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It's been 11 years. If they hadn't been bought they'd have found a different monetization model long ago
by phyrex 1y ago
It's been 11 years. If they hadn't been bought they'd have found a different monetization model long ago
- owebmaster 1y agoWhatsApp make billions of dollars but Meta wants it to make hundreds of billions. There's no way to appease the dragon.
- xeromal 1y agoCurious how whatsapp makes any money besides the handful of companies that use it as a customer support portal
- owebmaster 1y agoWhatsApp integrates into the rest of Meta ads machine so it distribute leads from facebook and instagram directly to whatsapp. It also makes money with spam.
- phyrex 1y agoWhatsApp makes absolutely no money with spam. There isn't a per-message cost or however you think that would work
- hermanzegerman 1y agoThere absolutely is a per-conversation cost for marketing messages. https://business.whatsapp.com/products/platform-pricing?country=Germany¤cy=Euro%20(EUR)&category=Marketing https://business.whatsapp.com/products/platform-pricing?coun... See also here >With marketing messages, you pay for each message that is delivered to a receiver you chose within five days of being sent. https://faq.whatsapp.com/178447635241069?cms_id=178447635241069&draft=false https://faq.whatsapp.com/178447635241069?cms_id=178447635241...
- owebmaster 1y agoYou are wrong.
- fnands 1y ago> handful of companies Go to India. Way more than just a handful of companies using it
- nathancahill 1y agoOn a global level it's completely pervasive.
- bachmeier 1y agoHow many of the people posting here that criticize this move are owners of Meta stock? The number is certainly above 50%, at least for those in the US, since most people with a retirement plan will own Meta in some form. It's the need to satisfy shareholders with new earnings.
- mikestew 1y agoSo you’re blaming me because Fidelity bought some Meta for my 401K without me directly knowing?
- bachmeier 1y agoWell, I'm saying we should be hesitant to immediately throw out blame for pursuing profit, because it's not just more money for Zuckerberg and other billionaires. If retirement funds were growing at 2%, the same people criticizing this decision would be looking for alternative investment vehicles.
- Coffeewine 1y agoWhat choice do we have? Indeed, I would rather prefer that the companies that comprise the broad market embrace some form of ESG ethos, but that's clearly out of vogue these days. I vote to that extent, but I'm a breathtakingly small portion of the vote when it comes to corporate governance.
- account42 1y agoHow would being actively discriminatory against a large part of the population help anything?
- owebmaster 1y agoThat is not my case. If Meta had minted thousands of millionaires in my country I would have way less problems with them
- Crosseye_Jack 1y agoThey kinda did. Before facebook brought them, the app cost $1/£1 per year (iirc your first year was free). Thing is back then MMS and/or texts across borders was expensive, so if you were regularly sending picture messages to people the $1/£1 sub was a no brainer. Lets wave a magic wand and presume 50% of the user base thought it was also worth $1 a year and it grew just as well as it did (It was growing very well in the UK before the takeover just by word of mouth). That's still just a messaging app that would be raking in $1.5B per year today, and that's before you bolt on any paid cosmetics or upgrades (small things that users don't mind dropping a few more bucks on).
- pantulis 1y agoI happen to remember paying 1€ for Whatsapp.
- nielsole 1y agoAnd my understanding back then was that enforcement of payment was via the honour system. It was even possible to pay for your contacts, likely to make it as low friction as possible especially as paying for something on the internet was still a relatively new thing.
- jonpurdy 1y agoFor $1 per contact, I'd be happy to pay for anyone I know, or ever meet in the future to keep a messaging platform ad-free/user-centric.
- parthdesai 1y agoThere's no way it would've gotten the adoption it did in 3rd world countries if you had to pay $1 per year.
- calt 1y agoThing is, it already was getting that adoption, and network effect can largely take care of the rest. Also, some it’s tied to a real phone number, geographic price differentiation is trivial to implement.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]