So wait. Facebook paid $19 Billion for Whatsapp? 19 BILLION?!
- Thread starter ronito
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The Faceless Master
Member
why not just use Hangouts?
sign in with multiple Google accounts on his device and either use his account for just Hangouts or your account for just Google Play.
Yeah, Laiwang, developdf by the Amazon/eBay/PayPal of China, basically did just this--they paid people to use and refer people to their new messaging app.
http://thenextweb.com/apps/2014/01/...ing-users-to-sign-friends-up-to-its-chat-app/
Because all these services now use your phone number as an account, it is much easier to switch. The same way the phone number makes it easy to sign up means that it is easy to switch to another service that's also based on phone numbers.
I think the history of messaging and social network platforms seems to prove otherwise. And like I've said, the ease of account creation makes it easy to move as well. Look at the rise and fall of AIM, MSN, ICQ. In China, see how everyone quickly migrated from QQ to WeChat. Laiwang is adding over 300,000 users a day from a standing start in November 2013.
DanteGhost
Member
I know why is hard to understand for anyone in the U.S. since Whatsapp is just a simple IM application. The thing is it is huge in Latin America, which has a population nearing 600 million people, and that not counting the Latin American population in the U.S.
All my Hispanic friends use this app exclusively, even though must of them have iPhones. And Hispanics do not tend to care for privacy as Americans do (including me). I personally think this was an incredible acquisition for facebook, since a lot of U.S based companies are failing at targeting Latin America. There is a lot of money to be made for them in the region.
All my Hispanic friends use this app exclusively, even though must of them have iPhones. And Hispanics do not tend to care for privacy as Americans do (including me). I personally think this was an incredible acquisition for facebook, since a lot of U.S based companies are failing at targeting Latin America. There is a lot of money to be made for them in the region.
The Chinese market is very different. It is completely secluded from the western world. Combine that with no copy-right laws, and it's a place to copy what's successful in the west.
You mention AIM, MSN and ICQ. They're the old breed. WhatsApp isn't even a new MSN. It's something different. When Facebook trumped MySpace, that was because Facebook did something completely new. If you make Smachebook now, that's basically Facebook, you won't change anything.
In what way? They'd need to sell the earth's population several times over WhatsApp to break even.
No matter how you put it, it is 19 billion dollars. Even the dollar is suspect of being overvalued, so you can't make an argument "that it's not that much money because it might not be that much money in the future". That's down to investment of those who own the stock. If Facebook knows their stock is overvalued, it means they're trading on insider information. That is very illegal. If Facebook feels the market sentiment is that of overvalue, they need a guiding. Not only that, but there are no technical signs that the stock is overvalued, what so ever. Not being deep in the P/E of the stock, it is obvious that the stock is in a long upward trend. It looks healthy and safe. Further, Facebook can sell of more off their own stock, if that were the case. Why would they give away equity in the company no matter what the valuation is?
So no, it's 19 billion dollars. That's what there's to it.
s_mirage
Member
Pretty much the same. "The youth" that I know don't use it (they use Snapchat), and I'd never even heard of it. Whatever the case, $19 billion is an absolutely insane amount of money for a company of this kind unless there are genius plans to monetize it. How long till the dot-com crash 2.0 I wonder?
DragonSworne
Banned
People with families in India and other countries from that region mostly use it.
Certinty
Member
Pretty much the only non-stock app I use on my iPhone. Practically everyone I know has it and everytime i'm on my phone i'm most probably on it. Whatsapp just has so many advantages to iMessage, BBM and text messaging etc. so there's no real reason for me to ever change unless Facebook fuck the app up big time.
WhatsApp and Snapchat are two very different uses. Bubbles also have their indicators. There is no bubble here.
You do know that many of WhatsApps features were actually copied from WeChat, right? Like voice messaging. If they start to allow you to follow/checkin/buy from businesses, run microblogs, send money to other users, send messages from your computer, they'd be copying from WeChat as well. There is no "copyright" on using the phone number as an account, that's why iMessage already does it, and non-Chinese apps like Line and Kakao. There were no barriers for WhatsApp in China, it just was trumped in features. There's tons of room for innovation in this space and that's why it's very vulnerable to being replaced, especially since it's easy to move accounts when you aren't tied down by things like usernames and proprietary buddy lists.
mattiewheels
And then the LORD David Bowie saith to his Son, Jonny Depp: 'Go, and spread my image amongst the cosmos. For every living thing is in anguish and only the LIGHT shall give them reprieve.'
Is blowing $19bil in one flash something that their stockholders think is a great move? Was this competitor that expensive a threat to them? That's like end-of-the-line type of stuff, they must have smelled death.
Captain Tuttle
Member
edit: nevermind, figured it out
Reading through the post I replied to again, I see I misread it a bit. You replied to me where I said that making a copy of WhatsApp won't change anything, because no one will go to something that's the same but new. Facebook can't make their own copy of WhatsApp, because WhatsApp has the market share that WhatsApp targets. Facebook are interested in that market share, which is why the copy process isn't viable.
If they wished to venture into new territory and gamble on making "the next WhatsApp", then they'd rather do that. But obviously they didn't.
Yeah, my feelings too once I found out what Whatsaap does.
D
Deleted member 1235
Unconfirmed Member
in europe generally yes. you tend to buy a '1Gb and 100 SMS per month!'
what'sapp uses less than an MB in a month if you use it for messaging only, scale up for video and audio obviously. it's so rampantly popular because sms is a total scam and whats app replaces that with no setup account and free messaging.
That can't be right...
If it is then, fuck the UN and and every charity in existence for not coming together and solving it
I'm guessing the people saying they don't know the app are from the US, because here it is simply ubiquitous.
I've used texting maybe twice this year, but I use WhatsApp every day. Simply everyone I know uses WhatsApp, and whatsapp groups are used for everything -- I'm a member in at least ten.
I've used texting maybe twice this year, but I use WhatsApp every day. Simply everyone I know uses WhatsApp, and whatsapp groups are used for everything -- I'm a member in at least ten.
Miss.Selfdestruct
Member
Am slightly embarrassed to chime in with ignorance re: Whatsapp. Had no idea of its existence until these news hit :/
....you can already do this with gmail/hangouts or Kakao Talk (freeee), which can also be cross platform (I think, I never tried it on BlackBerry) and used with wifi.
....you can already do this with gmail/hangouts or Kakao Talk (freeee), which can also be cross platform (I think, I never tried it on BlackBerry) and used with wifi.
In Finland you usually get unlimited data plan (5~10mb speed 3G) with 5 euros or so per month and unlimited phone calls to people with the same service provider - at least that's my plan.
So whatsapp is really useful as I only have to pay for text messaging and when I call people who use another operator.
WhatsApp is pretty huge in Europe, I'd say. Almost everyone I know that has a phone has Whatsapp installed. Phone plans aren't that cheap where I live (Netherlands) so if I can save some money with less SMS/phone minutes and get like 500MB of data then Whatsapp is amazing.
It saves costs.
Although, 19 billion is a little exessive.
Whatsapp is huge here in Indonesia as well. Blackberry Messenger was one of the most used message programs until the fall of RIM. Now, everyone is in a transition phase to iPhones or Android and Whatsapp is extremely popular. You just need a phone number and wifi to use it. Extremely easy and user friendly. No ads, and perfect for communication across borders. Mind you, this is a country of around 250 million people. This mobile market is huge.
Path is also becoming quite popular.
Path is also becoming quite popular.
The Real Abed
Perma-Junior
All they need is a Windows version of the app and an Android one. But I don't see that happening. They'd have to open the API up for third parties instead. Let someone else create the Windows and Android apps.
And OS X. The best part is getting my messages on my iPhone, iPad and MacBook Pro all at once and being able to reply using any device I want. But all my family members and 85% of the people I work with all use iPhones or Macs so it's a no-brainer for me. Otherwise we just use FaceBook messages. I have the FB Messages app installed for that purpose. I use that app more than I even use the website itself.
I've used a total of 4:14 since I got the phone almost 2 years ago. I get 300 minutes a month. If they rolled over I'd have days of talk time available. I just don't use voice. What an age of communication we live in!
You want a straight answer? In a nutshell:
Basically unlike everyone else who's in it to just make money, this guy actually had a conscience. He knew it was addictive and saw what it did to people. So he took it down. It's such an odd contrast to a world where we have Angry Birds merchandise and half a dozen sequels on every device ever made. Rovio never got a conscience. The weird thing is Angry Birds has so much more substance than Flappy Bird. I'm still amazed people even took to that thing at all. But whatever. Maybe one day I can get in on the App game. I could turn my conscience off for a while and let the money roll in.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Ok but that's crazy talk, you know that right? The degree to which people were "addicted" to Flappy Bird was overblown. If he actually believed that, he's an idiot, and if he shut it down for that reason, he's an idiot. Maybe the inventor of basketball should have burned all traces of the game, unlike those consiousless bastards who invented baseball
But I don't take him at face value. He made a lot of money from that thing. There is a hidden story there. One Gaffer floated the idea that being famously, newly rich in an impovershed country is a huge liability (you can be a target for thugs), which sounds reasonable. Or maybe he was afraid of future litigation from Nintendo (reasonable or not). Or maybe he just had a nervous breakdown from the instant fame and online abuse. He took the money and ran.
criesofthepast
Member
Which is a huge fucking negative IMO. The kind of media people send on what's app and iMessage of our daily doings are not the kind of media we care to be sent in full 5000x3000 resolution or 1080p video. It is slow and unacceptable that there at least isn't a compress option in iMessage. Whats app does compresses and I find it to be a perfectly acceptable quality level and its why media messages are sent almost instantly on there. The speed of what's app is why it is so good for me.
I haven't used iMessage for a year now so don't know how much its changed for the better, but that was one of my biggest pet peeves when it was sending these 5MB pictures every single time instead of compressing them down to like 50kb like what's app does. Me and my gf love to send dozens of pictures a day so what's app is a million times better for that.
If you want to be sending pictures that you want to retain full res then you would be emailing them anyways. Speed in messaging is the most important bullet point for a messaging app.
The Real Abed
Perma-Junior
Yeah, I don't know why you'd even make an app like that if you don't expect to make money. But I guess he really didn't expect it to make money. At least not $50,000. ($15,000?) But he shouldn't have stopped just because it was addictive. So what? It happens. An innocuous looking game comes along, doesn't do well at all until suddenly it balloons in popularity, stays around for a while, then gets replaced by the next craze. (Or in Angry Birds' case, stays sort of popular enough to be ported to everything in existence and remains kind of relevant while coexisting with the numerous replacements that have come and gone during its time.)Ok but that's crazy talk, you know that right? The degree to which people were "addicted" to Flappy Bird was overblown. If he actually believed that, he's an idiot, and if he shut it down for that reason, he's an idiot. Maybe the inventor of basketball should have burned all traces of the game, unlike those consiousless bastards who invented baseball
But I don't take him at face value. He made a lot of money from that thing. There is a hidden story there. One Gaffer floated the idea that being famously, newly rich in an impovershed country is a huge liability (you can be a target for thugs), which sounds reasonable. Or maybe he was afraid of future litigation from Nintendo (reasonable or not). Or maybe he just had a nervous breakdown from the instant fame and online abuse. He took the money and ran.
Anyone remember Doodle Jump? I had it. It was stupid. I hated it. But fucking everyone was playing it for months and it had dozens of clones! It was a shitty game! It was very similar to Flappy Bird but vertical. I guess what separates these from Angry Birds is their simplicity. AB is pretty complex in comparison.
How about Tiny Tower? That was popular for a while. And I think it's still updated. But I haven't opened it in forever. It was free and had no ads, but IAP. I wonder how much NimbleBit made from their Tiny games.
for me hangouts is terrible replacement. They removed jabber support and I don't see option to strip Unicode when sending sms.
9 billion probably would disappear into corrupt hands
And people will move to something else.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Exactly. I can see some value in the user base, but here we have an app that on its own generates little to no revenue. To break even they're going to have to monetize those hundreds of millions of users to the tune of ~$50 each without driving them off because of said monetization? Good luck.
I think that's what's getting lost of the users here - it's not that WhatsApp doesn't have its uses, it's that nothing in its business model shows a $19BB valuation.
Conversely, the typical non-American:
"Hi, I use a free app. Because I use it, it's worth an infinite amount of money, but those new owners had better not monetize it."
I'm not talking about charging users a fee for messaging. I'm talking about charging users for ancillary services that exist on top of the basic chat service.
nephilimdj
Member
Phone companies in Africa are slowly making wikipedia a data free zone, facebook is working to make facebook also data free.
If they get whatsapp free, basically they own the continent in social interaction.
Coreda
Member
That figure seems way off on the surface of it. It couldn't possibly be that low for the infrastructure, surely.
POWERSPHERE
Member
Vibers waaaaay better
I got it working on my tablet (nexus 7) perfectly fine. Though it used my phone's number to work thus I've basically disabled it on my phone in favour of using it on my tablet. The root methods are probably so you can use it on both. But battery life on phones isn't efficient enough for me to want to leave my 3G on so I don't care.
Just try to imagine the following:
Every WhatsApp user transmits his phone's entire address book to WhatsApp. You don't have a choice, it does this automatically. Also, it doesn't matter if the other people in your address book actually use WhatsApp or not.
Let's say that each user transmits 4 (random guess) unique contacts to WhatsApp's servers, that's roughly 2 billion contact details.
So chances aren't that bad that they already have your contact details, even if you've never heard of WhatsApp before
Just because someone who uses it has your number.
Every WhatsApp user transmits his phone's entire address book to WhatsApp. You don't have a choice, it does this automatically. Also, it doesn't matter if the other people in your address book actually use WhatsApp or not.
Let's say that each user transmits 4 (random guess) unique contacts to WhatsApp's servers, that's roughly 2 billion contact details.
So chances aren't that bad that they already have your contact details, even if you've never heard of WhatsApp before
Just because someone who uses it has your number.Don't Laugh
Banned
yikesJust try to imagine the following:
Every WhatsApp user transmits his phone's entire address book to WhatsApp. You don't have a choice, it does this automatically. Also, it doesn't matter if the other people in your address book actually use WhatsApp or not.
Let's say that each user transmits 4 (random guess) unique contacts to WhatsApp's servers, that's roughly 2 billion contact details.
So chances aren't that bad that they already have your contact details, even if you've never heard of WhatsApp before
poppabk
Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
Doesn't that make it a terrible investment, though? The ease with which you can create an account and build a network based off your phone number can be easily replicated by someone else. There is no inertia to keep users on your platform, which Facebook should understand better than anyone.
PetriP-TNT
Member
No, because dedicated users won't jump the ship for more of the same.
For $19B? Probably. I can't fathom how they are going to recoup that, without going into nutcase theories.
industrian
will gently cradle you as time slowly ticks away.
It's probably a very low estimate.
Solving that sort of issue would be a logistical nightmare on an unparalleled scale.
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