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Something that resonates in the article for me is that I don't understand the utility of Facebook's big acquisitions. You see Google and Apple make acquisitions

Something that resonates in the article for me is that I don't understand the utility of Facebook's big acquisitions. You see Google and Apple make acquisitions for talent and technology to build out products they want to launch and/or improve that ultimately drive their core business. What does WhatsApp provide Facebook? People are talking about the value of the user base. How is the user base more valuable to Facebook than it would be to Wal-Mart? Is Facebook going to merge WhatsApp accounts into FB accounts and the WhatsApp platform into Facebook Messenger? Ditto for Instagram. I'm not sure what advantage that provided to Facebook. As far as I can tell it's an entirely separate products and platform and user base. If anyone has insight on this, please enlighten me!

ivraatiems 13y ago
Personally, I'm not sure that it does provide Facebook anything - same for Instagram. That said, there is an argument I think could be made as follows: Facebook (and Google) is essentially about data. The more information they have on a given person, the more information they have period, the more valuable they are. This value is to advertisers and marketers of course (the real "customers") but also to end users. WhatsApp is $19 billion worth of data about people in places where Facebook doesn't have a lot of data. Countries like India, for example. I don't think Facebook penetration is nearly as significant there as it is in the US (though I do not have a statistic on hand for that ATM). So the argument is that WhatsApp gives Facebook a foot in the door to more information on more places at once. Just like Google gets data on what people want from their videos from YouTube, Instagram gives Facebook more information on what people do with their images and how they share them. Facebook already does these things - messaging and image sharing - but it could be argued that Facebook will be able to do them better/more profitably/at least in a more aware way if it studies how it works for Instagram and WhatsApp. Again, I don't really see the point myself - but that's an argument that could be made.
goatforce5 13y ago
One argument is that for Facebook it's better that they own the big competitors rather than someone else (Google rolling it in to Google+, Apple doing something with it, etc). As long as they keep swallowing up any "social(-ish) network" app before they become a real threat to Facebook, Facebook can still be the king.
krick 13y ago
Here's pretty realistic article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2014/02/20/5-key-reasons-whatsapp-is-worth-19bn-to-facebook/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2014/02/20/5-key-rea... I don't have an opinion on that topic, but probably just data mining on the set of WhatsApp users can be pretty useful. What is more interesting for me is why WhatsApp is so popular? It's not unique, is it? Why is it so special?
- qw 13y ago
  I haven't used WhatsApp, but from what I can tell it runs on a lot of platforms, including feature phones. An iPhone app is of no use to someone who can't afford one. Perhaps there are more affordable cheap Chinese Android phones these days, but WhatsApp started in 2009 It's also a network effect where people use it because their friends use it. I have the same questions about Craigslist. There were certainly a lot of free competitors at the time, but somehow they managed to attract users.
  - krick 13y ago
    Oh, feature phones… Yeah, that must be it. I was thinking about smartphone apps. Skype has been around for years even before smartphones became popular. Last smartphone I had was way before Android was born, so I can't exactly name rivals of WhatsApp, but I'm sure I heard about many of them even before I heard about WhatsApp. There're many messengers (even completely free ones), there're bridges between them, there's Viber. But, yes, availability on feature phones explains a lot.

ivraatiems 13y ago

Personally, I'm not sure that it does provide Facebook anything - same for Instagram. That said, there is an argument I think could be made as follows: Facebook (and Google) is essentially about data. The more information they have on a given person, the more information they have period, the more valuable they are. This value is to advertisers and marketers of course (the real "customers") but also to end users. WhatsApp is $19 billion worth of data about people in places where Facebook doesn't have a lot of data. Countries like India, for example. I don't think Facebook penetration is nearly as significant there as it is in the US (though I do not have a statistic on hand for that ATM). So the argument is that WhatsApp gives Facebook a foot in the door to more information on more places at once. Just like Google gets data on what people want from their videos from YouTube, Instagram gives Facebook more information on what people do with their images and how they share them. Facebook already does these things - messaging and image sharing - but it could be argued that Facebook will be able to do them better/more profitably/at least in a more aware way if it studies how it works for Instagram and WhatsApp. Again, I don't really see the point myself - but that's an argument that could be made.

goatforce5 13y ago

One argument is that for Facebook it's better that they own the big competitors rather than someone else (Google rolling it in to Google+, Apple doing something with it, etc). As long as they keep swallowing up any "social(-ish) network" app before they become a real threat to Facebook, Facebook can still be the king.

krick 13y ago

Here's pretty realistic article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2014/02/20/5-key-reasons-whatsapp-is-worth-19bn-to-facebook/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2014/02/20/5-key-rea... I don't have an opinion on that topic, but probably just data mining on the set of WhatsApp users can be pretty useful. What is more interesting for me is why WhatsApp is so popular? It's not unique, is it? Why is it so special?

qw 13y ago
I haven't used WhatsApp, but from what I can tell it runs on a lot of platforms, including feature phones. An iPhone app is of no use to someone who can't afford one. Perhaps there are more affordable cheap Chinese Android phones these days, but WhatsApp started in 2009 It's also a network effect where people use it because their friends use it. I have the same questions about Craigslist. There were certainly a lot of free competitors at the time, but somehow they managed to attract users.
- krick 13y ago
  Oh, feature phones… Yeah, that must be it. I was thinking about smartphone apps. Skype has been around for years even before smartphones became popular. Last smartphone I had was way before Android was born, so I can't exactly name rivals of WhatsApp, but I'm sure I heard about many of them even before I heard about WhatsApp. There're many messengers (even completely free ones), there're bridges between them, there's Viber. But, yes, availability on feature phones explains a lot.