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WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

nytimes.com

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Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#311

Post by Marsymars »

andrepd wrote: post #78
jahnu wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal have a few things that make it a hard sell. It's really hard to clean up media. You have to go into every single chat and from there go about deleting stuff. At least they finally added a "select all" option in there recently. So the size of it just grows and grows and grows until it's using all the space on your phone. Not a good fit for non-technical types. Secondly, no web view. There is the desktop app yes…

It's very frustrating, I admit. Backups and archival are indeed a pet peeve of mine, as are the frequent redesigns (but that's just a "feature" virtually every single god-damn modern app). What is the alternative though? A private chat app, mobile + desktop, syncing, with enough ease of setup and use for normies to adopt? I don't see it.

> What is the alternative though? A private chat app, mobile + desktop, syncing, with enough ease of setup and use for normies to adopt? I don't see it.

iMessage, if you only use Apple devices or are willing/able to hack around the Apple-device requirement.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#312

Post by ThatPlayer »

jobigoud wrote: post #146
yapyap wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify I get because the Spotify free experience is HORRID. Youtube is also moving into that direction.

I think a good amount of people pay for Youtube just to be able to listen to audio with the screen off, which is a completely artificial restriction they added to the free version. Such a strange business model, making the free version below acceptable.

It makes sense because YouTube's income is from being paid to deliver video ads. They can't fulfill that if the screen is off.

I believe they are rolling out audio ads.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#313

Post by xeromal »

RestlessMind wrote: post #290
ndriscoll wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How was it unsustainable? As far as I know they were simply competent. They charged $1/year, so had ~half a billion in revenue, right? They probably could've bumped that to $2-$5/year with similar uptake. And they ran it with ~500 servers and 50 employees 12 years ago, so could probably do the same with ~50 or fewer servers today.

They never charged everyone. I was on Android back then and never paid a dime. Neither did anyone I know who was using Whatsapp on Android

They did charge me and I gladly paid.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#314

Post by lmm »

Zak wrote: post #282
RestlessMind wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used Hangouts including the dogfood versions internally at Google. Problem was it was too complicated because it was designed by Googlers for Googlers. So it supported desktop and mobile, work email and personal email and phone numbers, text and video, and so on. In short, every single complexity conceivable was crammed into the app. Whereas Whatsapp was simple - only phone numbers to sign up, only text and images,…

Thanks for the insider perspective. I used Hangouts for a while and had a bunch of contacts on it when it was Android's default SMS app. Many of them were not particularly technical, including one of my parents whom I don't recall telling to use it. If you were using an Android phone, you were probably already logged in to a Google account. iPhone users had to work a little harder for it (install the app and remember…

> If you were using an Android phone, you were probably already logged in to a Google account.

Sure. But is it the same Google account that your relatives email you on, or a different one that only that phone is using? When you drop this phone are you going to sign into that same Google account or make a new one? The answers for non-technical users are non-obvious.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#315

Post by lmm »

ab_testing wrote: post #243
rconti wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just thinking about this the other day -- hotels so badly want me to book directly with them instead of using, say Booking.com. But then to book directly and get the "guaranteed cheapest!" price, I have to sort through even more options than on an aggregator, I have to create an account, and now I'm getting spammed from ANOTHER entity I never plan to do business with again. At least with the aggregators I have…

I book with hotels directly almost all the time and never receive marketing spam just regular mail about my upcoming start. Also booking with the hotel lets me select options not available on booking sites like king vs 2 queen bed options, ADA compliant rooms and even floor options. Also if you have AAA or some other memberships, those codes can easily beat discount sites like Booking.com

> I book with hotels directly almost all the time and never receive marketing spam just regular mail about my upcoming start.

What's your secret? Even the hotel in privacy-conscious Austria I stayed with once four years ago spams me.

> booking with the hotel lets me select options not available on booking sites like king vs 2 queen bed options, ADA compliant rooms and even floor options

If their booking system works. Usually faster and more reliable to send a message on booking.com.

> if you have AAA or some other memberships, those codes can easily beat discount sites like Booking.com

Maybe if your time is worthless.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#316

Post by lmm »

Symbiote wrote: post #211
noosphr wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People pick the cheapest flights because price is a simple number they can understand. How to you qualify the comfort of a seat with 20cm of legroom vs 30cm? Until we have a quality metric for flights that's also a single number we can't.

The price is one of the few things that's always available when choosing between flights. Journey time is the other, and people will pay for a shorter journey or shorter layovers. Strangely, some of my colleagues have 'paid' (work's money, their time) extra to avoid Ryanair, when Ryanair has the only direct connection. This I find strange. Given the choice, I've long paid a little more if it means an Airbus plane, as…

Ryanair are notorious for a) nickel-and-diming and b) general nastiness (e.g. charging a big fee to print a boarding pass at the airport, flying to an airport 70km from the city name they advertised, telling the press that they're going to start charging for the toilet). They're one of the few airlines whose reputation is big and extreme enough that it's percolated into the public consciousness.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#317

Post by PenguinCoder »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #292
mrtksn wrote: post #8

Does anybody have stats on how many people are O.K. paying for their core services, i.e. how many people pay for paid personal e-mail services? I just don't want to believe that our services have to be paid for through proxy by giving huge cut to 3rd parties. The quality goes down both as UX and as core content, our attention span is destroyed, our privacy is violated and our political power is being stolen as conten…

Me? Never again. I used to... like some app, paid for a "PRO" version to get additonal features. Everything was ok. Then 6 months went by, and they added a cloud feature, to upload some stuff and configs and sync between devices, and it turned from one time payment to a subscription plan. Then built-in features got moved into the cloud, and previously working stuff didn't work without subscriptions anymore. Then they…

Which app? I paid for pro fairmail and don't have that issue with the app, currently. Which is what I'd expect.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#318

Post by danpalmer »

> The promotions will appear only in an area of the app called Updates, which is used by around 1.5 billion people a day

Is that 1.5 billion people engaging with it, or 1.5 billion people seeing it because it's the first tab and then immediately switching to "Chats", the only useful tab in the app?

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#319

Post by ndriscoll »

johncessna wrote: post #132
Workaccount2 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By far the choice of most marginally savvy and above internet users is an ad-model where they themselves ad-block. Which somehow is spun to be morally righteous.

Morally Righteous? I think it's more they don't have to so they don't. It's like the DVR days where you'd just fast forward ads. It wasn't a moral high ground, it was just easy to do and was better than the alternative.

I do actually think that putting ads in front of children at least is immoral, and it is neglectful not to block ads for kids in the same way that it is to just hand them an unfiltered violence-and-porn device.

It's probably at least irresponsible to not block ads for an elderly parent who's starting to experience cognitive decline.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#320

Post by 1oooqooq »

xp84 wrote: post #285
1oooqooq wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

none of those are blasting "encryption! only you can read your messages" as their main message and marketing. those are literal public forums people go to expose themselves. you don't have a very good point.

Whatsapp is messaging-focused, but I'm willing to bet the quotation you just gave is not even 10% of the reason people choose to use it. If I understand it correctly, people use it mainly because MMS was a dumpster fire and WA was the first platform which got critical mass in most countries, which it achieved by being both pretty good overall and by being cross-platform. The encryption is a nice bonus that everybody…

Gmail is the least ad ridden property on google ever.

i don't think people join because it's encrypted, but they wouldn't use when it's not. it too can became the dumpsterfire that sms was/is.

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