4 ms·

Also, "changing the world". Sorry, your messaging app isn't doing that.

by rajathagasthya 9y ago

3pt14159 9y ago
If WhatsApp didn't change the world, what did?
- abiox 9y ago
  it's neither the first nor the last chat app, i believe - so how would you say the world changed? (note that i don't use whatsapp and am not all that familiar with it. mostly i'm aware of it due to an interest in erlang.)
  - freeone3000 9y ago
    Previously there wasn't a WhatsApp app, and now there is! World changed. :)
  - NikolaeVarius 9y ago
    Over 1 Billion users. According to wiki: According to the Financial Times, WhatsApp "has done to SMS on mobile phones what Skype did to international calling on landlines."[167] Seems pretty world changing in terms of providing a core communication service to 1/7 of the human population
  - RestlessMind 9y ago
    Some ways in which WhatsApp changed the world, based on my first hand experience: - many of my family members, especially in developing world, bought a smartphone solely as a reason to be on WhatsApp. Nothing convinced them before to buy one. Once they had it, they discovered other awesome uses of a smartphone and are part of the "mobile revolution"(TM). That alone should qualify for "changing the world". - no one I know uses SMS anymore (again, developing countries). A great change given the price gouging before (and Americans probably won't understand that if you haven't seen it first hand). - Amount of "support" happening on WhatsApp in the broader economy - (eg. booking a taxi, ordering home delivery from corner grocery store etc - which needed a phone call before and was not as smooth as WhatsApp experience) - hyper-sharing of casual moments in life. I know, I know - there was facebook and picasa and whatnot before that and instagram/snap these days, but amount of photo sharing that happens on WhatsApp is 2 to 3 orders of magnitude higher than what came before or other channels (again, developing countries), simply because WhatsApp made it super simple to share compared to predecessors and is ubiquitous compared to other contemporaries. It should also be noted that WhatsApp needed two big giant shoulders to stand upon: - android and affordable phones (sorry, iPhone simply doesn't cut the deal for the masses) - 2G / 3G spectrum and data connectivity
  - liotier 9y ago
    No VOIP system before Whatsapp reached the threshold of general usability for the unwashed masses (a complex matter conflating voice quality, software distribution, contact discovery, network effect, data usage, resilience, system load etc.). Facebook and Viber came close but failed. Before Whatsapp, my friends in various African countries and their correspondents spent sometimes hundreds of Euros a month in voice communications. After Whatsapp: zero. It happened overnight. Quite a few chat applications worked as well, but one cannot overstate how radically Whatsapp has changed international voice for users and telcos alike. That is not just success in entertainment but a significant social impact.
    - Retric 9y ago
      Saving people money != changing the world. The telegraph changed the world, so did cellphones. Cheaper messaging or HDTV did not. The difference is really one of capability not minor quality improvements. Otherwise you get into things like calling every single new generation of graphics cards as revolutionary not evolutionary.
      - liotier 9y ago
        There is a demand elasticity threshold effect. When people traveled overseas, the consensus was that they were out of reach. Cheap Internet access broke that consensus for text & images. Whatsapp broke it for synchronous voice. People can now maintain close relationships internationally. It did not happen linearly with international voice prices decrease: it happened suddenly with the combination of the cost reaching zero with accepted usability.
        Retric 9y ago
        Whatsapp started in 2009, you could do free voice chat internationally well before that. Arguably they 'won' because Skype was sold to Microsoft in 2009 creating a huge opening. But, it hardly changed the world even if it did save some people quite a bit of money. PS: I suspect people will have the same conversation in 10 years about a company created around 2014 when Whatsapp was sold.
scryder 9y ago
Well, in the most trivial and banal sense possible, it is: there's now another message app that wasn't there before. I tried to unpack why this phrase is overused. I think it is because it's one of a few things that both sounds lofty when used in a pitch, and wiil always be true. It's also a great dodge of considering the type of change (changing the world for the better or worse?) or of that change's magnitude (substantially changing the world, or just a little?). To some of a crowd, having heard the above, they will assume things about "changing the world" that may make further probing on those points at a high level sound like duplicate questions, and thus surpresses the chance of getting them. Useful for someone trying to peddle crap.
- ballooney 9y ago
  I only really see it used on potential employees, rather than potential customers. It sounds better than the more-correct 'come and sacrifice your best years on this pointless app that might make me rich but probably will crash and burn like all the others'.
  - scryder 9y ago
    That's definitely something which you can tell employees if you're making an app like that, but it's tolerable to use on customers too, in a pinch. They probably won't believe you, but it's better sounding than nothing when features and tangible results are sparse. And hey! When all else fails, it's at least guaranteed to not be false advertising.
msla 9y ago
Right. Messaging apps like Twitter didn't change the world.
- exelius 9y ago
  President @realDonaldTrump would beg to differ.
- rajathagasthya 9y ago
  I didn't target Twitter or WhatsApp or any other app. Sure, some did. But most of the startups that say they "change the world" use the phrase very casually.
dasil003 9y ago
Even if it is, there's something that rubs me the wrong way about that little SV mantra. First, the banal arrogance of it, but more importantly, the purposelessness of it—we just want to be responsible for making our mark, not to make the world better or push it in any particular direction, but just to point and say, "look, I had that effect!"

Also, "changing the world". Sorry, your messaging app isn't doing that.

3pt14159 9y ago

If WhatsApp didn't change the world, what did?

abiox 9y ago
it's neither the first nor the last chat app, i believe - so how would you say the world changed? (note that i don't use whatsapp and am not all that familiar with it. mostly i'm aware of it due to an interest in erlang.)
- freeone3000 9y ago
  Previously there wasn't a WhatsApp app, and now there is! World changed. :)
- NikolaeVarius 9y ago
  Over 1 Billion users. According to wiki: According to the Financial Times, WhatsApp "has done to SMS on mobile phones what Skype did to international calling on landlines."[167] Seems pretty world changing in terms of providing a core communication service to 1/7 of the human population
- RestlessMind 9y ago
  Some ways in which WhatsApp changed the world, based on my first hand experience: - many of my family members, especially in developing world, bought a smartphone solely as a reason to be on WhatsApp. Nothing convinced them before to buy one. Once they had it, they discovered other awesome uses of a smartphone and are part of the "mobile revolution"(TM). That alone should qualify for "changing the world". - no one I know uses SMS anymore (again, developing countries). A great change given the price gouging before (and Americans probably won't understand that if you haven't seen it first hand). - Amount of "support" happening on WhatsApp in the broader economy - (eg. booking a taxi, ordering home delivery from corner grocery store etc - which needed a phone call before and was not as smooth as WhatsApp experience) - hyper-sharing of casual moments in life. I know, I know - there was facebook and picasa and whatnot before that and instagram/snap these days, but amount of photo sharing that happens on WhatsApp is 2 to 3 orders of magnitude higher than what came before or other channels (again, developing countries), simply because WhatsApp made it super simple to share compared to predecessors and is ubiquitous compared to other contemporaries. It should also be noted that WhatsApp needed two big giant shoulders to stand upon: - android and affordable phones (sorry, iPhone simply doesn't cut the deal for the masses) - 2G / 3G spectrum and data connectivity
- liotier 9y ago
  No VOIP system before Whatsapp reached the threshold of general usability for the unwashed masses (a complex matter conflating voice quality, software distribution, contact discovery, network effect, data usage, resilience, system load etc.). Facebook and Viber came close but failed. Before Whatsapp, my friends in various African countries and their correspondents spent sometimes hundreds of Euros a month in voice communications. After Whatsapp: zero. It happened overnight. Quite a few chat applications worked as well, but one cannot overstate how radically Whatsapp has changed international voice for users and telcos alike. That is not just success in entertainment but a significant social impact.
  - Retric 9y ago
    Saving people money != changing the world. The telegraph changed the world, so did cellphones. Cheaper messaging or HDTV did not. The difference is really one of capability not minor quality improvements. Otherwise you get into things like calling every single new generation of graphics cards as revolutionary not evolutionary.
    - liotier 9y ago
      There is a demand elasticity threshold effect. When people traveled overseas, the consensus was that they were out of reach. Cheap Internet access broke that consensus for text & images. Whatsapp broke it for synchronous voice. People can now maintain close relationships internationally. It did not happen linearly with international voice prices decrease: it happened suddenly with the combination of the cost reaching zero with accepted usability.
      - Retric 9y ago
        Whatsapp started in 2009, you could do free voice chat internationally well before that. Arguably they 'won' because Skype was sold to Microsoft in 2009 creating a huge opening. But, it hardly changed the world even if it did save some people quite a bit of money. PS: I suspect people will have the same conversation in 10 years about a company created around 2014 when Whatsapp was sold.

scryder 9y ago

Well, in the most trivial and banal sense possible, it is: there's now another message app that wasn't there before. I tried to unpack why this phrase is overused. I think it is because it's one of a few things that both sounds lofty when used in a pitch, and wiil always be true. It's also a great dodge of considering the type of change (changing the world for the better or worse?) or of that change's magnitude (substantially changing the world, or just a little?). To some of a crowd, having heard the above, they will assume things about "changing the world" that may make further probing on those points at a high level sound like duplicate questions, and thus surpresses the chance of getting them. Useful for someone trying to peddle crap.

ballooney 9y ago
I only really see it used on potential employees, rather than potential customers. It sounds better than the more-correct 'come and sacrifice your best years on this pointless app that might make me rich but probably will crash and burn like all the others'.
- scryder 9y ago
  That's definitely something which you can tell employees if you're making an app like that, but it's tolerable to use on customers too, in a pinch. They probably won't believe you, but it's better sounding than nothing when features and tangible results are sparse. And hey! When all else fails, it's at least guaranteed to not be false advertising.

msla 9y ago

Right. Messaging apps like Twitter didn't change the world.

exelius 9y ago
President @realDonaldTrump would beg to differ.
rajathagasthya 9y ago
I didn't target Twitter or WhatsApp or any other app. Sure, some did. But most of the startups that say they "change the world" use the phrase very casually.

dasil003 9y ago

Even if it is, there's something that rubs me the wrong way about that little SV mantra. First, the banal arrogance of it, but more importantly, the purposelessness of it—we just want to be responsible for making our mark, not to make the world better or push it in any particular direction, but just to point and say, "look, I had that effect!"