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WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

nytimes.com

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Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#371

Post by udev4096 »

BiggerChungus wrote: post #97
robertlagrant wrote: post #42

> When Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014, the messaging app had a clear focus. No ads, no games and no gimmicks. This sort of analysis is very surface-level I think. My impression is WhatsApp offered that by running on VC money and had no plan to run an actual business. That's not a question of focus. It's an unsustainable, please monetise me later land grab.

Respectfully, clearly you aren't familiar with Jan and Brian's history of public statements. Even for years after they were acquired by Meta, Jan refused to allow advertising and kept pushing the $1 dollar per user subscription fee. Sheryl nixed it b/c it was "not scalable." VC's may have the mindset that the founders will eventually acquiesce to ads, but also they didn't really care b/c all they wanted was an exit,…

Brian Acton is a fucking sell out. Peroid. He deserves no sympathy and I cannot believe how he was appointed executive chairperson of signal foundation

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#372

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

rchaud wrote: post #235
robertlagrant wrote: post #42

> When Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014, the messaging app had a clear focus. No ads, no games and no gimmicks. This sort of analysis is very surface-level I think. My impression is WhatsApp offered that by running on VC money and had no plan to run an actual business. That's not a question of focus. It's an unsustainable, please monetise me later land grab.

Have you considered that you may be making the surface-level analysis? I paid $3 for Whatsapp in 2010 on the Blackberry app store. They had a staff of ~20 people handling messages across almost 200 countries.It became the defacto global messaging app because it was available on every single platform, not just the Apple/Google duopoly VCs cared about.

Sorry, but the original commenter is correct. They received relatively small amounts of seed funding in 2009 and later charged a nominal amount to cover text verification, but they still were a classic VC-funded play: receive tens of millions in VC dollars to operate at a loss for years to build market dominance. From the Wikipedia page:

> In April 2011, Sequoia Capital invested about $8 million for more than 15% of the company, after months of negotiation by Sequoia partner Jim Goetz.[63][64][65]

> By February 2013, WhatsApp had about 200 million active users and 50 staff members. Sequoia invested another $50 million, and WhatsApp was valued at $1.5 billion.[26] Some time in 2013[66] WhatsApp acquired Santa Clara–based startup SkyMobius, the developers of Vtok,[67] a video and voice calling app.[68]

> In a December 2013 blog post, WhatsApp claimed that 400 million active users used the service each month.[69] The year 2013 ended with $148 million in expenses, of which $138 million in losses.

I mean, when Facebook bought WhatsApp for billions, what did people expect? How else were they going to monetize?

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#373

Post by furyofantares »

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…

I think the problem is that we all pay for ads whether we're exposed to them or not. Ads result in higher prices, and a higher barrier to entry for competition. It's a collective action problem.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#375

Post by john61 »

leokennis wrote: post #7

At least in The Netherlands, WhatsApp could show a 60 second unskippable modal ad video on every launch, and still get away with it due to network effects. If you’re not on WhatsApp, no updates or news from your kids school, your sports team, your family, your car dealership etc. for you.

> If you’re not on WhatsApp, no updates or news from your kids school, your sports team, your family, your car dealership etc. for you.

Maybe, but not being in WhatsApp is also a signal.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#376

Post by spaqin »

boldlybold wrote: post #352
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only they would respect that when you tell them to hide shorts. Drives me crazy that they utterly refuse to let you turn those off.

Get a browser extension that does it, I finally looked for one after clicking the "not interested" button one too many times.

If you're at getting a browser extension level, you're not too far off from also getting an adblocker and not having to pay for premium.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#378

Post by anshumankmr »

muppetman wrote: post #364
filoleg wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t have the actual stats, but, sadly, it seems like a gigantic chunk of the “i would rather pay a small fee to use a service rather than paying for it with exposure to ads” crowd is mostly all-talk. And I am saying this as someone who genuinely believes in the “small fee instead of paying with ad exposure” approach. The one specific example of this that made me think so is the Youtube Premium situation. So many…

I pay for YT Premium. Not because I care for stupid videos, but because you get YT Music for free with it... Spotify is the hottest of garbage in my opinion, constantly trying to push podcasts at me. Why more people don't cancel Spotify and just pay for YT Premium - you get ad-free videos and all the music of Spotify. Plus with YT Music you can upload your own FLAC/MP3s to it, so all that odd werid music you've got t…

Its baffling how bad YT Music reccomendations are for me though (personally). My personal email account is something I have had since 2008 and there is probably history going back till then and even then somehow YT Music just gives bad reccomendations

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#379

Post by unmole »

theturtletalks wrote: post #326
leokennis wrote: post #7

At least in The Netherlands, WhatsApp could show a 60 second unskippable modal ad video on every launch, and still get away with it due to network effects. If you’re not on WhatsApp, no updates or news from your kids school, your sports team, your family, your car dealership etc. for you.

It's the same in many countries, especially the developing ones. In Kenya for example, you can run out of data but Whatsapp will still work. It's that crucial to daily life, it's get an exception by telecom companies.

> It's that crucial to daily life, it's get an exception by telecom companies.

Isn't this because Facebook is paying telcos to keep its services free? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet.org

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#380

Post by worik »

gruez wrote: post #186
selfhoster11 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal isn't backed by a global data gathering conglomerate, so no.

You're right, they're funded by something far more sinister - the US government. More to the point, I thought the principle was "Any man who must say, "I am the King", is no true king."? That seems to leave no room for hedging, like only distrusting "global data gathering conglomerate" or whatever. If you're have to do a holistic assessment of an organization's governance structure and incentives, you're basically ad…

> they're funded by something far more sinister - the US government.

What does that mean?

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