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We Don't Sell Ads (2012)
- landhar 6y agoI was talking with a friend about moving off whatsapp due to the TOS update. I was reminiscing that I had originally bought the app because I had read a blog post from the CEO where he explained that charging for the app was the way they ensured they would never run ads on it. I was surprised to find out that the blog post is still accessible from whatsapp.com given how things have changed...
- kitkat_new 6y agoAre we Matrix yet?
- hhjj 6y agoWe don't sell ads but we are selling ourselves so you can sell ads in the future.
- amateurdev 6y agoI doubt that was the intent at the time. Sure they'd be looking for ways to monetize, but could the co-founder in 2012 have predicted what FB as an entity would become ~10 years later?
- jedberg 6y agoFacebook was making money from ads when they sold WhatsApp to FB. They had to know that was the plan. I don't fault them for selling, I fault everyone else for assuming it would always be ad free after the sale.
- andi999 6y agoWell, if it would been a free app, OK. But one did pay for this feature, isn't it. So I want my dollar back.
- landhar 6y agoThat's a fair point in general, but I think that by the time FB acquired whatsapp the writing was in the wall and I feel that the founders probably knew where things were headed. This is the timeline as I recall it (and from quickly googling a couple of articles), feel free to correct me if I'm getting things wrong: 2012: this article 2014: FB acquires whatsapp 2016: Whatsapp becomes free (drops the $1 purchase fee) 2018: Jan Koun and Brian Acton leave FB
- lotsofpulp 6y agoYes, if someone offers to pay you $20B for your chat app, it’s not out of charity. I’m not blaming them for selling out for $20B, I would have done the same. But I won’t believe they didn’t know what was going to happen.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- martin-adams 6y agoIf WhatsApp had no users, they wouldn't have been worth much. They didn't sell ads, they sold all their users.
- quijoteuniv 6y agoJune 18, 2012
- landhar 6y agoAdded 2012 to the title. Thanks for the call out.
- seph-reed 6y agoThis article itself is marginally different from an ad. What's the point of this article? To inform, or to sway?
- landhar 6y agoFor context: this was a blog post from the founders of whatsapp prior to their acquisition by Facebook, where they explained why they had chosen to make whatsapp a paid app.
- rassputin902 6y agoRemoved whatsapp today, hello Signal.
- Havoc 6y agoI mean it's basically the classic SV way. Build a unsustainable business promising the world. Get traction based on that. Get bought by FAANG. Ride off into sunset & don't look back. Cool guys don't look at explosions/broken promises
- chaostheory 6y agoWhatsApp charged for their service to make it viable without ads. It isn’t Instagram or Snapchat
- ignoramous 6y agoOn Android, it remained free. That is, even if you didn't pay, it continued to work endlessly. That said, WhatsApp's plans to make revenue didn't involve showing ads in 2016 (2 years into Facebook acquisition) when they made it officially free: > Naturally, people might wonder how we plan to keep WhatsApp running without subscription fees and if today's announcement means we're introducing third-party ads. The answer is no. Starting this year, we will test tools that allow you to use WhatsApp to communicate with businesses and organizations that you want to hear from. That could mean communicating with your bank about whether a recent transaction was fraudulent, or with an airline about a delayed flight. We all get these messages elsewhere today – through text messages and phone calls – so we want to test new tools to make this easier to do on WhatsApp, while still giving you an experience without third-party ads and spam. https://blog.whatsapp.com/making-whats-app-free-and-more-useful/?lang=en https://blog.whatsapp.com/making-whats-app-free-and-more-use...
- xmprt 6y agoOn Android I still remember getting yearly notifications that my "yearly subscription fee" was waived. So I assume they made it free but also wanted the option to go back to subscriptions if wanted.
- chaostheory 6y agoIf I remember correctly, the founders were against making it free. It was one of the reasons they left years ago
- fossuser 6y agoBrian Acton selling to FB is in a way a tragic story. I understand why he did it, at some point it becomes irresponsible not to take the money given the opportunity cost (and he did give $50M to signal). Steven Levy has a funny bit about it in his excellent book Facebook: The Inside Story. When someone offers you 19 billion to violate your principles, you have to wonder what you can do with that money and maybe you can do more good than you could with whatsapp. Plus housing in Palo Alto is expensive: https://www.dirt.com/moguls/tech/brian-acton-house-palo-alto-1203229747/ https://www.dirt.com/moguls/tech/brian-acton-house-palo-alto... I wrote an overly long feudal allegory about this based on pillars of the earth (I know, but it was fun to write): https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/07/14/the-serfs-of-facebook.html https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/07/14/the-serfs-of-facebook... His last tweet still stands: https://twitter.com/brianacton/status/976231995846963201?s=20 https://twitter.com/brianacton/status/976231995846963201?s=2... ### “Do no knights strike out on their own?” Philip was quiet for a moment. He pointed across a vast vista to a large castle in the distance adjacent to that of their own Earl Zuckerberg’s. “That is the castle of Sir Brian Acton of the former Earldom of WhatsApp. Sir Acton was an idealistic farmer who rejected the ways of our earl. He promised the serfs he would take no part of their data harvest they produced from the land he provided them, and instead the serfs even paid him a small cash fee for his protection. He had no knights to watch and report on his people and no heralds spreading pronouncements.” “What happened?” “He was too successful. Earl Zuckerberg saw many of his serfs begin to leave his lands to work the lands of Sir Acton (at the time he was known as Farmer Acton). This was a risk to the power of Zuckerberg’s earldom, since an earl without serfs to tend to the data fields has no harvest to interest others. In the end he offered Sir Acton a knightship and such enormous wealth that he could not refuse. It’s said he now lives in that vast castle alone, is rarely seen, and rarely speaks. The serfs that were in agreement with him now belong to Earl Zuckerberg as they had before, their deal was broken, and once again they tend to our earl’s data harvest.” “Are there no others?” “Sir Acton was just the most noble, and his fall the most tragic. Others like Sir Chris Coyne of the former Earldom of Keybase promised their serfs protection and then cruelly sold them to the Earldom of Zoom, which is closely tied to the Eastern Kingdom, a hostile land ruled by a tyrant king where the earls are weak and only serve to do the king’s bidding. There the serfs are forced to grow only what the king has allowed and serfs that refuse are dealt with swiftly and harshly. While in our kingdom farmers can choose to try to strike out on their own (though most choose not to), in the Earldoms of Zoom or TikTok, nothing can happen without the blessing of their king.”
- tapia 6y agoSince Facebook bought Whatsapp I have been upset exactly because of this. I remember having read this post at the time and considered that that was exactly the right way to go. I started using Whatsapp and paying for it in that moment. I convinced many family members and friends to start using it because of this. Then, when they got enough users, they just decided that none of what they promised was important. Since then, I have actively trying to convince my contacts to move away from WhatsApp, but it is really hard now. This clearly shows that no matter how much trust a company might inspire at a given time, nothing prevents that ten years from now, when everyone is dependent on their technology, they will not change the rules. And nobody will be able to do anything. (Next: Apple, maybe?)
- bozzcl 6y agoI've also been trying to convince my contacts to move away from WhatsApp. I'm met with lots of resistance, including "but all my friends use it" and "lol I don't care about privacy". I've had a hard time building an argument that's convincing for them.
- hinkley 6y agoIf a company isn't willing to sell a thing, but they are willing to sell the company, then they sell the thing. Just not yet.
- save_ferris 6y agoCulturally, we aren't taught to think critically enough about how businesses operate. In an environment that espouses entrepreneurship to the max, we don't spend enough time talking about if companies lie to us or not, how do they plan to monetize, etc. There's just no way that Facebook wasn't planning to monetize this platform when they wrote this article. Frankly, situations like this should be treated like deceptive advertising practices. Just like in the political arena, there are very few consequences to just flat out lie to people, and that's unacceptable.
- landhar 6y agoThis article was written before FB acquired whatsapp back when it was still its own company. That being said, it was "only" 20 months later that FB acquired it, so it's hard to believe that the ideals discussed in this article were no longer in the founders' minds when they accepted the deal.
- alex_young 6y ago20 months later they sold to Facebook for $19 billion. How can this statement be taken seriously? Obviously Facebook was paying for advertising potential here. https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-to-buy-whatsapp-for-16-billion-1392847766 https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-to-buy-whatsapp-for-16...
- troydavis 6y agoWhatsapp’s story is also unique because their acquisition by Facebook was so large. At $19 billion, the founders probably could have attached pretty much any terms to the deal (as formal terms in the purchase agreement) - and still had a $10+ billion offer that made them multi-billionaires. Permanently enjoin the acquirer from showing ads or sharing data. Heck, require operating independence. Just like any other transaction, terms like these are negotiable. Maybe those reduce the purchase price by $3 billion, or even $5 or $10 billion, but the founders would still be multi-billionaires and they’d also see Whatsapp survive the way they envisioned it. Best of both worlds. (And if the buyer totally walked rather than reducing the price, at least you’d know their true intention.)
- DoofusOfDeath 6y agoThere's a saying that "Every man has his price." For me personally, I hope that I'll never be offered enough money to betray those who trust me. But I fear that my selling price is far lower than $19B.
- fossuser 6y agoYou really have to consider opportunity cost at that price. Is the good you're doing via whatsapp enough to outweigh how you could leverage 19B?
- landhar 6y agoSure, there's lots to consider. But as a user of whatsapp since they wrote this article, and that has been trying to get my friends and family off whatsapp since they got acquired by FB, I am terribly sorry that they took that deal.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y agoOnly if you reduce ethics to a math problem.
- fossuser 6y ago
- kerng 6y agoJust convinced my family to delete WhatsApp.. that was not easy but I dont want such a large unethical company continue to dictate our lifes in future.
- pearjuice 6y agoAlmost all people their principles have a price. With an amount of money thrown at you, you cannot spend in a lifetime, most people bend. The stance they were defending or the problems they were fighting are all of a sudden no longer an issue they will ever face. Why would they bother? Think about your biggest stance. Be it climate change, political affiliation or controversial issues like abortion. How much money do you need to receive to never talk or be bothered about it again? With a few billion dollars in your pocket, most issues are no longer a concern or anything you will care about reasonably.
- OzzyB 6y agoWhy are you all surprised by this -- didn't you see the Tyler Durden quote? It was right there at the top of the page! I guess everyone's an edgy-movie-quote-quoting-internet-hacker-bro until the man from Silicon Valley offers your $19Billion. I wonder how many of those billions can we equate to Tyler Durden? Must of been worth at least 8 IMO.
- frongpik 6y agoI'd try to guess that the next move will be facebookification of whatsapp, i.e. whatsapp will slowly morph into a FB client, will all the buzz and whistles.
- resynth1943 6y agoYour data isn't even in the picture. We are simply not interested in any of it. My gosh, how the tide can turn. https://write.privacytools.io/right-to-privacy/getting-whatsapps-privacy-policy-prompts-heres-why https://write.privacytools.io/right-to-privacy/getting-whats... WhatsApp now collects: WhatsApp: Device ID, User ID, Advertising Data, Purchase History, Coarse Location, Phone Number, Email, Contacts, Product Interaction, Crash, Data, Performance Data, Other Diagnostics Data, Payment Info, Customer Support, Product Interaction, Other User, Content.
- hanniabu 6y agoYup, classic bait and switch tactics. Act like a saint, get a ton of users, then milk them dry.
- marcinzm 6y agoFor extra points, get paid billions for it and then act outraged when the new owner decides to make back their investment.
- huseyinkeles 6y agoFunny how literally the same thing happened with Oculus acquisition by Facebook.
- resynth1943 6y agoI'm personally worried Signal will suffer the same fate. It's heavily trusted in its current state, but it could, in time, turn into a Silicon Valley "product" (and so will we). eye roll.
- kvm 6y agoThe founders were true to these values and IMO did not just "act like a saint"
- anoncake 6y ago
- julik 6y agoImagine you wrote a post like this, and then you get an offer for $19B. I really wonder how many here would sincerely FU that (anyone who saw FB doing the move knew what they were going for)
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoSimilarly hilarious to read today is Google's "The Meaning of Open" (2009): https://publicpolicy.googleblog.com/2009/12/meaning-of-open.html?m=1 https://publicpolicy.googleblog.com/2009/12/meaning-of-open.... And of course, Appendix A of "Anatomy of a Search Engine": http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html Everyone has their price, and corporations selling out their values for more money is basically a universal truth.
- vowelless 6y agoPeople should be aware that Brian Action is also the founder and chairman of Signal Foundation.
- mattficke 6y agoBrian Acton, the co-founder mentioned at the beginning of the blog post, resigned from Facebook in 2017 over early steps toward this and forfeited $850 million as a result [0]. [0]:https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2018/09/26/exclusive-whatsapp-cofounder-brian-acton-gives-the-inside-story-on-deletefacebook-and-why-he-left-850-million-behind/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2018/09/26/exclusive...
- LeifCarrotson 6y agoWow, talk about putting your money where your mouth is. On the one hand, he had to forsee this happening when he sold to Facebook, and he was worth $3.6 billion at the time of the decision anyways, so it wasn't like me with my 5-figure net worth refusing a jump to 9, it was an abandonment of more like 25%, but still. That's a lot of money to leave on the table.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- leoplct 6y agoWebRTC could be used for a messaging app?
- iddan 6y agoThere’s continuous discussion about how WhatsApp sold off its ideals but i think that in the reality that we live in that citizens are not informed about the services they consume the law should protect them as much as possible. A good data law is feasible in many of the continents WhatsApp operates in and with it companies won’t abuse user data because they would simply could not
- azzamsa 6y agohttps://deletewhatsapp.com/ https://deletewhatsapp.com/
- jiofih 6y agoFB seems to have a too-good ability to swindle entrepreneurs into believing they will keep their independence. Oculus suffered the same fate.
- randiantech 6y ago19 billion dollars for WhatsApp. I cant think of a better deal than that on entire human history.
- caminocorner 6y agoThis page says they "charge" for WhatsApp, at least in 2012. I didn't know that. What were they charging for? To buy the app or something else?
- WillYouFinish 6y agoThere was a free year and then a yearly usage fee. I think the iPhone version was always a single pay purchase.
- eleumik 6y agothat was long time ago ;-)