801–810 of 1001 posts
My simple solution to this problem: we need a law that forces companies to provide a messaging-only version of messaging apps, without algorithmic social feeds.
WhatsApp has been relatively feature stagnant for a long while now, and it's certainly being almost ubiquitous for a long time too, but we're seeing an explosion in features and product tweaks recently? I wonder what the trigger was to suddenly leverage the enormous corpus of users to sweat more cash out of it?
> relatively feature stagnant Is that a bad thing? It's a useful dedicated tool. Paperclips have been feature stagnant since the 19th century, and they're fine
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Here’s an advertising model I’ve thought about but never seen: The app itself is 100% ad free and runs on credits. You get credits through se other portal by logging in to watch ads whenever it’s convenient for you. Good app experience for the user, and potentially better experiences for the advertisers because they get the target audience when they are most open to ads (and not annoyed by them).
That's just a paid app with extra steps.
Most users would probably pay, but some people really don’t want to/can’t and this gives them an option.
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It's been 11 years. If they hadn't been bought they'd have found a different monetization model long ago
WhatsApp make billions of dollars but Meta wants it to make hundreds of billions. There's no way to appease the dragon.
everyone saw this coming the day facebook bought it, but the real issue isn't ads in status . it's that the platform is now locked into meta's attention monetization engine. the founders explicitly said no ads. now not only ads, but paid channels, algorithmic exposure, and user segmentation creeping in. most people won't switch because of network effects, so meta can keep tightening the screws. this isn't about reven…
It is becoming painfully apparent that the cycle of enshittification is truly inevitable, right up there next to the second law of thermodynamics.
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There's no way it would've gotten the adoption it did in 3rd world countries if you had to pay $1 per year.
Thing is, it already was getting that adoption, and network effect can largely take care of the rest. Also, some it’s tied to a real phone number, geographic price differentiation is trivial to implement.
Point being, I agree with you, it was getting that adoption anyways, even with the fees. And within months, I was hearing this from so many others.
How do I remember? I moved back to US in Feb 2013, so it had to be before that, just can not recall the exact year and month.
I guess this was expected, but it makes me feel really powerless in the sense that I can't really move away from WhatsApp. I have a couple of friends that I message via Signal and even convinced my dad to use it a while back, but here in Brazil WhatsApp is _everything_, and I doubt most people care about this at all. In my case, I'd love to just go over to Signal fully but then I couldn't talk to family, friends, and…
Yup. Non-traveling US Americans mostly won’t understand how critical WhatsApp is in many parts of the world, for more than a decade. It’s much much stronger than the iMessage norm in the US. Businesses put WhatsApp numbers on their stores, and it’s often the only way to get a hold of a person. I would bet it’s more used than email, especially for young people. If WhatsApp went down for a week, it would seriously impe…
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Yup. Non-traveling US Americans mostly won’t understand how critical WhatsApp is in many parts of the world, for more than a decade. It’s much much stronger than the iMessage norm in the US. Businesses put WhatsApp numbers on their stores, and it’s often the only way to get a hold of a person. I would bet it’s more used than email, especially for young people. If WhatsApp went down for a week, it would seriously impe…
What about non traveling Chinese?
Americans tend to believe everyone is trying very hard to be like them (when they think about the rest of the world at all).
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I shifted to Telegram a few years ago, and it was such a rich experience for me. Off the top of my head: - much much better performance - a good desktop client - open source message clients - scheduling messages - better search - many small gestures/UX features that feel thoughtfully implemented - better channels - message threads - chat folders - very easily programmable & deployable bots for moderation or implement…
I guess all this is available through the business version of whatsapp.