3 ms·

I was just thinking about this. In 2010 (when many people were building GroupOn clones) I don't think people thinking about tech really saw this coming: that ch

by firasd 11y ago

I was just thinking about this. In 2010 (when many people were building GroupOn clones) I don't think people thinking about tech really saw this coming: that chat apps would not just be successful at such large scale but also subsume VOIP, ecommerce... Otherwise large companies would have valued and focused on their older chat apps like BlackBerry Messenger, MSN Messenger, AIM. Even actively used apps like Google Hangouts and Skype didn't really go aggressively after the user base now held by WhatsApp, WeChat, Facebook Messenger.

w1ntermute 11y ago
> I don't think people thinking about tech really saw this coming: that chat apps would not just be successful at such large scale but also subsume VOIP Because they couldn't have predicted how badly Skype would botch the transition to mobile: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10927899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10927899 As for e-commerce, that's still controlled by Amazon, not any chatting apps (at least in the West).
- firasd 11y ago
  Yeah I was thinking in terms of the future, especially if FB integrates digital wallets like WeChat. Not the Amazon-like shopping part necessarily, but payments, talking to customers, stuff like that.
PakG1 11y ago
Blackberry's former co-CEO saw it coming. But he lost a battle to reposition the company in a way where he thought they could go for the opportunity. That being said, if he had won that battle, who knows whether or not he would have actually succeeded in his vision though. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/the-inside-story-of-why-blackberry-is-failing/article14563602/?page=all http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/the-inside... Relevant quote: Inside RIM, the brash Mr. Balsillie had championed a bold strategy to re-establish the company’s place at the forefront of mobile communications. The plan was to push wireless carriers to adopt RIM’s popular BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) instant messaging service as a replacement for their short text messaging system (SMS) applications – no matter what kind of phone their customers used. It was a novel plan. If RIM could get BBM onto hundreds of millions of non-BlackBerry phones, and charge fees for it, the company would have an enormous new source of profit, Mr. Balsillie believed. “It was a really big idea,” said an employee who was involved in the project.
- firasd 11y ago
  Interesting. Also telling because of how their deployment and revenue model was tightly coupled to carriers (old school thinking) v.s. being consumer-driven from app stores.
- tomp 11y ago
  > If RIM could get BBM onto hundreds of millions of non-BlackBerry phones, and charge fees for it, Why would carriers want to get on board with it? Just take a look at heir resistance to free SMS replacement, now imagine they had to pay fees for it as well...

by firasd 11y ago

w1ntermute 11y ago

> I don't think people thinking about tech really saw this coming: that chat apps would not just be successful at such large scale but also subsume VOIP Because they couldn't have predicted how badly Skype would botch the transition to mobile: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10927899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10927899 As for e-commerce, that's still controlled by Amazon, not any chatting apps (at least in the West).

firasd 11y ago
Yeah I was thinking in terms of the future, especially if FB integrates digital wallets like WeChat. Not the Amazon-like shopping part necessarily, but payments, talking to customers, stuff like that.

PakG1 11y ago

Blackberry's former co-CEO saw it coming. But he lost a battle to reposition the company in a way where he thought they could go for the opportunity. That being said, if he had won that battle, who knows whether or not he would have actually succeeded in his vision though. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/the-inside-story-of-why-blackberry-is-failing/article14563602/?page=all http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/the-inside... Relevant quote: Inside RIM, the brash Mr. Balsillie had championed a bold strategy to re-establish the company’s place at the forefront of mobile communications. The plan was to push wireless carriers to adopt RIM’s popular BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) instant messaging service as a replacement for their short text messaging system (SMS) applications – no matter what kind of phone their customers used. It was a novel plan. If RIM could get BBM onto hundreds of millions of non-BlackBerry phones, and charge fees for it, the company would have an enormous new source of profit, Mr. Balsillie believed. “It was a really big idea,” said an employee who was involved in the project.

firasd 11y ago
Interesting. Also telling because of how their deployment and revenue model was tightly coupled to carriers (old school thinking) v.s. being consumer-driven from app stores.
tomp 11y ago
> If RIM could get BBM onto hundreds of millions of non-BlackBerry phones, and charge fees for it, Why would carriers want to get on board with it? Just take a look at heir resistance to free SMS replacement, now imagine they had to pay fees for it as well...