Facebook • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook

#91

Post by eevilspock » Thu, Feb 20, 2014, 7:43 PM UTC

ryanSrich wrote: post #85

yaeger wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I don't get. If nothing will change for the users, then why did Facebook acquire them? Why did they bother? Just so that they can run statistics and include WhatsApps numbers in there as well because they now belong to the same organisation?

Diversification. Aquire as many relevant products as you can to stay, well, relevant. If Facebook.com is losing users then it makes sense for them to use the money they have now to buy a company that's gaining users.

Then why WhatsApp over thousands of other companies they could have acquired? No, there has to be another reason and there is no way WhatsApp is not going to change because of this. Their saying it won't change is like the like a corporate VP stepping down "to spend more time with his family".

Re: Facebook

#92

Post by habosa » Thu, Feb 20, 2014, 8:08 PM UTC

ulfw wrote: post #90

habosa wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, but it's amazing that a start up with such basic features has gotten to the point where you can compare it to texting or email as far as engagement.

What do you mean? IT IS TEXTING! It's texting via a TCP connection and with the help of Apple's and Google's push messaging servers instead of going through the SMS channel of a GSM network. As a product it's the exact same as SMS/MMS. Just the technical implementation is different.

Well that different technical implementation made it much more attractive to millions of people worldwide. Sounds like a win.

Also I don't think they use Apple and Google's push servers since this also runs on J2ME devices, Windows phone, Symbian, etc.

Re: Facebook

#93

Post by ulfw » Fri, Feb 21, 2014, 1:16 PM UTC

habosa wrote: post #92

ulfw wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? IT IS TEXTING! It's texting via a TCP connection and with the help of Apple's and Google's push messaging servers instead of going through the SMS channel of a GSM network. As a product it's the exact same as SMS/MMS. Just the technical implementation is different.

Well that different technical implementation made it much more attractive to millions of people worldwide. Sounds like a win. Also I don't think they use Apple and Google's push servers since this also runs on J2ME devices, Windows phone, Symbian, etc.

Of course they're not using Apple's push servers on J2ME devices. They're using it on iOS. Of course they're not using Google's push servers on Windows Phone devices. They're using it on Android.... How else would you get notified?

Also I never said it wasn't attractive. I just tried to explain that conceptionally as a product it's the same as text messaging and should thus have similar Daily to Monthly User ratios.