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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

#211

Post by vmarsy »

kitsune_ wrote: post #88
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…

This doesn't explain the success WhatsApp had in Europe. Germany, The Netherlands, Switzerland, etc. WhatsApp dominates all of these markets. I think a reason for this is that in Europe, we're not used to unlimited text plans. Unlike the US, we don't have to pay to receive text messages, only to send them, so there is little incentive to get an "unlimited plan" anyways. But ultimately, you still end up paying 20 cent…

This would explain why it is barely used in France : http://ymuchomas.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/global-reach-of...

Unlimited texts come with every mobile plan which cost more than 20€, even when it's not unlimited the rates are really cheap and you don't pay for received texts ever. MMS were never part of the data plan either, when you get unlimited SMS it always comes with free MMS.

afaik, using whatsapp require you to have a data plan, and in France you'll almost always get unlimited texts before data plans

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

#212

Post by largote »

dublinben wrote: post #162
enewcomer wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only need one friend you care about using a Blackberry or Nokia for it to matter though. The long tail matters when it comes to communication.

I'd rather just SMS/email them. At least those are actually cross-platform, and don't depend on proprietary apps like WhatsApp.

SMSs are expensive and people just don't prioritize email like they do IMs.

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

#213

Post by twic »

yohanatan wrote: post #207
avenger123 wrote: post #155

The message of the article is good but it's not seeing the forest from the trees. Having just read the Forbes artcile on the company and Jan in particular, some interesting things stood out: 1) Jan had money to start and was able to take time to build a user base and find the real value in the App and didn't need to go around "raising money". The SMS component of the app wasn't the initial focus. The company didn't n…

> 3) There is real value in the app. No one needs to question this. There's no big pitch deck's, presentations, etc.The app was allowed to grow organically due to its network affect. The business can scale into the millions and billions of users. Can you explain this one? Something that seems to have been lost in all the hype is how yet another messaging app is somehow novel, innovative, or exciting. Is this somehow…

WhatsApp is different to most messaging apps in that it runs on dumb phones (featurephones), not just smartphones. It's different to built-in text messaging in that it uses data rather than SMS. Dumb phones are a lot cheaper than smartphones, and for most people, data is cheaper than SMS.

There are an awful lot of people in the world who can't afford a smartphone or a serious SMS habit. Those people use WhatsApp.

There is a parallel here to BlackBerry Messenger. In the UK at least, the two groups that use (or used, a couple of years ago) BlackBerries are businesspeople, who use it because it integrates with their corporate IT whatnot, and schoolchildren, who use it because BBM is free, unlike SMS. However, BBM is tied to a shonky and still not that cheap hardware platform that uses special snowflake network services that are not available everywhere, whereas WhatsApp is portable.

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

#216

Post by yohanatan »

twic wrote: post #213
yohanatan wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 3) There is real value in the app. No one needs to question this. There's no big pitch deck's, presentations, etc.The app was allowed to grow organically due to its network affect. The business can scale into the millions and billions of users. Can you explain this one? Something that seems to have been lost in all the hype is how yet another messaging app is somehow novel, innovative, or exciting. Is this somehow…

WhatsApp is different to most messaging apps in that it runs on dumb phones (featurephones), not just smartphones. It's different to built-in text messaging in that it uses data rather than SMS. Dumb phones are a lot cheaper than smartphones, and for most people, data is cheaper than SMS. There are an awful lot of people in the world who can't afford a smartphone or a serious SMS habit. Those people use WhatsApp. The…

That sounds rather trivial to me. Facebook has a huge userbase and I'm sure that if they made FB Messenger run on J2ME as well, it would have massive uptake. Seems like Zuck just wanted to spread the love around a bit and generate some news (or has some serious lack of confidence in the competence of his own developers).

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

#217

Post by nevster »

gojomo wrote: post #22
sspiff wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Background notifications too? I'm surprised - I wrote a Twitter client in 2009, and I couldn't find a way to make that work. I didn't think J2ME could do that at all, to be honest.

Maybe some form of this... ? http://www.javaworld.com/article/2071753/mobile-java/push-me...

Yep, SMS push. I did some prototyping using this tech for a telco company here in Sydney back in, like, 2005 (9 years ago!). It actually worked quite well.

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

#219

Post by brisance »

edraferi wrote: post #140
brisance wrote: post #33

Framed another way, it goes to demonstrate the ridiculous price paid for the company. How are the "other 3 billion people" without smartphones going to contribute to Facebook's bottom line? When they don't even have Facebook? That they don't even view ads? And that the cost of switching is practically close to zero, with many other competitive products like WeChat? It all seems to me that it's just to pad the "total…

I don't think they're necessarily looking to integrate the user bases that way. If Facebook's mission is simply to "connect everything ” then this gets them closer to that goal. Whatsapp profits are note Facebook profits, and Facebook is connecting everyone that Whatsapp used to connect. Facebook wants as many users as possible, connected to rapture in as many ways as possible. This is a big win for that, and will co…

It's not apparent to me that having the "most number of users" is a net win as I stated previously, especially so when the WhatsApp co-founder states unequivocally that "nothing is going to change" for its users.

This is directly at odds with Facebook's business model which requires mining users' information for serving ads. Something has to give.

Looked another way, let's say WhatsApp is going to grow to 1 billion customers who pay $1 for an annual subscription. It would still take 19 years just to recoup the acquisition cost.

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

#220

Post by brisance »

eru wrote: post #83
brisance wrote: post #33

Framed another way, it goes to demonstrate the ridiculous price paid for the company. How are the "other 3 billion people" without smartphones going to contribute to Facebook's bottom line? When they don't even have Facebook? That they don't even view ads? And that the cost of switching is practically close to zero, with many other competitive products like WeChat? It all seems to me that it's just to pad the "total…

> How are the "other 3 billion people" without smartphones going to contribute to Facebook's bottom line? When they don't even have Facebook? That makes them even more valuable. Why should Facebook buy users they already have?

As WhatsApp's user base grows, the probability of users who are also on Facebook increases and vice versa. Which means you are supporting my argument that this is just a play for "number of users", since it's very likely a good proportion would be counted twice instead of uniquely.
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