adopt internet features into their offering. None of the big ISP's from the 90's "made it". Earthlink, Netcom, Prodigy... They were all either acquired, went bankrupt, or became DSL resellers. They didn't have any content so they were worthless as broadband took over. There's only a handful of dot-com's still around from those…
> None of the big ISP's from the 90's "made it". AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon are still chugging along, among others. Some of them aren't household names like Level 3 or CenturyLink. > There truly was nothing they could have done. It's 1996, sales are terrible, stock price is in the toilet, the newest product line isn't selling as well, and it was very expensive to develop as it moved to a different CPU architecture. M…
> I don't even recall if they did start offering DSL.
They did. My parents had it in the early 00s. They'd resell the local phone company's DSL but require you to log into the AOL app in order to actually use your connection.