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WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

nytimes.com

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Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#41

Post by barnabee »

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’d love to know the expected ad revenue per user for makers of apps like WhatsApp, Instagram.

I’m pretty convinced I’d pay 10x or more than that amount for a completely ad free version but I can’t be sure.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#42

Post by robertlagrant »

> 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.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#43

Post by A_Duck »

doix wrote: post #26
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 remember WhatsApp costing money, 1$ per year or per lifetime or something. I paid for it, I think it was a WinRar situation though, where deleting and reinstalling the app gave it to you for free or something. I'm guessing most people didn't pay though, since they scraped the fee (even before FB bought them). I guess it was just too little money to be worth the effort.

Yep I paid for Whatsapp, I've even dug out the receipt email. I want my £0.79 back!

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#44

Post by MrDOS »

jahnu wrote: post #16
andrepd wrote: post #3

Would be nice if these kinds of articles would at least take a paragraph to plug some alternatives, such as Signal.

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…

I stopped recommending Signal to nontechnical folks due to the inability to back up messages on iOS. People are pretty protective of their message history, and having everything tied to a single device with no recourse for backups is a nonstarter.

The slightly longer version of the story is that my wife, travelling alone, had some trouble with an iPhone update (it hung for hours), and so she took it to the nearest Genius Bar; they eventually got the update to apply, but then did a factory reset “just to be safe”. Of course, everything except her Signal message history was restored from the automatic iCloud backups. She was devastated, and refuses to touch it now.

Please do not reply to say this was the fault of the Apple Store employee. It was, but at the same time, it also very much wasn't.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#45

Post by jahnu »

MrDOS wrote: post #44
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…

I stopped recommending Signal to nontechnical folks due to the inability to back up messages on iOS. People are pretty protective of their message history, and having everything tied to a single device with no recourse for backups is a nonstarter. The slightly longer version of the story is that my wife, travelling alone, had some trouble with an iPhone update (it hung for hours), and so she took it to the nearest Ge…

Oh yes this too. How could I forget!

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#46

Post by toast0 »

snapcaster wrote: post #2

Surprised it took them this long

They were working on it in 2019 when I left, I thought it was tested in one country after that and then it got shelved. IIRC, it needed a ToS change and there was too much pushback.

I had been voluntold to be on the ads team, because I had sent a list of things that needed to be done to make ads doable and not terrible. Of course, none of my ideas were deemed feasible at the time, including figuring our the ToS stuff, because no use building a product you can't launch and ToS changes aren't easy.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#47

Post by mschuster91 »

doix wrote: post #26
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 remember WhatsApp costing money, 1$ per year or per lifetime or something. I paid for it, I think it was a WinRar situation though, where deleting and reinstalling the app gave it to you for free or something. I'm guessing most people didn't pay though, since they scraped the fee (even before FB bought them). I guess it was just too little money to be worth the effort.

Pre acquisition Whatsapp had 450M users. Even accounting for half the revenue of 1$ going away for payment fees (30%) and taxes (20%), that would still have been a nice cushy 200 million $ a year in almost pure profit - WA had 55 (!) employees at acquisition and 550 servers [1].

That's nothing at this scale of users and speaks volumes for the ingenuity of their staff.

The only ones driving even leaner than that are StackOverflow with just nine servers [2].

[1] https://highscalability.com/how-whatsapp-grew-to-nearly-500-...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34950843

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#48

Post by Workaccount2 »

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 can say from experience and from others who have been in this position (not email, but general services); its around 1-2% of people.

Nebula, the answer to the tyranny of Youtube (who works for advertisers), has a I could write pages about this, but I wish I could violently shake all the children (many who are now in their 40's) that so deeply feel entitled to free content on the internet, and scream "If you are not paying directly for the product, you have no right to complain about the product".

In reality the ad model is not going anywhere. Given the choice, people overwhelmingly chose to let the advertisers steer the ship if it means "free" entry.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#49

Post by blitzar »

mrtksn wrote: post #31
blitzar wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of those are tricked into it by manipulative UI or nearly impossible to cancel trials or forgotten monthly subscriptions.

How is it possible to have impossible to cancel trails? On AppStore it's in your account and takes 2 taps to cancel regardless of what the developer does. Are you talking for direct, by credit card payments that somehow you can't cancel? Can you explain a bit?

The abuse was so rampant that even the US has had to legislate. US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) introduced a new regulation, known as the “click to cancel” rule.

As for the darkest of dark patterns - give Adobe some money and see what happens.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#50

Post by owebmaster »

barnabee wrote: post #41
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’d love to know the expected ad revenue per user for makers of apps like WhatsApp, Instagram. I’m pretty convinced I’d pay 10x or more than that amount for a completely ad free version but I can’t be sure.

You would not, because 90% of the years wouldn't pay and you wouldn't also to have nobody to talk to after everybody moves to the next chat app
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