Unique and applicable to a growing market. Cars are made sub-optimally to maximize repeat purchases, and still have to advertise more than almost any other product. Don't forget that several professions and industries that rely on real-time communication are utilizing IM and texting, energy trading and logistics are nearly impossible nowadays without it.
I know and understand what WhatsApp and related are. I get why they are useful... From a cost perspective to the consumer... But this is a clear overreach to just get anyone to agree to be bought by Zuck. He's bee spurned a bit here lately.... $19 billion for a product that did $20 million in revenues? Um... Yeah, I get that the revenue faucet has barely been opened... This seems to be first about international, where whatsapp has lots of users and where texting monetizes through games, stickers, etc a lot better than it does for US customers. Also interesting how quickly FB has turned into that old incumbent, overpaying for new innovators as their own innovations (Messenger, Snapchat clone, Paper) either fail or underperform.
i totally agree. facebook has been trying to promote their own messenger, but i guess it hasn't been doing well. whatsapp has a young customer base, which is a demographic that has been escaping facebook lately. you need to appeal to the youth nowadays if you want to stick around. to their credit though buys like instagram have been keeping them afloat, so if they have the cash to spend it's worth it if you're able to find the new instagram
Thank you. I have downloaded it on my windows phone but it seems very simple to me. Text anyone with it, send a voice note or picture and call their cell. Dont see anything about location .
Not ripping what you are saying but I've tried to figure this out and it makes absolutely zero sense. The bottom line is how do they make money and what makes whatsapp special? I can use kik, or yahoo messenger, or line app, or skype or BBM, or a million other things to message people too. This will trump HP's acquisition of Autonomy. Insanely stupid waste of money for FB.
One thing that does concern me is how quickly this deal was done. According to the FT, whilst Zuckerberg did approach Whatsapp in 2012, they started talking seriously only in the last week and a half. I guess I'll let the FT Lex explain a bit:
A lot of it is just shares. Maybe facebook just thinks their shares are overvalued right now. It is all play money. Next year they can take a huge loss on the write down and avoid paying taxes for a little while.
F'n *******. Its also used for people that have cellphones internationally but can't text when they're in the states or vice versa. You would know if you would travel 2 miles past your trailer home and do some real traveling besides taken your white honky ass to the dearlys. b****.
Isn't snapchat better than whatsapp or are they a different business model? I guess whatsapp has the free global texting which is huge.
Well my wife uses it to talk to her Mother and sister back in Ukraine and yes they are very very very poor. Dirt poor. You ********er. Can't believe you're still a member here.
Snapchat can only do pictures, but you can always write text on labels on those pictures. I don't know how WhatsApp works.
Whats app is a full-fledged messenger, with group messaging, file sharing, etc. It is a robust app - but still not worth $40 a user. With that said, Facebook is a miner of data and that is why they continue to make these acquisitions. They don't feel the apps or technology are worth the price, it is all of the data that they seek to collect using said apps and tech.
19 billion text messages ... per day. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/20/facebook-buys-whatsapp_n_4822923.html You may never have heard of WhatsApp, the messaging service which Facebook on Wednesday announced it had purchased for a jaw-dropping $19 billion, but a lot of people, especially in India, Latin America and Europe, have. And they use it. A lot. WhatsApp customers send a whopping 19 billion messages each day. Yes, that's billion. With a "b." To put that huge number in perspective -- more WhatsApp messages were sent and received in 2013 than SMS messages were sent and received on all U.S. and Chinese wireless carriers combined, according to data from Chetan Sharma Consulting, a Washington-based firm that advises mobile carriers.
