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WhatsApp Cofounder on How It Reached 1.3B Users Without Losing Its Focus

295 points by munchor 9y ago

abuabi 9y ago
Whatsapp hacker
benevol 9y ago
Which is cool in itself. What is deeply regrettable is the fact that they ended up selling to Facebook and thereby contributing to Facebook's aggressive and relentless mass surveillance system.
- inciampati 9y ago
  I wonder if they also cut themselves a raw deal in selling. They could have built a whole platform on top of WhatsApp without any innovation more subtle than copying WeChat.
  - charlesdm 9y ago
    Nobody is going to complain about selling for $19bn. Sometimes you just need to take the money.
    - njarboe 9y ago
      And sometimes you don't. Zuckerburg famously had the chance to sell out for billions quite a few times [1], and basically said, "I'm doing what I want to be doing. If I sold out I would just start another social network company and I already own the best/biggest one." [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/all-the-companies-that-ever-tried-to-buy-facebook-2010-5/#in-june-2004-an-unnamed-financier-offered-10-million-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/all-the-companies-that-ever-t... edit: Closer and better quote. Thiel's paraphrase of Zuckerburg, "I don't know what I could do with the money. I'd just start another social networking site. I kind of like the one I already have." [2] https://www.inc.com/allison-fass/peter-thiel-mark-zuckerberg-luck-day-facebook-turned-down-billion-dollars.html https://www.inc.com/allison-fass/peter-thiel-mark-zuckerberg...
      - eecks 9y ago
        Did anyone offer him 19 billion?
        Mahn 9y ago
        Are you suggesting they never had a chance to sell for 19 billion? Because I'm pretty sure all Zuckerberg had to do was pick up the phone in 2009, or even earlier.
        1123581321 9y ago
        It's plausible. They crossed $20BB valuation roughly at the end of 2009. At that time they had 400MM users. This is about the same growth rate as WhatsApp since founding. However, Facebook had 400MM largely North American and European users and had $1-1.5BB revenue with obvious potential for much more. WhatsApp's revenue was a couple orders of magnitude less after five years, with lower potential on its own to grow since it lacked Facebook's ability to collect and exploit data. So, it seems like WhatsApp should be valued less than Facebook, i.e. less than $20BB, at the same stage in its life. That doesn't mean Facebook overpaid; WhatsApp's users were nearly a perfect complement to Facebook's geographically and Facebook, unlike a company like Google, had the organizational ability to allow WhatsApp to grow while benefitting from Facebook resources. https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/tracking-facebooks-valuation/ https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/tracking-facebooks-v...
  - sumedh 9y ago
    > They could have built a whole platform on top of WhatsApp What if it failed? A bird in the hand is worth more than 2 in the bush.
    - Markoff 9y ago
      then just platform would be ignored, but it would have no impact on messaging
mbesto 9y ago
It's super easy to focus on a single metric (user growth) when you have a seemingly unlimited amount of capital and have no immediate pressure to turn _any_ revenue/profit. This article does a massive disservice to those who are not as fortunate who will inevitably be lead into failure. Note, this should not discredit the more interesting and glorified aspects of WhatsApp (strong leadership, technical aptitude, tech stack, etc).
- CyberDildonics 9y ago
  > seemingly unlimited amount of capital Did they burn through lots of money? > no immediate pressure to turn _any_ revenue/profit Didn't some people pay for it?
  - numbsafari 9y ago
    They lost something close to $138MM the year before Facebook purchased them. https://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/dealbook/2014/10/28/facebooks-21-8-billion-acquisition-lost-138-million-last-year/ https://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/dealbook/2014/10/28/faceboo...
    - senatorobama 9y ago
      I'm a philistine, can someone explain how they paid their engineers when they lost SO much money?
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - tw04 9y ago
        They didn't lose SO MUCH MONEY, that's the thing. The article link points that out. They "lost" money on paper by handing out stock/equity to attract talent. Their actual financials, while underwhelming, looked solid.
      - 1024core 9y ago
philliphaydon 9y ago
The messaging app no one uses in Asia?
- Jagat 9y ago
  Are you serious? Everyone and their grandma in India uses WhatsApp. It's so pervasive that it's almost like the only means of communication for people with smartphone and internet access.
  - holydude 9y ago
    I guess he meant wechat/qq,kakao and line that are dominant in other countries. Whatsapp is impressive though.
    - philliphaydon 9y ago
      Most people seem to use LINE from what I see, living in singapore and traveling around.
  - bernadus_edwin 9y ago
    Whatsapp is no 1 market share in every country. If not no 1, only lost from wechat
    - freddie_mercury 9y ago
      WhatsApp is #1 in 55% of countries. It loses out to Zalo, Line, imo, Facebook Messenger and Blackberry Messenger in various countries. I'm pretty sure you made up every claim you just wrote. Why would you bother doing that?
      - iamgopal 9y ago
        Same as you ?
      - kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
ikeyany 9y ago
Why do we adhere to the assumption that number of users is the ultimate metric of software success? I would like to hear from devs who aren't interested in expanding for the sake of expanding, who still consider their apps to be very successful.
- bsbechtel 9y ago
  You should read Basecamp's material then.
- kemiller 9y ago
  For a messenging app, with classic network effects, it’s a very relevant metric.
  - ikeyany 9y ago
    That is true. Even outside of messaging apps, I very frequently see maximum growth as an inherently optimal metric to shoot for.
  - amelius 9y ago
    With the network effect, if you are above a certain threshold then suddenly everybody will use your app. So the number of users is either low, or it is near the maximum number of users. This means that there is little information in the actual number of users.
- rasz 9y ago
  Because users are the product you sell.
- uselessbro 9y ago
  Software success is different for the medium you are in B2B or B2C and then also the market. Chat market is pretty crowded so you're going for quantity. If I have a B2B tool and it's fairly niche I might only need 100-200 clients but I charge them more :)
- majani 9y ago
  Go to Indie Hackers or Basecamp SVN for such material.
ransom1538 9y ago
I think i see a pattern: WhatsApp: circumvent cellphone texting charges Airbnb: circumvent hotel laws Uber: circumvent taxi laws Amazon: circumvent state taxes Facebook: circumvent people's anonymity online Google: circumvent copyrights (take people's content slap on ads)
- pjc50 9y ago
  Of those description, whatsapp is the one that's actually the classic "how capitalism is supposed to work": provide a comparable or better service for a lower price. Amazon's era of sales tax evasion is mostly over. And if anyone is monetising copyright infringement it's not Google (who are somewhat conscientious about this after some lawsuits) but Tumblr (literally made of copyright infringing photos)
  - kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
    You mean the Sears-Roebuck era of tax evasion.
    - pjc50 9y ago
      I meant something very specific: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/24/the-holiday-is-over-amazon-will-collect-sales-taxes-nationwide-on-april-1.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/24/the-holiday-is-over-amazon-w... (The era of Amazon posting things from Jersey to UK and other destinations for similar reasons ended ages ago) I was also restricting myself to the question of sales taxes; tax evasion/avoidance among the internet tech monoliths is a wider question.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    Lot of this is that Amazon has a physical nexus in most states or wants to. (And the situation with affiliates is murky.) So not much point in resisting at this point at their scale. Almost no other company collects sales tax for out-of-state sales where they don't have a physical retail location although buyers are theoretically on the hook for reporting it during tax season.
  - 9y ago
pmontra 9y ago
> all of its attention has gone into making the app as simple as possible to get started with And they succeeded. I've been using it for years and the only new feature I remember is end to end encryption, despite they probably added new features. I don't care about status and stories, if they're still there they managed not to make them in the way of people that only want a SMS alternative. This is great design. My only wish is that they stay using the very same chatbot backend of Messenger. WhatsApp is the only major chart platform without chatbots and given it's the number one in many countries, included mine, I'm a little tired to tell customers, yes but your customers will have to use Messenger or Telegram (which many people don't even know to exist.)
- krrrh 9y ago
  The other significant feature added was voice chats. The fact that it's easy to forget or not notice is a strong indicator of how much humanity has adopted text chatting as the primary mode of remote communication.
  - jacalata 9y ago
    "Humanity" may be overstating it. In Brazil people very commonly use WhatsApp to send short spoken messages, for instance.
    - krrrh 9y ago
      You're right, China too. I should have said asynchronous messaging rather than text messaging. Whether short voice, text, gif, or emoji messages, the synchronous phone call is increasingly secondary.
      - Markoff 9y ago
        but reason in china is overcomplicated writing system. now young people have no problem to write in pinyin, but older generation will rather send voice message, since it's the easiest way to communicate, 2nd would be handwriting, my father in law is exactly like this, not sure what kind of keyboard use my MIL, my wife is fully westernized in this aspect using google pinyin with QWERTY (!) keyboard, which is rare even by CN standard when most young people still use T9 keyboard
fwdpropaganda 9y ago
I think they're losing focus. I've started seeing cracks in WhatsApp's UI: - Some times when inserting a single emoji on a single line, in between pressing send and the message being sent, the keyboard flickers. - There seems to be a mysterious space between the Euro symbol and the next character...? That space isn't displayed on the webapp. - I had a third one that I forgot. Also bad decisions: - Logs shouldn't be backed-up to Google Drive. - Bloat. "Status"? No one cares. Why does swiping left allows me to take pictures? I have a camera app that I like using. - Sharing metadata with Facebook will be WhatsApp's undoing, mark my words. Signal on the other hand is being developed by 1 guy and has 5M installs.
- helloindia 9y ago
  And Stories, what was he thinking?
  - LambdaComplex 9y ago
    Oh, that's an easy one. They want to get some of Snapchat's market share.
- hiq 9y ago
  > Sharing metadata with Facebook will be WhatsApp's undoing, mark my words. It pains me to say this, but almost nobody cares. Many people don't even know that Facebook owns WhatsApp. Most people don't care about how privacy-intrusive Messenger (or whatever Facebook's chat app is called nowadays) is, and WhatsApp is less intrusive than that (at least the data is e2e encrypted). I don't see any undoing in sight, unless the competition steps its game up a whole lot.
  - newscracker 9y ago
    > I don't see any undoing in sight, unless the competition steps its game up a whole lot. Due to network effects, competitors can't really have a big impact on reducing WhatsApp usage unless something scandalous and hugely worrisome (to the general public) happens with WhatsApp, which then causes many people to ditch it. I don't use WhatsApp because it's owned by Facebook. So my following comments here should be taken with a pinch of salt. Telegram, which I do use, has been on a rapid pace of development for at least a few years now. If I had to guess, I'd say that Telegram likely provides a much faster, better and richer experience compared to WhatsApp. Just a few features that come to my mind on Telegram that I like and value - username (no need to reveal one's phone number to others), @replies to tag users, cross platform/OS and cross device sync, great search (global as well as within a conversation), and message editing and deletion after sending. Telegram also has bots, money transfer and other features. I'm aware of the comparative security related weaknesses in Telegram, but other ones (like Signal and Wire, more so Signal) that are better on the security front have a long way to go to catch up with Telegram on reliability, features and UX.
gumby 9y ago
> “Images tell a much better story than text,” he says. “And videos tell a much better story than images. Seems like the evidence of WhatsApp itself, not to mention my own experience, is directly contradictory to this. A video is rarely preferable to an image, and an image is rarely preferable to a bit of text.
7ewis 9y ago
Sorry but I don't agree with the statistic of the Status feature. > the company announced that 250 million people—a quarter of all members—were using it daily Just had a quick look, and I have around 150 contacts on WhatsApp (mainly the Snapchat/Instagram users age group) and not a single person has set one of these photo statuses right now. I only ever recall seeing one once, since the feature launched. If I open up Snapchat/Instagram I will literally see hundreds. Unless it's become very popular within a certain country, or another age group I find it hard to believe that it's reached anywhere near the size of Snapchat's user base.
- fat-chunk 9y ago
  Are you in the States? I have heard that Whatsapp is much more popular outside the US. I live in the UK and everyone I know uses Whatsapp as their main method of communication while Snapchat activity seems to have dropped very quickly, perhaps in favour of Instagram, in my experience anyway.
firefoxd 9y ago
Here are some numbers i can't find. The number of users chatting on yahoo, aim, facebook, msn messenger, and all the random others combined when it was a thing not to care which people were using. At my job in 2011, every single member of my team was on using a different client, i was on ubuntu using Empathy. The point is, chat was already resolved, and it didn't require some sort of "quiet room or distraction free office" to get it where it was. Kudos to the WhatsApp team for having this many users, but let's not forget that we had no problem chatting until the facebook, yahoo, googles broke the old protocol in favor of restricting users to their own systems.
- blowski 9y ago
  Talking with non-technical family members was hard in 2007. Partly this was because the most portable solution was a big chunky laptop and most people didn't even have that. But we can't totally separate the mobile computing devices that have appeared since then from the apps installed on them. I'd love a world where open source protocols and clients dominated, but it wasn't quite the utopia you remember.
  - frozenport 9y ago
    Skype
    - posguy 9y ago
      Total PITA to use, didn't work well on even decently spec'ed machines at the time, and required extra hardware that was of varying quality.
      - tinus_hn 9y ago
        And that's before Microsoft sprinkled their 'special sauce' on it. Now it's even worse.
    - sumedh 9y ago
      Well, my mother can use watsapp, she could not use skype even with patient handholding.
leog7 9y ago
How much profit increase does a new user bring can i see that?
cerealbad 9y ago
icq, aim, msn messenger, google talk (DOA), skype, wechat. besides widespread business adoption, what's special about this one? it's seamless to uninstall an app and get a new one. why would there be customer loyalty to this business model? ot, i don't understand why anyone would want to get anywhere near mobile. people are too stupid to use these internet devices in moderation and it will destroy all social cohesion. it's a cash grab to the bottom as it devolves into radical groupthink, a breakdown of dialogue, and mass segregation of populations. how is arguing about anything and everything productive or useful without domain specific expertise? how is mindlessly consuming hours and hours of infotainment benefiting anyone? but i can instantly communicate to anyone around the world in a matter of milliseconds! your life is not that interesting, a letter sent by post every other month would probably be more fruitful to developing ideas, advancing discourse and carefully articulating thoughts. it's like correspondence chess vs 1 minute bullet matches. one is excited screaming and shouting, the other is a measured conversation and exchange. pretty sure e-mail hit that sweet spot decades ago, with bulletin boards and irc filling the less personal and more immediate gaps.
rvr_ 9y ago
WhatsApp's success here in Brazil can be attributed to very few reasons: 1) Worked in every single smartphone (I started using it on a very resource constrained 2010's Nokia running s60) 2) SMS was and still is very expensive here. 3) Zero friction to use: it uses your phone number as your ID and your catalog list as its own. It was a killer combination, almost everybody here in Brazil uses it, no matter how young or how old, no matter if it is a rich kid with the latest IPhone or the poor with the cheapest phone. Even the telcos had to bend to WhatsApp strength by offering "unlimited WhatsApp usage" on very limited data plans.
- std_throwaway 9y ago
  Did many switch to Telegram in the last year?
- smeroth 9y ago
  Regarding its availability, I think it's sad that they dropped support for Symbian OS. I wonder what made them drop an existing platform - I would've understood not bothering to develop for a new one, but not drop an existing.
  - sim0n 9y ago
    Is Symbian OS still a thing? From Wikipedia: > Nokia terminated its support of software development and maintenance for Symbian with effect from 1 January 2014, thereafter refusing to publish new or changed Symbian applications or content in the Nokia Store and terminating its 'Symbian Signed' program for software certification. (http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/18502_New_Symbian_and_Meego_applicat.php http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/18502_New_Symbian_a...)
- mattbettinson 9y ago
  I was in Brazil during the WhatsApp ban last summer. It crippled communication, it was fascinating to see.
  - seppin 9y ago
alicef 9y ago
my mobile phone has no webcam...
somberi 9y ago
In India, Whatsapp is HUGE. I would go as far as to say if it were to go down for a day, we will see a dip in the per-day GDP. It is not that so much business is conducted on it, but also it is the dominant social messaging glue. Whatsapp probably has about 220 million users in India[1] and also because of dwindling mobile data prices, it also has now become the alternate voice channel [2]. Also I read that 90% of all smart phones in India have Whatsapp installed. (1) http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/info-tech/whatsapp-hits-200-mn-user-milestone-in-india/article9559045.ece http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/info-tech/whatsapp-hits-... (2) https://www.medianama.com/2017/05/223-indian-whatsapp-users-video-call-for-50-million-minutes-per-day/ https://www.medianama.com/2017/05/223-indian-whatsapp-users-...
- tim333 9y ago
  >so much business is conducted on it WhapsApp could probably monetize there by tacking on a payments system, possible a bit paypal like. Could make money and not annoy existing users much beyond an extra button they don't use.
  - govg 9y ago
    This is in the works, as far as I remember. They plan to plug into the UPI (financial service by the government) to bring P2P payments. Will be quite the gamechanger, especially with how popular Paytm (another p2p payment method / wallet app) has become with shopkeepers and the like.
  - Markoff 9y ago
    just copy what WeChat did, when in China you have no problem to pay to beggar by scanning his QR code, pay for 1RMB (0.15USD) ice cream in corner shop or to any illegal street food vendor, it's really embraced everywhere since all both parties need is phone and no needd to pay any fees to bank for POS terminal not saying it's necessarily better than cards, since it came out of necessity when POS terminals are not as widespread as in west, but it's interesting alternative
samuel1604 9y ago
why all the girls on the picture have laptops and the guy only a book? feels like this is the person who was left out from the lan party :)
r_singh 9y ago
I'm kinda surprised to read that WhatsApp hasn't really caught on in the US—in the sense that not everyone you know uses it (on the contrary, very few do). Here in India, the term 'whatsapp' has creeped its way into regular hinglish (mix of hindi and english) that most working professionals speak in. All schools, colleges, offices and even parents use WhatsApp groups to communicate. It has simply been embraced as the default place to communicate. Even drivers and servants on my contact list put up WhatsApp stories and send broadcasts; the intuitiveness of its adoption truly amazes me!
- goutham467 9y ago
  even the government offices, tv channels provider whatsapp numbers.
sadlyNess 9y ago
I think WhatsApp is where Twitter was during their Ascend-to-protocol Vs Just-push-Ads phase[1], only that WA is dead-set on not going down the Ad route. IMO their options are whether to become an app platform for businesses(Service delivery, payments, shopping) or to become a user-data source for FB. KIM that they are naturally competing with IG & FB.com in generating revenue for FB Inc and subscription isn't working for them(mostly because of almost zero app-buying & digital payments culture in places where WA is popular). [1] http://daltoncaldwell.com/what-twitter-could-have-been http://daltoncaldwell.com/what-twitter-could-have-been

295 points by munchor 9y ago

Whatsapp hacker

Which is cool in itself. What is deeply regrettable is the fact that they ended up selling to Facebook and thereby contributing to Facebook's aggressive and relentless mass surveillance system.

inciampati 9y ago
I wonder if they also cut themselves a raw deal in selling. They could have built a whole platform on top of WhatsApp without any innovation more subtle than copying WeChat.
- charlesdm 9y ago
  Nobody is going to complain about selling for $19bn. Sometimes you just need to take the money.
  - njarboe 9y ago
    And sometimes you don't. Zuckerburg famously had the chance to sell out for billions quite a few times [1], and basically said, "I'm doing what I want to be doing. If I sold out I would just start another social network company and I already own the best/biggest one." [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/all-the-companies-that-ever-tried-to-buy-facebook-2010-5/#in-june-2004-an-unnamed-financier-offered-10-million-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/all-the-companies-that-ever-t... edit: Closer and better quote. Thiel's paraphrase of Zuckerburg, "I don't know what I could do with the money. I'd just start another social networking site. I kind of like the one I already have." [2] https://www.inc.com/allison-fass/peter-thiel-mark-zuckerberg-luck-day-facebook-turned-down-billion-dollars.html https://www.inc.com/allison-fass/peter-thiel-mark-zuckerberg...
    - eecks 9y ago
      Did anyone offer him 19 billion?
      - Mahn 9y ago
        Are you suggesting they never had a chance to sell for 19 billion? Because I'm pretty sure all Zuckerberg had to do was pick up the phone in 2009, or even earlier.
        1123581321 9y ago
        It's plausible. They crossed $20BB valuation roughly at the end of 2009. At that time they had 400MM users. This is about the same growth rate as WhatsApp since founding. However, Facebook had 400MM largely North American and European users and had $1-1.5BB revenue with obvious potential for much more. WhatsApp's revenue was a couple orders of magnitude less after five years, with lower potential on its own to grow since it lacked Facebook's ability to collect and exploit data. So, it seems like WhatsApp should be valued less than Facebook, i.e. less than $20BB, at the same stage in its life. That doesn't mean Facebook overpaid; WhatsApp's users were nearly a perfect complement to Facebook's geographically and Facebook, unlike a company like Google, had the organizational ability to allow WhatsApp to grow while benefitting from Facebook resources. https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/tracking-facebooks-valuation/ https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/tracking-facebooks-v...
- sumedh 9y ago
  > They could have built a whole platform on top of WhatsApp What if it failed? A bird in the hand is worth more than 2 in the bush.
  - Markoff 9y ago
    then just platform would be ignored, but it would have no impact on messaging

mbesto 9y ago

It's super easy to focus on a single metric (user growth) when you have a seemingly unlimited amount of capital and have no immediate pressure to turn _any_ revenue/profit. This article does a massive disservice to those who are not as fortunate who will inevitably be lead into failure. Note, this should not discredit the more interesting and glorified aspects of WhatsApp (strong leadership, technical aptitude, tech stack, etc).

CyberDildonics 9y ago
> seemingly unlimited amount of capital Did they burn through lots of money? > no immediate pressure to turn _any_ revenue/profit Didn't some people pay for it?
- numbsafari 9y ago
  They lost something close to $138MM the year before Facebook purchased them. https://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/dealbook/2014/10/28/facebooks-21-8-billion-acquisition-lost-138-million-last-year/ https://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/dealbook/2014/10/28/faceboo...
  - senatorobama 9y ago
    I'm a philistine, can someone explain how they paid their engineers when they lost SO much money?
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - tw04 9y ago
      They didn't lose SO MUCH MONEY, that's the thing. The article link points that out. They "lost" money on paper by handing out stock/equity to attract talent. Their actual financials, while underwhelming, looked solid.
    - 1024core 9y ago

philliphaydon 9y ago

The messaging app no one uses in Asia?

Jagat 9y ago
Are you serious? Everyone and their grandma in India uses WhatsApp. It's so pervasive that it's almost like the only means of communication for people with smartphone and internet access.
- holydude 9y ago
  I guess he meant wechat/qq,kakao and line that are dominant in other countries. Whatsapp is impressive though.
  - philliphaydon 9y ago
    Most people seem to use LINE from what I see, living in singapore and traveling around.
- bernadus_edwin 9y ago
  Whatsapp is no 1 market share in every country. If not no 1, only lost from wechat
  - freddie_mercury 9y ago
    WhatsApp is #1 in 55% of countries. It loses out to Zalo, Line, imo, Facebook Messenger and Blackberry Messenger in various countries. I'm pretty sure you made up every claim you just wrote. Why would you bother doing that?
    - iamgopal 9y ago
      Same as you ?
    - kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago

ikeyany 9y ago

Why do we adhere to the assumption that number of users is the ultimate metric of software success? I would like to hear from devs who aren't interested in expanding for the sake of expanding, who still consider their apps to be very successful.

bsbechtel 9y ago
You should read Basecamp's material then.
kemiller 9y ago
For a messenging app, with classic network effects, it’s a very relevant metric.
- ikeyany 9y ago
  That is true. Even outside of messaging apps, I very frequently see maximum growth as an inherently optimal metric to shoot for.
- amelius 9y ago
  With the network effect, if you are above a certain threshold then suddenly everybody will use your app. So the number of users is either low, or it is near the maximum number of users. This means that there is little information in the actual number of users.
rasz 9y ago
Because users are the product you sell.
uselessbro 9y ago
Software success is different for the medium you are in B2B or B2C and then also the market. Chat market is pretty crowded so you're going for quantity. If I have a B2B tool and it's fairly niche I might only need 100-200 clients but I charge them more :)
majani 9y ago
Go to Indie Hackers or Basecamp SVN for such material.

ransom1538 9y ago

I think i see a pattern: WhatsApp: circumvent cellphone texting charges Airbnb: circumvent hotel laws Uber: circumvent taxi laws Amazon: circumvent state taxes Facebook: circumvent people's anonymity online Google: circumvent copyrights (take people's content slap on ads)

pjc50 9y ago
Of those description, whatsapp is the one that's actually the classic "how capitalism is supposed to work": provide a comparable or better service for a lower price. Amazon's era of sales tax evasion is mostly over. And if anyone is monetising copyright infringement it's not Google (who are somewhat conscientious about this after some lawsuits) but Tumblr (literally made of copyright infringing photos)
- kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
  You mean the Sears-Roebuck era of tax evasion.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    I meant something very specific: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/24/the-holiday-is-over-amazon-will-collect-sales-taxes-nationwide-on-april-1.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/24/the-holiday-is-over-amazon-w... (The era of Amazon posting things from Jersey to UK and other destinations for similar reasons ended ages ago) I was also restricting myself to the question of sales taxes; tax evasion/avoidance among the internet tech monoliths is a wider question.
- ghaff 9y ago
  Lot of this is that Amazon has a physical nexus in most states or wants to. (And the situation with affiliates is murky.) So not much point in resisting at this point at their scale. Almost no other company collects sales tax for out-of-state sales where they don't have a physical retail location although buyers are theoretically on the hook for reporting it during tax season.
- 9y ago

pmontra 9y ago

> all of its attention has gone into making the app as simple as possible to get started with And they succeeded. I've been using it for years and the only new feature I remember is end to end encryption, despite they probably added new features. I don't care about status and stories, if they're still there they managed not to make them in the way of people that only want a SMS alternative. This is great design. My only wish is that they stay using the very same chatbot backend of Messenger. WhatsApp is the only major chart platform without chatbots and given it's the number one in many countries, included mine, I'm a little tired to tell customers, yes but your customers will have to use Messenger or Telegram (which many people don't even know to exist.)

krrrh 9y ago
The other significant feature added was voice chats. The fact that it's easy to forget or not notice is a strong indicator of how much humanity has adopted text chatting as the primary mode of remote communication.
- jacalata 9y ago
  "Humanity" may be overstating it. In Brazil people very commonly use WhatsApp to send short spoken messages, for instance.
  - krrrh 9y ago
    You're right, China too. I should have said asynchronous messaging rather than text messaging. Whether short voice, text, gif, or emoji messages, the synchronous phone call is increasingly secondary.
    - Markoff 9y ago
      but reason in china is overcomplicated writing system. now young people have no problem to write in pinyin, but older generation will rather send voice message, since it's the easiest way to communicate, 2nd would be handwriting, my father in law is exactly like this, not sure what kind of keyboard use my MIL, my wife is fully westernized in this aspect using google pinyin with QWERTY (!) keyboard, which is rare even by CN standard when most young people still use T9 keyboard

fwdpropaganda 9y ago

I think they're losing focus. I've started seeing cracks in WhatsApp's UI: - Some times when inserting a single emoji on a single line, in between pressing send and the message being sent, the keyboard flickers. - There seems to be a mysterious space between the Euro symbol and the next character...? That space isn't displayed on the webapp. - I had a third one that I forgot. Also bad decisions: - Logs shouldn't be backed-up to Google Drive. - Bloat. "Status"? No one cares. Why does swiping left allows me to take pictures? I have a camera app that I like using. - Sharing metadata with Facebook will be WhatsApp's undoing, mark my words. Signal on the other hand is being developed by 1 guy and has 5M installs.

helloindia 9y ago
And Stories, what was he thinking?
- LambdaComplex 9y ago
  Oh, that's an easy one. They want to get some of Snapchat's market share.
hiq 9y ago
> Sharing metadata with Facebook will be WhatsApp's undoing, mark my words. It pains me to say this, but almost nobody cares. Many people don't even know that Facebook owns WhatsApp. Most people don't care about how privacy-intrusive Messenger (or whatever Facebook's chat app is called nowadays) is, and WhatsApp is less intrusive than that (at least the data is e2e encrypted). I don't see any undoing in sight, unless the competition steps its game up a whole lot.
- newscracker 9y ago
  > I don't see any undoing in sight, unless the competition steps its game up a whole lot. Due to network effects, competitors can't really have a big impact on reducing WhatsApp usage unless something scandalous and hugely worrisome (to the general public) happens with WhatsApp, which then causes many people to ditch it. I don't use WhatsApp because it's owned by Facebook. So my following comments here should be taken with a pinch of salt. Telegram, which I do use, has been on a rapid pace of development for at least a few years now. If I had to guess, I'd say that Telegram likely provides a much faster, better and richer experience compared to WhatsApp. Just a few features that come to my mind on Telegram that I like and value - username (no need to reveal one's phone number to others), @replies to tag users, cross platform/OS and cross device sync, great search (global as well as within a conversation), and message editing and deletion after sending. Telegram also has bots, money transfer and other features. I'm aware of the comparative security related weaknesses in Telegram, but other ones (like Signal and Wire, more so Signal) that are better on the security front have a long way to go to catch up with Telegram on reliability, features and UX.

gumby 9y ago

> “Images tell a much better story than text,” he says. “And videos tell a much better story than images. Seems like the evidence of WhatsApp itself, not to mention my own experience, is directly contradictory to this. A video is rarely preferable to an image, and an image is rarely preferable to a bit of text.

7ewis 9y ago

Sorry but I don't agree with the statistic of the Status feature. > the company announced that 250 million people—a quarter of all members—were using it daily Just had a quick look, and I have around 150 contacts on WhatsApp (mainly the Snapchat/Instagram users age group) and not a single person has set one of these photo statuses right now. I only ever recall seeing one once, since the feature launched. If I open up Snapchat/Instagram I will literally see hundreds. Unless it's become very popular within a certain country, or another age group I find it hard to believe that it's reached anywhere near the size of Snapchat's user base.

fat-chunk 9y ago
Are you in the States? I have heard that Whatsapp is much more popular outside the US. I live in the UK and everyone I know uses Whatsapp as their main method of communication while Snapchat activity seems to have dropped very quickly, perhaps in favour of Instagram, in my experience anyway.

firefoxd 9y ago

Here are some numbers i can't find. The number of users chatting on yahoo, aim, facebook, msn messenger, and all the random others combined when it was a thing not to care which people were using. At my job in 2011, every single member of my team was on using a different client, i was on ubuntu using Empathy. The point is, chat was already resolved, and it didn't require some sort of "quiet room or distraction free office" to get it where it was. Kudos to the WhatsApp team for having this many users, but let's not forget that we had no problem chatting until the facebook, yahoo, googles broke the old protocol in favor of restricting users to their own systems.

blowski 9y ago
Talking with non-technical family members was hard in 2007. Partly this was because the most portable solution was a big chunky laptop and most people didn't even have that. But we can't totally separate the mobile computing devices that have appeared since then from the apps installed on them. I'd love a world where open source protocols and clients dominated, but it wasn't quite the utopia you remember.
- frozenport 9y ago
  Skype
  - posguy 9y ago
    Total PITA to use, didn't work well on even decently spec'ed machines at the time, and required extra hardware that was of varying quality.
    - tinus_hn 9y ago
      And that's before Microsoft sprinkled their 'special sauce' on it. Now it's even worse.
  - sumedh 9y ago
    Well, my mother can use watsapp, she could not use skype even with patient handholding.

leog7 9y ago

How much profit increase does a new user bring can i see that?

cerealbad 9y ago

icq, aim, msn messenger, google talk (DOA), skype, wechat. besides widespread business adoption, what's special about this one? it's seamless to uninstall an app and get a new one. why would there be customer loyalty to this business model? ot, i don't understand why anyone would want to get anywhere near mobile. people are too stupid to use these internet devices in moderation and it will destroy all social cohesion. it's a cash grab to the bottom as it devolves into radical groupthink, a breakdown of dialogue, and mass segregation of populations. how is arguing about anything and everything productive or useful without domain specific expertise? how is mindlessly consuming hours and hours of infotainment benefiting anyone? but i can instantly communicate to anyone around the world in a matter of milliseconds! your life is not that interesting, a letter sent by post every other month would probably be more fruitful to developing ideas, advancing discourse and carefully articulating thoughts. it's like correspondence chess vs 1 minute bullet matches. one is excited screaming and shouting, the other is a measured conversation and exchange. pretty sure e-mail hit that sweet spot decades ago, with bulletin boards and irc filling the less personal and more immediate gaps.

rvr_ 9y ago

WhatsApp's success here in Brazil can be attributed to very few reasons: 1) Worked in every single smartphone (I started using it on a very resource constrained 2010's Nokia running s60) 2) SMS was and still is very expensive here. 3) Zero friction to use: it uses your phone number as your ID and your catalog list as its own. It was a killer combination, almost everybody here in Brazil uses it, no matter how young or how old, no matter if it is a rich kid with the latest IPhone or the poor with the cheapest phone. Even the telcos had to bend to WhatsApp strength by offering "unlimited WhatsApp usage" on very limited data plans.

std_throwaway 9y ago
Did many switch to Telegram in the last year?
smeroth 9y ago
Regarding its availability, I think it's sad that they dropped support for Symbian OS. I wonder what made them drop an existing platform - I would've understood not bothering to develop for a new one, but not drop an existing.
- sim0n 9y ago
  Is Symbian OS still a thing? From Wikipedia: > Nokia terminated its support of software development and maintenance for Symbian with effect from 1 January 2014, thereafter refusing to publish new or changed Symbian applications or content in the Nokia Store and terminating its 'Symbian Signed' program for software certification. (http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/18502_New_Symbian_and_Meego_applicat.php http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/18502_New_Symbian_a...)
mattbettinson 9y ago
I was in Brazil during the WhatsApp ban last summer. It crippled communication, it was fascinating to see.
- seppin 9y ago

alicef 9y ago

my mobile phone has no webcam...

somberi 9y ago

In India, Whatsapp is HUGE. I would go as far as to say if it were to go down for a day, we will see a dip in the per-day GDP. It is not that so much business is conducted on it, but also it is the dominant social messaging glue. Whatsapp probably has about 220 million users in India[1] and also because of dwindling mobile data prices, it also has now become the alternate voice channel [2]. Also I read that 90% of all smart phones in India have Whatsapp installed. (1) http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/info-tech/whatsapp-hits-200-mn-user-milestone-in-india/article9559045.ece http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/info-tech/whatsapp-hits-... (2) https://www.medianama.com/2017/05/223-indian-whatsapp-users-video-call-for-50-million-minutes-per-day/ https://www.medianama.com/2017/05/223-indian-whatsapp-users-...

tim333 9y ago
>so much business is conducted on it WhapsApp could probably monetize there by tacking on a payments system, possible a bit paypal like. Could make money and not annoy existing users much beyond an extra button they don't use.
- govg 9y ago
  This is in the works, as far as I remember. They plan to plug into the UPI (financial service by the government) to bring P2P payments. Will be quite the gamechanger, especially with how popular Paytm (another p2p payment method / wallet app) has become with shopkeepers and the like.
- Markoff 9y ago
  just copy what WeChat did, when in China you have no problem to pay to beggar by scanning his QR code, pay for 1RMB (0.15USD) ice cream in corner shop or to any illegal street food vendor, it's really embraced everywhere since all both parties need is phone and no needd to pay any fees to bank for POS terminal not saying it's necessarily better than cards, since it came out of necessity when POS terminals are not as widespread as in west, but it's interesting alternative

samuel1604 9y ago

why all the girls on the picture have laptops and the guy only a book? feels like this is the person who was left out from the lan party :)

r_singh 9y ago

I'm kinda surprised to read that WhatsApp hasn't really caught on in the US—in the sense that not everyone you know uses it (on the contrary, very few do). Here in India, the term 'whatsapp' has creeped its way into regular hinglish (mix of hindi and english) that most working professionals speak in. All schools, colleges, offices and even parents use WhatsApp groups to communicate. It has simply been embraced as the default place to communicate. Even drivers and servants on my contact list put up WhatsApp stories and send broadcasts; the intuitiveness of its adoption truly amazes me!

goutham467 9y ago
even the government offices, tv channels provider whatsapp numbers.

sadlyNess 9y ago

I think WhatsApp is where Twitter was during their Ascend-to-protocol Vs Just-push-Ads phase[1], only that WA is dead-set on not going down the Ad route. IMO their options are whether to become an app platform for businesses(Service delivery, payments, shopping) or to become a user-data source for FB. KIM that they are naturally competing with IG & FB.com in generating revenue for FB Inc and subscription isn't working for them(mostly because of almost zero app-buying & digital payments culture in places where WA is popular). [1] http://daltoncaldwell.com/what-twitter-could-have-been http://daltoncaldwell.com/what-twitter-could-have-been