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Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App

489 points by nicpottier 13y ago

mik3y 13y ago
Citation needed; I'd certainly love to know whether J2ME devices were a significant chunk of WhatsApp's actives, but there's zero data to back up the suggestion..
- dsl 13y ago
  As of today: Smartphones outsold feature phones for this first time ever in India. http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/samsung-smartphones-outsell-feature-phones/1/344332.html http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/samsung-smartphones-outse... From my personal experiences, international countries that have smartphone adoption use Viber, and the feature phone countries use WhatsApp.
  - ghshephard 13y ago
    Singapore is a Smartphone country, but Whatsapp is pretty dominant there. (I didn't run into anyone who didn't use it as their primary messaging platform)
    - rabino 13y ago
      Same in Argentina
    - thaumasiotes 13y ago
      In China, it seems to be Wechat. I had never heard of WhatsApp.
    - yen223 13y ago
      Same up here in Malaysia. In fact, it's starting to look like the only places that isn't dominated by WhatsApp are America and China.
      - dba7dba 13y ago
        You forgot china/Skorea/Japan, all big markets. WeChat - china S Korea - kakaotalk 90% market share LINE - Japan 50 million users with 300 million worldwide And all three have significant revenue in double digit US millions a year, unlike WhatsApp which has no real revenue...
        skinnymuch 13y ago
        Whatsapp has revenue in the double digit US millions per year. Their profit might even be in that range.
  - terhechte 13y ago
    WhatsApp is also really strong here in Germany and other parts of Europe. More of my friends are on WhatsApp than Facebook (only very few more though).
    - danieldk 13y ago
      Also in the Netherlands. E.g. in June 2013, 75% of the smartphone users used WhatsApp daily. Moreover, more than three quarter of the Dutch citizens has a smartphone. So, WhatsApp is definitely used in high-profit markets as well. Source: http://www.nu.nl/tech/3506473/whatsapp-heeft-kwart-miljard-actieve-gebruikers.html http://www.nu.nl/tech/3506473/whatsapp-heeft-kwart-miljard-a...
    - sschueller 13y ago
      These numbers are going to drop significantly now. Everyone I talk to is unhappy about the acquisition and will switch to something else like telegram.
      - enewcomer 13y ago
        Unless everybody switches, few will switch. Network effects also create some pretty powerful stickiness.
      - krisgenre 13y ago
        Unless Facebook actually puts their logo on WhatsApp, hardly anyone would notice. The tech community is minuscule compared to the large number of non-tech people using WhatsApp.
      - ville 13y ago
        I'd say more than 99.9% of WhatsApp users haven't heard of Telegram. WhatsApp users are mostly not early adopters like you and your friends. They are ordinary people, because WhatsApp is is a simple communication tool targeted to everyone. And that's why they keep doubling their user base.
      - Jare 13y ago
        The uproar in Spain about WhatsApp switching to $1 per year was huge, noisy and... emphemeral. Line got a lot of new signups for a few weeks, but the only person I know that still considers using Line today didn't even have WhatsApp back then (but, like everyone else, does have it now).
  - dba7dba 13y ago
    KakaoTalk is big in S Korea. LINE is big in Japan. LINE has 300 million users, with 50 million in Japan. As far as I know, both are very profitable through sales of digital goods like stickers etc.
- phn 13y ago
  Remember that it's not only the J2ME actives that matter. The fact that you have access to all your friends wihtout exception inside the same app is killer, even if you have the latest iPhone. That's what made me return to WhatsApp in the first place. That, coupled with an apparently flawless experience.
- Indyan 13y ago
  It's not just the raw numbers. I would love to move onto Telegram, which is more secure, has an API, and works from a desktop. But, I can't. There are about five or six odd people in my life (professional or private) that I message frequently. Even if 1 out of them isn't on a particular messaging platform, I can't adopt that platform wholeheartedly. With Fb Messages, Hangouts and every other popular smartphone oriented messaging platform there would always be that one or two contacts that you regularly communicate with, who would be left out due to having an incompatible device. Whatsapp on the other hand works on pretty much every phone. When you want to replace something as prevalent as SMS, the long tail matters. There's another tangible benefit of focusing on so many platforms. Whatsapp, which doesn't spend much (if anything at all) on promotion, is prominently featured in the advertisements of many budget phones, as manufacturers see Whatsapp support as a strong selling point.
  - mkesper 13y ago
    Use SMS.
    - SyneRyder 13y ago
      Not when SMS costs 29c per message. The free global text messaging that Whatsapp provides is potentially very disruptive to telcos.
      - aleh 13y ago
        It's the same way around. If telcos drop SMS const or make them free few people will have initiative to use Whatsapp.
- qwerta 13y ago
  Yeah, all those people in India and Africa use latest Iphone :-)
gojomo 13y ago
If anyone has used the J2ME version of WhatsApp, can they describe how similar it is to the smartphone versions? For example: • Do you get a notification as soon as messages are waiting, even if the J2ME app hasn't been run recently? • Are photo/video messages available? • Are the group messaging options the same?
- thewarrior 13y ago
  Yes all of them work. Not just that they work surprisingly well. This is the best J2ME app that I have ever used on my phone.
  - sspiff 13y ago
    Background notifications too? I'm surprised - I wrote a Twitter client in 2009, and I couldn't find a way to make that work. I didn't think J2ME could do that at all, to be honest.
    - thewarrior 13y ago
      Even I dont know exactly how it works. I think Nokia gave them access to some private API.
      - pjmlp 13y ago
        J2ME is not Nokia specific.
        sspiff 13y ago
        No, but it is not uncommon for J2ME apps to have a different package for certain vendors, or even for specific series or models of certain vendors. Those packages often utilize vendor-specific APIs or work around limitations or quirks in their J2ME stack. Opera's J2ME application took this to extremes, with dozens of different versions of a specific release.
dlhavema 13y ago
i dabbled with some J2ME development back in the day when palm pilots were cool, i even made a basic app for the original (early 2000-ish ) Motorola Razer.. it's not easy at all... i haven't looked for community resources for J2ME in years but back then i could find hardly any...
- 616c 13y ago
  And out of curiosity I decided to search for J2ME on my laptop and Google had very little resources except official Oracle docs and a Java blog tutorial ... from 2005. Good times. https://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2005/02/09/j2me1.html https://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2005/02/09/j2me1.html
  - dlhavema 13y ago
    what kills me is the initial release had support for the IR blaster that most palm pilots had, the next "SDK" i found had it removed, and i later read it was because of something along the lines of "most devices don't support this so we removed it". the possibility of having a programmable IR remote control on the cheap 12 years ago was amazing to me. I think its kinda cool that newer android devices are starting to have IR blasters again..
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    Android killed J2ME, this is where all Java developers moved to. Oracle still tries to push J2ME, but the opportunity is gone.
- megablast 13y ago
  Come on, it is not that hard. Actually did some cool stuff very easily. I mean, it is no xcode easy, but it is eclipse easy.
coenhyde 13y ago
The key take away from this article is not to build your app in J2ME but to recognize how big the world is outside of America. American focused startups face lots of competition in a relatively small market.
- nicpottier 13y ago
  Ya.. that is definitely the takeaway. If you address all platforms, your market is suddenly both under served and absolutely huge.
  - SunboX 13y ago
    That's the key of Firefox OS. Use well known technology and try to go into these markets.
    - pjmlp 13y ago
      My problem with Firefox OS is that they don't add any value over what is already possible in modern mobile OS. All of them have a web browser of some sort.
      - SunboX 13y ago
        It's not about what is possible todo, it's about replacing feature phones in developing markets. They can't effort "cheap" androids, neither iphones. And if they get the money for an "cheap" android they don't have money for the development equipment.
        pjmlp 13y ago
        My old cheap feature phone had a good enough browser already.
        testernew 13y ago
        Ok
chubot 13y ago
I'm pretty ignorant about whatsapp, but I paged through their blog a couple hours ago, before reading this post (https://blog.whatsapp.com/ https://blog.whatsapp.com/). And the fact that they had blog posts about Windows Mobile, Nokia, and Blackberry clients really stood out. I think Google, Facebook et al probably prioritize those platforms last, if at all. So kudos to Whatsapp for their contrarian thinking. Their blog also shows the achievements of 1M and 2M simultaneous connections on a box, which I remember seeing here before on HN. So these guys are also very talented and experienced engineers.
apunic 13y ago
Wrong. Whatsapp didn't start with a J2ME app, they started with the smartphone versions first and later they provided J2ME versions when they had already significant market share.
- nicpottier 13y ago
  The point isn't actually which came first, it is that they are ubiquitous. The difference between WhatsApp and Viber is that WhatsApp put far more effort in being on every possible platform, and for something that relies on network effects, that effort was worth it.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
colin_mccabe 13y ago
Let's not forget Symbian and Blackberry either. WhatsApp also runs on those. I don't think starting a new Blackberry, Symbian or J2ME project today is really a good idea, though. It takes at least a few years for a company to make an exit, and by the time you do, those burning platforms will have flamed out.
- blazespin 13y ago
  It absolutely makes sense to work on a J2ME app today if you have a product aimed at developing nations. They won't be swimming in smartphones any time soon.
  - colin_mccabe 13y ago
    I can't find the link now, but I remember some discussion of cheap Chinese-made Android phones selling for single-digit numbers of dollars. At the end of the day, it's just like any other piece of electronics. It's not like Android phones are made out of more expensive raw materials than dumbphones. They're just newer. So I think that eventually the third world will be swimming in smartphones-- probably a lot sooner than you think. Whether or not that impacts your business model depends on what the business model is, of course. I'm sure a few more Symbian apps will be cranked out as retailers blow out their stock of old inventory. Very poor people will probably hold on to old phones for years, as well. But phones do break, and batteries die after a few years, so a decade from now Symbian will be just an obscure memory, like the Acorn Archimedes or the ZX Spectrum.
  - acchow 13y ago
    Low end Android phones are approaching feature phones in price.
    - vishnugupta 13y ago
      They are already cheaper than feature phones! At least in India : http://tinyurl.com/la5g2ou http://tinyurl.com/la5g2ou
cturhan 13y ago
Facebook paid 16B Dollars for 400,000,000 active phone numbers and all the personal info bound to them. It's not the app itself it's the data, you know it well too.
- User8712 13y ago
  It's likely most of those users were once on Facebook, so I don't think personal info was a big selling point here. I think they made the purchase because 400,000,000 users outside of their bubble is a little worrying. It's a threat, what happens if WhatsApp begins to pivot and push more into Facebook territory?
- mattsyd 13y ago
  That's not the case. WhatsApp barely holds any data. The user doesn't have to give over their personal details. It ties them to their mobile number & messages are stored only until they're pushed to the client. Once pushed they are then removed from WhatsApp servers.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    I'm curious: how do you know that they're removed?
    - JetSpiegel 13y ago
      They pinky sweared, of course! /s
  - polymatter 13y ago
    even if removed, WhatsApp could store metadata like who is talking to whom. This is valuable to try to identify the trendsetters and key people to market to. With a bit of text analysis like google do with gmail, they can personalise ads more. all very very valuable data.
  - gazarsgo 13y ago
    You underestimate the value of the graph data.
webdisrupt 13y ago
I completely agree with most comments about catering for most operating systems but I also think that this acquisition was also due to Facebook "panicking" about losing ground (e.g. teens) and WhatsApp having a great number of monthly active users.
brisance 13y ago
Framed another way, it goes to demonstrate the ridiculous price paid for the company. How are the "other 3 billion people" without smartphones going to contribute to Facebook's bottom line? When they don't even have Facebook? That they don't even view ads? And that the cost of switching is practically close to zero, with many other competitive products like WeChat? It all seems to me that it's just to pad the "total number of active users on Facebook and associated platforms" column during earnings season.
- merry-year 13y ago
  >> How are the "other 3 billion people" without smartphones going to contribute to Facebook's bottom line? By becoming rich, of course.
- eru 13y ago
  > How are the "other 3 billion people" without smartphones going to contribute to Facebook's bottom line? When they don't even have Facebook? That makes them even more valuable. Why should Facebook buy users they already have?
  - brisance 13y ago
    As WhatsApp's user base grows, the probability of users who are also on Facebook increases and vice versa. Which means you are supporting my argument that this is just a play for "number of users", since it's very likely a good proportion would be counted twice instead of uniquely.
- edraferi 13y ago
  I don't think they're necessarily looking to integrate the user bases that way. If Facebook's mission is simply to "connect everything ” then this gets them closer to that goal. Whatsapp profits are note Facebook profits, and Facebook is connecting everyone that Whatsapp used to connect. Facebook wants as many users as possible, connected to rapture in as many ways as possible. This is a big win for that, and will continue to reap benefits as the Whatsapp user base grows.
szatkus 13y ago
"And you know what, on $10 a day you probably don't have an iPhone or an Android handset." Most people I know who earn ~10$ a day have smartphones with Android or WP.
dhawalhs 13y ago
A comment [1] I made 829 days ago on Whatsapp Its biggest plus is that it is cross platform. They have apps for Blackberry, Android, iOS and Symbian. So you can talk with almost anybody out there. At least in my home country, most people have Blackberry/Symbian. Imagine having a group conversation with people on different platforms and in different countries. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3231053 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3231053
- diaz 13y ago
  Well they don't have an app for Jolla and are now sending takedown notices for the existing apps that try to take on that problem.
sgloutnikov 13y ago
http://openwhatsapp.org http://openwhatsapp.org - One example of how powerful the community around WhatsApp has been. Certainly loved it when I was on my Nokia N9.
- kefs 13y ago
  :( http://openwhatsapp.org/blog/2014/02/13/mass-dmca-takedowns-whatsapp/ http://openwhatsapp.org/blog/2014/02/13/mass-dmca-takedowns-...
enscr 13y ago
Really? The viral growth & popularity of Whatsapp is due to early J2ME versions rather than the widespread adoption of Android. I think it's the latter but maybe I'm mistaken.
notastartup 13y ago
can someone explain how a free app ends up generating $40 per user? more importantly, if facebook keeps buying large MAU at costs exceeding their revenues (not profit), at what point will those purchases start generating revenues (if at all)? at what point will they no longer have money to buy MAU or even generate revenue on those users they purchased and own? Are we in a new economy now just like 1999?
72deluxe 13y ago
J2ME is interesting. Each phone supported Java Specification Requests (JSRs) and you could look up which JSRs a phone supported. For example, JSR82 is some Bluetooth supporty thing. The real problem was that between different phones and JSRs, some implementations were really bad (I remember having a Nokia 6500slide with dodgy implementations) and varied between phone models. This was especially odd on Nokia phones considering that there were hundreds of phones running S40 or S60 and yet there were differences between those phones. (If I recall correctly, I had a 5200 and 5300 and there were differences between them). Highly unreliable. But $16bn unreliable for testing? Not sure. Well done for getting bought though.
- enewcomer 13y ago
  They aren't paying for a J2ME app and the requisite testing. They are paying for the results of the network effect made possible by it.
  - 72deluxe 13y ago
    So, the $16bn is for a massive network of end-user testers? :-)
trhway 13y ago
reminds me about Sun buying StorageTek for 4B - a company whose technology and market had very visible end. J2ME on smartphones - basically an oxymoron if one knows why and how J2ME was designed 15 years ago - doesn't seem to be happening (despite predictable post-WhatsApp influx of crazy VC money into such combination in the next half year) and cheap $10-$20 smartphones are the next billions of devices.
doczoidberg 13y ago
The key success of Whatsapp is IMHO that it uses your phone's address book as contact list. There is no hurdle to use it what is very important for the average user. The multi platform support from beginning is second thing. J2ME as stated in the article is negligible. I can't understand why this article is on top of HN.
- enewcomer 13y ago
  The phone number as an id is a very important component to their adoption indeed. So do you posit that WhatsApp's adoption rates being what they are (compared to say Viber which does the same thing) is purely due to first mover?
  - doczoidberg 13y ago
    yes that's my opinion.
porker 13y ago
OK, how is Whatsapp different to using SMS to communicate with friends? What am I missing?
- k-mcgrady 13y ago
  It's free to message people abroad.
- cr3ative 13y ago
  It is broadly speaking lower cost, allows media sharing (photos/sound clips) and provides delivery receipts.
- unfamiliar 13y ago
  It's free. No length limit. You can send pics and vids. No international fees.
- Aissen 13y ago
  It's cheaper (free). All this value stems from carriers's infinite greediness in making us pay (international) SMS and MMS.
  - veb 13y ago
    It's only free if you have a data plan, right? (or connected to WiFi). Historically in NZ, SMS has been basically free, unlimited but data has been 10mb, 100mb etc. We're now trying to catch up on the world with our data plans on 3G and 4G networks, but even then it's about $50 NZD for 1gb data.
- dnqthao 13y ago
  group chat
pastylegs 13y ago
Is WhatsApp popular in the states? I'm Irish and living in Spain and in both countries it's incredibly popular. Most of my communication is channeled through it (I'd rather send a WhatsApp then call in most cases)
keerthiko 13y ago
This. This is the answer I have always looked for. > "But, but, how is WhatsApp any different than iMessage / Facebook Messenger / Hangouts?" I have made this exclamation multiple times, and my friends in India and Singapore and other parts of Asia just turned up their palms with a "I dunno, everyone uses it and told me to get it." I refused to use it since I like to use as few messaging platforms as possible (just Google Hangouts right now since it has most of my contacts, voice and video) despite my friends pestering me. J2ME is the most reasonable explanation. I see why it made Whatsapp itself popular. But still? Almost everyone I know who's using it actually uses it on an Android/iOS smart device. Who is this "everyone" of theirs using it on feature phones? I doubt their friends circle intersects that heavily with rural villagers living on $10/day. And also, is this really a viable long-term play for Facebook? How does this contribute towards the rest of their product plays?
- enewcomer 13y ago
  You only need one friend you care about using a Blackberry or Nokia for it to matter though. The long tail matters when it comes to communication.
  - keerthiko 13y ago
    Ah. Blackberry. I forgot that is included in the J2ME target devices. That explains nearly everything, although any of my friends who had those blackberries have transitioned since, and now people are just (well played WhatsApp) locked into the service.
  - dublinben 13y ago
    I'd rather just SMS/email them. At least those are actually cross-platform, and don't depend on proprietary apps like WhatsApp.
    - largote 13y ago
      SMSs are expensive and people just don't prioritize email like they do IMs.
- 13y ago
krisgenre 13y ago
One more thing.. I doubt anyone 'updates' a J2ME app, they had to get most of the stuff working perfectly the first time itself.
dschiptsov 13y ago
I is only me who is thinking that everything that worth $16B is happened on the server side and J2ME is just a crap?)
teemo_cute 13y ago
You forgot the marketing and promotion. (BTW I'm a techie trying to be a humanie :)
buster 13y ago
For this article to really make sense, we will need to know how many J2ME users _really_ us Whatsapp. Yes, there are many users with featurephones. But how many of them use Internet on it? Can i afford an internet flatrate with 20$/month income? Nope.
rglullis 13y ago
On the other hand, how does Facebook expect to monetize these millions of users who are living on $10/day? The number being thrown around yesterday was that Facebook paid $40/user. Bearing in mind that a good percentage of these users will never provide any ROI, it is one more reason to look like it was way overvalued.
- pm90 13y ago
  That's a good question. I will invoke my "lack of foresight" card though, and say that there might be other future benefits that come out of this service
- sokoloff 13y ago
  A significant portion if the deal value is defensive, IMO. AKA: so Google or VK don't buy them and strangle off a major tentacle of user adoption and stickiness of the FB ecosystem. Facebook doesn't have to directly monetize THOSE $10/day users for this to be a smart decision. They can monetize some users directly, but not having a competitor own whatsapp is worth a lot to FB.
  - im3w1l 13y ago
    How long will it be until they have to purchase Whosdown for the same reason? How much time did they buy?
ck2 13y ago
Pretty sure facebook could give a darn about the app, they are buying access to the customers, to either get their data or show them ads. The app itself will probably be bloated or ruined within a couple years.
- apetrovic 13y ago
  The point of the article is that WhatsApp built that customer base not having only shiny iPhone or Android app, but also having a presence on feature phones.
_pmf_ 13y ago
> Writing J2ME apps is no cakewalk. It's a bizarre perversion of everything that makes software development bearable. I've created my share of horribly cobbled-together ad-hoc embedded software development toolchains, but these can't hold a candle to the abysmal monstrosity of a vendor-patched J2ME SDK.
sibbl 13y ago
Guess how long ICQ has a J2ME app...
kyberias 13y ago
Just amazing example of cargo-cult phenomenon! The idea that using a particular technology (here J2ME) would allow one to get a $16B exit. Hilarious!
- twic 13y ago
  Imagine how much they would have sold for if they'd used node.js!
theknown99 13y ago
Your path to happiness? Don't be so obsessed with money. Build something that's fun, and meaningful, that makes you, and others happy.
vayarajesh 13y ago
One of the key reasons whatsApp was successful was the simplicity for the user to start communicating - No registration or username creation hence allowing users not to care about remembering passwords. Another important feature was that the user did not have to search for their friends in family if they were on whatsapp and then add them or send request etc. They used the phone number and users phone book. If you have a friend uses whatsapp it will automatically show you. WhatsApps is easy, simple, quick and beautiful! so the path to $16B exit is not a J2ME app but an idea to get users start communicating with minimum amount of effort and time.
transfire 13y ago
Awesome, now Facebook can spy on everybody!
fredgrott 13y ago
Only problem is that low cost android is disrupting that, which I imagine is part of the reason for the decline in fb stock price seen yesterday.
sandeepspatil 13y ago
The article makes it sound a big deal to develop J2ME app. This app basically has just 2 screens, so I wouldn't think it would be any big deal to replicate those screens across platforms. Their challenge is more on the server-side, scaling for all the billions of users that they have - again, no big deal for plain text but mostly the pictures and the videos that are shared ...few big datacenters somewhere...again, nothing great. And hey, they dont even support voice calls. I dont buy that the app itself is a deal breaker. It's mostly their user base that they have been paid for.
swah 13y ago
Also, at least in Brazil, Whatsapp became a tool for journalists on the streets. A very interesting use...
- mmmm 13y ago
  And in Sweden (some) police men were discovered using Whatsapp - sending sensitive information about suspects[0]. They were discovered when they accidentally misstyped a phonenumber. Whoops. The police in Sweden have some Blackberry encrypted services, but apparently these police men were not given one because they're expensive. [0] Swedish source: http://computersweden.idg.se/2.2683/1.547026/polisens-chatt-miss--hemlig-spaninfo-pa-drift-i-whatsapp http://computersweden.idg.se/2.2683/1.547026/polisens-chatt-...
loup-vaillant 13y ago
Funny how Paul Graham came up with "schlep blindness"[1]: It's a subset of LessWrong's "ugh fields"[2]. [1]: http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html [2]: http://lesswrong.com/lw/21b/ugh_fields/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/21b/ugh_fields/
avenger123 13y ago
The message of the article is good but it's not seeing the forest from the trees. Having just read the Forbes artcile on the company and Jan in particular, some interesting things stood out: 1) Jan had money to start and was able to take time to build a user base and find the real value in the App and didn't need to go around "raising money". The SMS component of the app wasn't the initial focus. The company didn't need VC funding at any point. He was able to focus on product development and revenues started to come in to cover costs. 2) Jan is a technical guy. He did the initial backend but hired out the iPhone development. Either way he was involved. He developed the initial app for the first 9 months or so before bringing on Ackon as a cofounder. 3) There is real value in the app. No one needs to question this. There's no big pitch deck's, presentations, etc.The app was allowed to grow organically due to its network affect. The business can scale into the millions and billions of users. The $16 billion exit is largely due to number 3. It's rare for a lot of businesses to have that kind of scale. Reading the Forbes article, my takeaway is that there is no way anyone can "build a path to a xx billion exit". What one can do is find a business model that can actually scale and generate real revenue. Maybe not to billion users or hundreds of millions in revenue but enough to take it outside of the "lifestyle" business mode. Also, having money of your own and technical skills to execute doesn't hurt one bit. I think one lesson that I would take away for the younger crowd is - slow down a bit. Go work for a big corp or even a startup that pays well. Save every penny. Instead of spending that $100 on the get together every other night save it. Build your skills. At some point, go for it. You'll have money to live off, money to test your business model and a fallback if it doesn't work (get another job). EDIT: Another big reason for the big exit is incredible leverage by Jan. He's got the most equity. He doesn't need Facebook. He is already a millionaire and the App can only get better. This is deal making at its finest. I can only imagine how much back and forth happened, each time with a bigger number from Facebook.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- JoeAltmaier 13y ago
  I'm a little more skeptical. This guy worked hard, sure, but as he seems to be the only guy making out big, after scores of guys worked hard. Maybe he's not much of a hero.
ausjke 13y ago
it looks so much like WeChat from Tencent(one of the largest IT company in China), and WeChat is totally free.
yungether 13y ago
Did anyone else chuckle at the title including "Path"?
antirez 13y ago
The j2me is just a piece of "it just works". 1) Covers a huge amount of devices. Yep, because j2me, but also because what could be the top-1 competitor, Apple iMessage, can't inter-operate between Apple and Android devices (very stupid tactic, it will get marginalized). 2) Does not require an account, so it is not bound to Facebook, Twitter, ... You may ask, what's the problem with having an account? That you capture in your use base non-social people. Hey mom, put this in your phone and we'll exchange messages for free. 3) Because it just works and is not bound to a specific social network / company, people see it as SMS that is both free (hugely important because of stupidly overpriced SMS are, and especially, were). And... an improved version of SMS because MMS are totally a fail: limited, costly, lame. 4) Add to this business smartness behind that: old users don't pay for premium accounts, no ADV, resist to the temptation of fixing what is irrelevant for the mass of people (security) if this impacts in any way the product aspect (no account, trivial recovery of the account if you change phone). 5) Add to this product/technology smartness: don't archive messages server side so the service runs with 1/100 of resources. No huge scaling issues. So this is just a very very very well executed product, that was able to provide what users wanted, and this is why they did a 16B deal, not for the j2me app, every successful business is a mix of a number of critical things. The ground that made this possible was the incredible situation where on the internet era you had to pay 10 cents to exchange 160 chars between two phones.
- zyb09 13y ago
  I agree, this is the real reason WhatsApp took off so quickly. Especially that it automatically uses your phone number as account-id and then goes through your address book to automatically populate your WhatsApp contact list. No other Instant Messenger did that. It was always: Create account, exchange account-ids, add to contact list. This adds huge amounts of friction for a new service, and WhatsApp sidestepped this completely.
  - dba7dba 13y ago
    I use KakaoTalk occasionally and KakaoTalk also does the same thing, use phone # as acct, auto populate contact using address book and also suggests friends that you might want to add.
auctiontheory 13y ago
Speaking of J2ME, $16B is more than twice what Oracle paid to acquire Sun in 2010.
sdegutis 13y ago
How many people still have the exit strategy "die old"? Are we a shrinking group?
praetorian84 13y ago
Boy, that 2 in J2ME (and J2EE for that matter) just never goes away.
- twic 13y ago
  J2EE is officially JEE now: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javaee/overview/index.html http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javaee/overview/index... But yeah, i still call it J2EE too.
greatsuccess 13y ago
I have to say this is the wrong conclusion. J2ME and the stuff that runs it runs on is in the past. Its simply a waste of time. So Im not sure why the OP focused on this. Let's not make up reasons this guy got bought out beyond a few dinners with Zuck and a whole lotta luck.

489 points by nicpottier 13y ago

mik3y 13y ago

Citation needed; I'd certainly love to know whether J2ME devices were a significant chunk of WhatsApp's actives, but there's zero data to back up the suggestion..

dsl 13y ago
As of today: Smartphones outsold feature phones for this first time ever in India. http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/samsung-smartphones-outsell-feature-phones/1/344332.html http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/samsung-smartphones-outse... From my personal experiences, international countries that have smartphone adoption use Viber, and the feature phone countries use WhatsApp.
- ghshephard 13y ago
  Singapore is a Smartphone country, but Whatsapp is pretty dominant there. (I didn't run into anyone who didn't use it as their primary messaging platform)
  - rabino 13y ago
    Same in Argentina
  - thaumasiotes 13y ago
    In China, it seems to be Wechat. I had never heard of WhatsApp.
  - yen223 13y ago
    Same up here in Malaysia. In fact, it's starting to look like the only places that isn't dominated by WhatsApp are America and China.
    - dba7dba 13y ago
      You forgot china/Skorea/Japan, all big markets. WeChat - china S Korea - kakaotalk 90% market share LINE - Japan 50 million users with 300 million worldwide And all three have significant revenue in double digit US millions a year, unlike WhatsApp which has no real revenue...
      - skinnymuch 13y ago
        Whatsapp has revenue in the double digit US millions per year. Their profit might even be in that range.
- terhechte 13y ago
  WhatsApp is also really strong here in Germany and other parts of Europe. More of my friends are on WhatsApp than Facebook (only very few more though).
  - danieldk 13y ago
    Also in the Netherlands. E.g. in June 2013, 75% of the smartphone users used WhatsApp daily. Moreover, more than three quarter of the Dutch citizens has a smartphone. So, WhatsApp is definitely used in high-profit markets as well. Source: http://www.nu.nl/tech/3506473/whatsapp-heeft-kwart-miljard-actieve-gebruikers.html http://www.nu.nl/tech/3506473/whatsapp-heeft-kwart-miljard-a...
  - sschueller 13y ago
    These numbers are going to drop significantly now. Everyone I talk to is unhappy about the acquisition and will switch to something else like telegram.
    - enewcomer 13y ago
      Unless everybody switches, few will switch. Network effects also create some pretty powerful stickiness.
    - krisgenre 13y ago
      Unless Facebook actually puts their logo on WhatsApp, hardly anyone would notice. The tech community is minuscule compared to the large number of non-tech people using WhatsApp.
    - ville 13y ago
      I'd say more than 99.9% of WhatsApp users haven't heard of Telegram. WhatsApp users are mostly not early adopters like you and your friends. They are ordinary people, because WhatsApp is is a simple communication tool targeted to everyone. And that's why they keep doubling their user base.
    - Jare 13y ago
      The uproar in Spain about WhatsApp switching to $1 per year was huge, noisy and... emphemeral. Line got a lot of new signups for a few weeks, but the only person I know that still considers using Line today didn't even have WhatsApp back then (but, like everyone else, does have it now).
- dba7dba 13y ago
  KakaoTalk is big in S Korea. LINE is big in Japan. LINE has 300 million users, with 50 million in Japan. As far as I know, both are very profitable through sales of digital goods like stickers etc.
phn 13y ago
Remember that it's not only the J2ME actives that matter. The fact that you have access to all your friends wihtout exception inside the same app is killer, even if you have the latest iPhone. That's what made me return to WhatsApp in the first place. That, coupled with an apparently flawless experience.
Indyan 13y ago
It's not just the raw numbers. I would love to move onto Telegram, which is more secure, has an API, and works from a desktop. But, I can't. There are about five or six odd people in my life (professional or private) that I message frequently. Even if 1 out of them isn't on a particular messaging platform, I can't adopt that platform wholeheartedly. With Fb Messages, Hangouts and every other popular smartphone oriented messaging platform there would always be that one or two contacts that you regularly communicate with, who would be left out due to having an incompatible device. Whatsapp on the other hand works on pretty much every phone. When you want to replace something as prevalent as SMS, the long tail matters. There's another tangible benefit of focusing on so many platforms. Whatsapp, which doesn't spend much (if anything at all) on promotion, is prominently featured in the advertisements of many budget phones, as manufacturers see Whatsapp support as a strong selling point.
- mkesper 13y ago
  Use SMS.
  - SyneRyder 13y ago
    Not when SMS costs 29c per message. The free global text messaging that Whatsapp provides is potentially very disruptive to telcos.
    - aleh 13y ago
      It's the same way around. If telcos drop SMS const or make them free few people will have initiative to use Whatsapp.
qwerta 13y ago
Yeah, all those people in India and Africa use latest Iphone :-)

gojomo 13y ago

If anyone has used the J2ME version of WhatsApp, can they describe how similar it is to the smartphone versions? For example: • Do you get a notification as soon as messages are waiting, even if the J2ME app hasn't been run recently? • Are photo/video messages available? • Are the group messaging options the same?

thewarrior 13y ago
Yes all of them work. Not just that they work surprisingly well. This is the best J2ME app that I have ever used on my phone.
- sspiff 13y ago
  Background notifications too? I'm surprised - I wrote a Twitter client in 2009, and I couldn't find a way to make that work. I didn't think J2ME could do that at all, to be honest.
  - thewarrior 13y ago
    Even I dont know exactly how it works. I think Nokia gave them access to some private API.
    - pjmlp 13y ago
      J2ME is not Nokia specific.
      - sspiff 13y ago
        No, but it is not uncommon for J2ME apps to have a different package for certain vendors, or even for specific series or models of certain vendors. Those packages often utilize vendor-specific APIs or work around limitations or quirks in their J2ME stack. Opera's J2ME application took this to extremes, with dozens of different versions of a specific release.

dlhavema 13y ago

i dabbled with some J2ME development back in the day when palm pilots were cool, i even made a basic app for the original (early 2000-ish ) Motorola Razer.. it's not easy at all... i haven't looked for community resources for J2ME in years but back then i could find hardly any...

616c 13y ago
And out of curiosity I decided to search for J2ME on my laptop and Google had very little resources except official Oracle docs and a Java blog tutorial ... from 2005. Good times. https://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2005/02/09/j2me1.html https://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2005/02/09/j2me1.html
- dlhavema 13y ago
  what kills me is the initial release had support for the IR blaster that most palm pilots had, the next "SDK" i found had it removed, and i later read it was because of something along the lines of "most devices don't support this so we removed it". the possibility of having a programmable IR remote control on the cheap 12 years ago was amazing to me. I think its kinda cool that newer android devices are starting to have IR blasters again..
- pjmlp 13y ago
  Android killed J2ME, this is where all Java developers moved to. Oracle still tries to push J2ME, but the opportunity is gone.
megablast 13y ago
Come on, it is not that hard. Actually did some cool stuff very easily. I mean, it is no xcode easy, but it is eclipse easy.

coenhyde 13y ago

The key take away from this article is not to build your app in J2ME but to recognize how big the world is outside of America. American focused startups face lots of competition in a relatively small market.

nicpottier 13y ago
Ya.. that is definitely the takeaway. If you address all platforms, your market is suddenly both under served and absolutely huge.
- SunboX 13y ago
  That's the key of Firefox OS. Use well known technology and try to go into these markets.
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    My problem with Firefox OS is that they don't add any value over what is already possible in modern mobile OS. All of them have a web browser of some sort.
    - SunboX 13y ago
      It's not about what is possible todo, it's about replacing feature phones in developing markets. They can't effort "cheap" androids, neither iphones. And if they get the money for an "cheap" android they don't have money for the development equipment.
      - pjmlp 13y ago
        My old cheap feature phone had a good enough browser already.
        testernew 13y ago
        Ok

chubot 13y ago

I'm pretty ignorant about whatsapp, but I paged through their blog a couple hours ago, before reading this post (https://blog.whatsapp.com/ https://blog.whatsapp.com/). And the fact that they had blog posts about Windows Mobile, Nokia, and Blackberry clients really stood out. I think Google, Facebook et al probably prioritize those platforms last, if at all. So kudos to Whatsapp for their contrarian thinking. Their blog also shows the achievements of 1M and 2M simultaneous connections on a box, which I remember seeing here before on HN. So these guys are also very talented and experienced engineers.

apunic 13y ago

Wrong. Whatsapp didn't start with a J2ME app, they started with the smartphone versions first and later they provided J2ME versions when they had already significant market share.

nicpottier 13y ago
The point isn't actually which came first, it is that they are ubiquitous. The difference between WhatsApp and Viber is that WhatsApp put far more effort in being on every possible platform, and for something that relies on network effects, that effort was worth it.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

colin_mccabe 13y ago

Let's not forget Symbian and Blackberry either. WhatsApp also runs on those. I don't think starting a new Blackberry, Symbian or J2ME project today is really a good idea, though. It takes at least a few years for a company to make an exit, and by the time you do, those burning platforms will have flamed out.

blazespin 13y ago
It absolutely makes sense to work on a J2ME app today if you have a product aimed at developing nations. They won't be swimming in smartphones any time soon.
- colin_mccabe 13y ago
  I can't find the link now, but I remember some discussion of cheap Chinese-made Android phones selling for single-digit numbers of dollars. At the end of the day, it's just like any other piece of electronics. It's not like Android phones are made out of more expensive raw materials than dumbphones. They're just newer. So I think that eventually the third world will be swimming in smartphones-- probably a lot sooner than you think. Whether or not that impacts your business model depends on what the business model is, of course. I'm sure a few more Symbian apps will be cranked out as retailers blow out their stock of old inventory. Very poor people will probably hold on to old phones for years, as well. But phones do break, and batteries die after a few years, so a decade from now Symbian will be just an obscure memory, like the Acorn Archimedes or the ZX Spectrum.
- acchow 13y ago
  Low end Android phones are approaching feature phones in price.
  - vishnugupta 13y ago
    They are already cheaper than feature phones! At least in India : http://tinyurl.com/la5g2ou http://tinyurl.com/la5g2ou

cturhan 13y ago

Facebook paid 16B Dollars for 400,000,000 active phone numbers and all the personal info bound to them. It's not the app itself it's the data, you know it well too.

User8712 13y ago
It's likely most of those users were once on Facebook, so I don't think personal info was a big selling point here. I think they made the purchase because 400,000,000 users outside of their bubble is a little worrying. It's a threat, what happens if WhatsApp begins to pivot and push more into Facebook territory?
mattsyd 13y ago
That's not the case. WhatsApp barely holds any data. The user doesn't have to give over their personal details. It ties them to their mobile number & messages are stored only until they're pushed to the client. Once pushed they are then removed from WhatsApp servers.
- icebraining 13y ago
  I'm curious: how do you know that they're removed?
  - JetSpiegel 13y ago
    They pinky sweared, of course! /s
- polymatter 13y ago
  even if removed, WhatsApp could store metadata like who is talking to whom. This is valuable to try to identify the trendsetters and key people to market to. With a bit of text analysis like google do with gmail, they can personalise ads more. all very very valuable data.
- gazarsgo 13y ago
  You underestimate the value of the graph data.

webdisrupt 13y ago

I completely agree with most comments about catering for most operating systems but I also think that this acquisition was also due to Facebook "panicking" about losing ground (e.g. teens) and WhatsApp having a great number of monthly active users.

brisance 13y ago

Framed another way, it goes to demonstrate the ridiculous price paid for the company. How are the "other 3 billion people" without smartphones going to contribute to Facebook's bottom line? When they don't even have Facebook? That they don't even view ads? And that the cost of switching is practically close to zero, with many other competitive products like WeChat? It all seems to me that it's just to pad the "total number of active users on Facebook and associated platforms" column during earnings season.

merry-year 13y ago
>> How are the "other 3 billion people" without smartphones going to contribute to Facebook's bottom line? By becoming rich, of course.
eru 13y ago
> How are the "other 3 billion people" without smartphones going to contribute to Facebook's bottom line? When they don't even have Facebook? That makes them even more valuable. Why should Facebook buy users they already have?
- brisance 13y ago
  As WhatsApp's user base grows, the probability of users who are also on Facebook increases and vice versa. Which means you are supporting my argument that this is just a play for "number of users", since it's very likely a good proportion would be counted twice instead of uniquely.
edraferi 13y ago
I don't think they're necessarily looking to integrate the user bases that way. If Facebook's mission is simply to "connect everything ” then this gets them closer to that goal. Whatsapp profits are note Facebook profits, and Facebook is connecting everyone that Whatsapp used to connect. Facebook wants as many users as possible, connected to rapture in as many ways as possible. This is a big win for that, and will continue to reap benefits as the Whatsapp user base grows.

szatkus 13y ago

"And you know what, on $10 a day you probably don't have an iPhone or an Android handset." Most people I know who earn ~10$ a day have smartphones with Android or WP.

dhawalhs 13y ago

A comment [1] I made 829 days ago on Whatsapp Its biggest plus is that it is cross platform. They have apps for Blackberry, Android, iOS and Symbian. So you can talk with almost anybody out there. At least in my home country, most people have Blackberry/Symbian. Imagine having a group conversation with people on different platforms and in different countries. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3231053 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3231053

diaz 13y ago
Well they don't have an app for Jolla and are now sending takedown notices for the existing apps that try to take on that problem.

sgloutnikov 13y ago

http://openwhatsapp.org http://openwhatsapp.org - One example of how powerful the community around WhatsApp has been. Certainly loved it when I was on my Nokia N9.

kefs 13y ago
:( http://openwhatsapp.org/blog/2014/02/13/mass-dmca-takedowns-whatsapp/ http://openwhatsapp.org/blog/2014/02/13/mass-dmca-takedowns-...

enscr 13y ago

Really? The viral growth & popularity of Whatsapp is due to early J2ME versions rather than the widespread adoption of Android. I think it's the latter but maybe I'm mistaken.

notastartup 13y ago

can someone explain how a free app ends up generating $40 per user? more importantly, if facebook keeps buying large MAU at costs exceeding their revenues (not profit), at what point will those purchases start generating revenues (if at all)? at what point will they no longer have money to buy MAU or even generate revenue on those users they purchased and own? Are we in a new economy now just like 1999?

72deluxe 13y ago

J2ME is interesting. Each phone supported Java Specification Requests (JSRs) and you could look up which JSRs a phone supported. For example, JSR82 is some Bluetooth supporty thing. The real problem was that between different phones and JSRs, some implementations were really bad (I remember having a Nokia 6500slide with dodgy implementations) and varied between phone models. This was especially odd on Nokia phones considering that there were hundreds of phones running S40 or S60 and yet there were differences between those phones. (If I recall correctly, I had a 5200 and 5300 and there were differences between them). Highly unreliable. But $16bn unreliable for testing? Not sure. Well done for getting bought though.

enewcomer 13y ago
They aren't paying for a J2ME app and the requisite testing. They are paying for the results of the network effect made possible by it.
- 72deluxe 13y ago
  So, the $16bn is for a massive network of end-user testers? :-)

trhway 13y ago

reminds me about Sun buying StorageTek for 4B - a company whose technology and market had very visible end. J2ME on smartphones - basically an oxymoron if one knows why and how J2ME was designed 15 years ago - doesn't seem to be happening (despite predictable post-WhatsApp influx of crazy VC money into such combination in the next half year) and cheap $10-$20 smartphones are the next billions of devices.

doczoidberg 13y ago

The key success of Whatsapp is IMHO that it uses your phone's address book as contact list. There is no hurdle to use it what is very important for the average user. The multi platform support from beginning is second thing. J2ME as stated in the article is negligible. I can't understand why this article is on top of HN.

enewcomer 13y ago
The phone number as an id is a very important component to their adoption indeed. So do you posit that WhatsApp's adoption rates being what they are (compared to say Viber which does the same thing) is purely due to first mover?
- doczoidberg 13y ago
  yes that's my opinion.

porker 13y ago

OK, how is Whatsapp different to using SMS to communicate with friends? What am I missing?

k-mcgrady 13y ago
It's free to message people abroad.
cr3ative 13y ago
It is broadly speaking lower cost, allows media sharing (photos/sound clips) and provides delivery receipts.
unfamiliar 13y ago
It's free. No length limit. You can send pics and vids. No international fees.
Aissen 13y ago
It's cheaper (free). All this value stems from carriers's infinite greediness in making us pay (international) SMS and MMS.
- veb 13y ago
  It's only free if you have a data plan, right? (or connected to WiFi). Historically in NZ, SMS has been basically free, unlimited but data has been 10mb, 100mb etc. We're now trying to catch up on the world with our data plans on 3G and 4G networks, but even then it's about $50 NZD for 1gb data.
dnqthao 13y ago
group chat

pastylegs 13y ago

Is WhatsApp popular in the states? I'm Irish and living in Spain and in both countries it's incredibly popular. Most of my communication is channeled through it (I'd rather send a WhatsApp then call in most cases)

keerthiko 13y ago

This. This is the answer I have always looked for. > "But, but, how is WhatsApp any different than iMessage / Facebook Messenger / Hangouts?" I have made this exclamation multiple times, and my friends in India and Singapore and other parts of Asia just turned up their palms with a "I dunno, everyone uses it and told me to get it." I refused to use it since I like to use as few messaging platforms as possible (just Google Hangouts right now since it has most of my contacts, voice and video) despite my friends pestering me. J2ME is the most reasonable explanation. I see why it made Whatsapp itself popular. But still? Almost everyone I know who's using it actually uses it on an Android/iOS smart device. Who is this "everyone" of theirs using it on feature phones? I doubt their friends circle intersects that heavily with rural villagers living on $10/day. And also, is this really a viable long-term play for Facebook? How does this contribute towards the rest of their product plays?

enewcomer 13y ago
You only need one friend you care about using a Blackberry or Nokia for it to matter though. The long tail matters when it comes to communication.
- keerthiko 13y ago
  Ah. Blackberry. I forgot that is included in the J2ME target devices. That explains nearly everything, although any of my friends who had those blackberries have transitioned since, and now people are just (well played WhatsApp) locked into the service.
- dublinben 13y ago
  I'd rather just SMS/email them. At least those are actually cross-platform, and don't depend on proprietary apps like WhatsApp.
  - largote 13y ago
    SMSs are expensive and people just don't prioritize email like they do IMs.
13y ago

krisgenre 13y ago

One more thing.. I doubt anyone 'updates' a J2ME app, they had to get most of the stuff working perfectly the first time itself.

dschiptsov 13y ago

I is only me who is thinking that everything that worth $16B is happened on the server side and J2ME is just a crap?)

teemo_cute 13y ago

You forgot the marketing and promotion. (BTW I'm a techie trying to be a humanie :)

buster 13y ago

For this article to really make sense, we will need to know how many J2ME users _really_ us Whatsapp. Yes, there are many users with featurephones. But how many of them use Internet on it? Can i afford an internet flatrate with 20$/month income? Nope.

rglullis 13y ago

On the other hand, how does Facebook expect to monetize these millions of users who are living on $10/day? The number being thrown around yesterday was that Facebook paid $40/user. Bearing in mind that a good percentage of these users will never provide any ROI, it is one more reason to look like it was way overvalued.

pm90 13y ago
That's a good question. I will invoke my "lack of foresight" card though, and say that there might be other future benefits that come out of this service
sokoloff 13y ago
A significant portion if the deal value is defensive, IMO. AKA: so Google or VK don't buy them and strangle off a major tentacle of user adoption and stickiness of the FB ecosystem. Facebook doesn't have to directly monetize THOSE $10/day users for this to be a smart decision. They can monetize some users directly, but not having a competitor own whatsapp is worth a lot to FB.
- im3w1l 13y ago
  How long will it be until they have to purchase Whosdown for the same reason? How much time did they buy?

ck2 13y ago

Pretty sure facebook could give a darn about the app, they are buying access to the customers, to either get their data or show them ads. The app itself will probably be bloated or ruined within a couple years.

apetrovic 13y ago
The point of the article is that WhatsApp built that customer base not having only shiny iPhone or Android app, but also having a presence on feature phones.

_pmf_ 13y ago

> Writing J2ME apps is no cakewalk. It's a bizarre perversion of everything that makes software development bearable. I've created my share of horribly cobbled-together ad-hoc embedded software development toolchains, but these can't hold a candle to the abysmal monstrosity of a vendor-patched J2ME SDK.

sibbl 13y ago

Guess how long ICQ has a J2ME app...

kyberias 13y ago

Just amazing example of cargo-cult phenomenon! The idea that using a particular technology (here J2ME) would allow one to get a $16B exit. Hilarious!

twic 13y ago
Imagine how much they would have sold for if they'd used node.js!

theknown99 13y ago

Your path to happiness? Don't be so obsessed with money. Build something that's fun, and meaningful, that makes you, and others happy.

vayarajesh 13y ago

One of the key reasons whatsApp was successful was the simplicity for the user to start communicating - No registration or username creation hence allowing users not to care about remembering passwords. Another important feature was that the user did not have to search for their friends in family if they were on whatsapp and then add them or send request etc. They used the phone number and users phone book. If you have a friend uses whatsapp it will automatically show you. WhatsApps is easy, simple, quick and beautiful! so the path to $16B exit is not a J2ME app but an idea to get users start communicating with minimum amount of effort and time.

transfire 13y ago

Awesome, now Facebook can spy on everybody!

fredgrott 13y ago

Only problem is that low cost android is disrupting that, which I imagine is part of the reason for the decline in fb stock price seen yesterday.

sandeepspatil 13y ago

The article makes it sound a big deal to develop J2ME app. This app basically has just 2 screens, so I wouldn't think it would be any big deal to replicate those screens across platforms. Their challenge is more on the server-side, scaling for all the billions of users that they have - again, no big deal for plain text but mostly the pictures and the videos that are shared ...few big datacenters somewhere...again, nothing great. And hey, they dont even support voice calls. I dont buy that the app itself is a deal breaker. It's mostly their user base that they have been paid for.

swah 13y ago

Also, at least in Brazil, Whatsapp became a tool for journalists on the streets. A very interesting use...

mmmm 13y ago
And in Sweden (some) police men were discovered using Whatsapp - sending sensitive information about suspects[0]. They were discovered when they accidentally misstyped a phonenumber. Whoops. The police in Sweden have some Blackberry encrypted services, but apparently these police men were not given one because they're expensive. [0] Swedish source: http://computersweden.idg.se/2.2683/1.547026/polisens-chatt-miss--hemlig-spaninfo-pa-drift-i-whatsapp http://computersweden.idg.se/2.2683/1.547026/polisens-chatt-...

loup-vaillant 13y ago

Funny how Paul Graham came up with "schlep blindness"[1]: It's a subset of LessWrong's "ugh fields"[2]. [1]: http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html [2]: http://lesswrong.com/lw/21b/ugh_fields/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/21b/ugh_fields/

avenger123 13y ago

The message of the article is good but it's not seeing the forest from the trees. Having just read the Forbes artcile on the company and Jan in particular, some interesting things stood out: 1) Jan had money to start and was able to take time to build a user base and find the real value in the App and didn't need to go around "raising money". The SMS component of the app wasn't the initial focus. The company didn't need VC funding at any point. He was able to focus on product development and revenues started to come in to cover costs. 2) Jan is a technical guy. He did the initial backend but hired out the iPhone development. Either way he was involved. He developed the initial app for the first 9 months or so before bringing on Ackon as a cofounder. 3) There is real value in the app. No one needs to question this. There's no big pitch deck's, presentations, etc.The app was allowed to grow organically due to its network affect. The business can scale into the millions and billions of users. The $16 billion exit is largely due to number 3. It's rare for a lot of businesses to have that kind of scale. Reading the Forbes article, my takeaway is that there is no way anyone can "build a path to a xx billion exit". What one can do is find a business model that can actually scale and generate real revenue. Maybe not to billion users or hundreds of millions in revenue but enough to take it outside of the "lifestyle" business mode. Also, having money of your own and technical skills to execute doesn't hurt one bit. I think one lesson that I would take away for the younger crowd is - slow down a bit. Go work for a big corp or even a startup that pays well. Save every penny. Instead of spending that $100 on the get together every other night save it. Build your skills. At some point, go for it. You'll have money to live off, money to test your business model and a fallback if it doesn't work (get another job). EDIT: Another big reason for the big exit is incredible leverage by Jan. He's got the most equity. He doesn't need Facebook. He is already a millionaire and the App can only get better. This is deal making at its finest. I can only imagine how much back and forth happened, each time with a bigger number from Facebook.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
JoeAltmaier 13y ago
I'm a little more skeptical. This guy worked hard, sure, but as he seems to be the only guy making out big, after scores of guys worked hard. Maybe he's not much of a hero.

ausjke 13y ago

it looks so much like WeChat from Tencent(one of the largest IT company in China), and WeChat is totally free.

yungether 13y ago

Did anyone else chuckle at the title including "Path"?

antirez 13y ago

The j2me is just a piece of "it just works". 1) Covers a huge amount of devices. Yep, because j2me, but also because what could be the top-1 competitor, Apple iMessage, can't inter-operate between Apple and Android devices (very stupid tactic, it will get marginalized). 2) Does not require an account, so it is not bound to Facebook, Twitter, ... You may ask, what's the problem with having an account? That you capture in your use base non-social people. Hey mom, put this in your phone and we'll exchange messages for free. 3) Because it just works and is not bound to a specific social network / company, people see it as SMS that is both free (hugely important because of stupidly overpriced SMS are, and especially, were). And... an improved version of SMS because MMS are totally a fail: limited, costly, lame. 4) Add to this business smartness behind that: old users don't pay for premium accounts, no ADV, resist to the temptation of fixing what is irrelevant for the mass of people (security) if this impacts in any way the product aspect (no account, trivial recovery of the account if you change phone). 5) Add to this product/technology smartness: don't archive messages server side so the service runs with 1/100 of resources. No huge scaling issues. So this is just a very very very well executed product, that was able to provide what users wanted, and this is why they did a 16B deal, not for the j2me app, every successful business is a mix of a number of critical things. The ground that made this possible was the incredible situation where on the internet era you had to pay 10 cents to exchange 160 chars between two phones.

zyb09 13y ago
I agree, this is the real reason WhatsApp took off so quickly. Especially that it automatically uses your phone number as account-id and then goes through your address book to automatically populate your WhatsApp contact list. No other Instant Messenger did that. It was always: Create account, exchange account-ids, add to contact list. This adds huge amounts of friction for a new service, and WhatsApp sidestepped this completely.
- dba7dba 13y ago
  I use KakaoTalk occasionally and KakaoTalk also does the same thing, use phone # as acct, auto populate contact using address book and also suggests friends that you might want to add.

auctiontheory 13y ago

Speaking of J2ME, $16B is more than twice what Oracle paid to acquire Sun in 2010.

sdegutis 13y ago

How many people still have the exit strategy "die old"? Are we a shrinking group?

praetorian84 13y ago

Boy, that 2 in J2ME (and J2EE for that matter) just never goes away.

twic 13y ago
J2EE is officially JEE now: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javaee/overview/index.html http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javaee/overview/index... But yeah, i still call it J2EE too.

greatsuccess 13y ago

I have to say this is the wrong conclusion. J2ME and the stuff that runs it runs on is in the past. Its simply a waste of time. So Im not sure why the OP focused on this. Let's not make up reasons this guy got bought out beyond a few dinners with Zuck and a whole lotta luck.