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WhatsApp purchase was for that sweet sweet data of everyone's contact lists (this was their original innovation for onboarding — just give us access to your pho
by atemerev 2y ago
WhatsApp purchase was for that sweet sweet data of everyone's contact lists (this was their original innovation for onboarding — just give us access to your phone book and we'll tell you who else is on WhatsApp). Their earnings were completely irrelevant in price discussions. The billions were paid for the dataset.
- WhyNotHugo 2y agoIndeed. It's not just an incredible dataset, it's a self-updating one too.
- Marsymars 2y agoI'd expect a lot of the money was also to prevent a competitor with WhatsApp's ubiquity from existing. (Or selling to another competitor.)
- atemerev 2y agoThat too, of course. WhatsApp itself was a work of art at that point, its success should be studied and hopefully emulated.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dataflow 2y agoAny idea what profitable things they do with that data?
- atemerev 2y agoMostly ad targeting (you can infer a lot of things from the global graph of contacts). Meta is an attention routing company.
- guappa 2y agoHow do they spend insane amount of money in targeted ads and all the ads I get are useless? I constantly get ads to learn how to code. Ok I've been doing that professionally for over a decade and I have a real degree from a real university… why would I do some online programming course?
- atemerev 2y agoThere are much more ads than viable targets.