7 ms·

Or facebook is trying to trivialize and destroy the startup market.

• gailees 13y ago
  ...or facebook is trying to own messaging. I already have shifted a lot of the work I do on email to facebook messaging.
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
• philp 13y ago
  At this rate they can only pull that off a handful of times.
  • psbp 13y ago
    Before this people were comparing their value to snapchat's. This is a very unhealthy market that they're creating.
• dba7dba 13y ago
  the startup market of other messenger apps? The ones that are around are already big and profitable (KakaoTalk, LINE etc).
  • psbp 13y ago
    The bubble spreads across all tech startups. Before it was whether your product could be viral enough to match snapchat's $1 billion, now it's whatsapp's $16 billion. This creates a very unhealthy attitude around tech startups that will have a cascading effect on the entire industry. It's like a hegemonic military policy. The strategy doesn't matter, as long as you have a big stick.
  • flyinglizard 13y ago
    @psbp ... and before that it was Instagram's $1b. It was a running joke back then.
  • mahyarm 13y ago
    Well going by itunes top 20 free social networking apps, you still have kik, tango, oovoo, & zello.
• downandout 13y ago
  I'm not sure I'd call the WhatsApp of today a startup.
  • rokhayakebe 13y ago
    Why not? ~50 employees, a couple of years old, $8M in funding.
    • MichaelGG 13y ago
      50 employees? That's awesome. Twitter has like over 2000. Sure, Twitter's infrastructure is more complicated, but still.
      • yla92 13y ago
        From this blog post[0], "WhatsApp runs lean. With only 32 engineers" I am very impressed. [0]: http://sequoiacapital.tumblr.com/post/77211282835/four-numbers-that-explain-why-facebook-acquired http://sequoiacapital.tumblr.com/post/77211282835/four-numbe...
    • elasticrat 13y ago
      Whatsapp is 5 years old.
    • downandout 13y ago
      They were just valued at $19 billion. Kind of not a startup.
      • jonknee 13y ago
        No, they were acquired for $19B. That's exactly a startup. They had a small amount of VC and the revenue to match, but sold for a king's ransom--the storybook version of a startup.
        • downandout 13y ago
          Value = the amount that someone will pay for something. $19B in this case.
• notahacker 13y ago
  Destroy? There will be a host of new messaging startups created off the back of this, and suddenly the Snapchat valuation looks sane. Do one thing that Facebook does but better is the new gold rush. Sure, most of them will fail hard without raising a cent in revenue, but others will start to threaten to chip away at Facebook's market share.. Anecdata: I get a lot more messages on FB messenger than WhatsApp...
  • philp 13y ago
    Whatsapp has virtually no market share in the US. In basically all markets outside of the US, however, they are dominating the messaging space. Text messages in major EU countries like Germany and France have been almost completely supplanted by WhatsApp.
    • objclxt 13y ago
      > In basically all markets outside of the US, however, they are dominating the messaging space ...WhatsApp certainly isn't dominating in the Asian markets, you only have to look at WeChat.
      • btown 13y ago
        From what I can tell, though, it's literally the two of those that are controlling the space outside the U.S.
        • rahimnathwani 13y ago
          er.. Line? KakaoTalk?
      • yen223 13y ago
        WhatsApp is huge in Malaysia, where I'm from. WeChat, Line, and those other messaging apps are tiny in comparison.
    • ForHackernews 13y ago
      Is that because SMS costs a fortune in Europe? As an American with unlimited SMS/MMS, I don't see the point of WhatsApp at all. I guess maybe if I wanted to send a text to somebody in Europe.
• myzerox 13y ago
  We'll see new angel investors. That will help the ecosystem.