Where I live (in South America), carriers give WhatsApp traffic for free to their clients. I guess this is probably the case in other countries as well.
There's also the B2C communication side of things. Businesses would be willing to pay to communicate with their customers via WhatsApp. Disclaimer: Until this year I worked for a company building apps to let businesses communicate with their customers via SMS and Facebook. Support for WhatsApp was the next most asked-for platform from our customers and prospects.
They had ~50 people at time of acquisition. Assuming a steep expense level of $18,500/employee/month, total run rate cost was at ~$11M/year. At a $1 a new user (were at 600M users and growing fast), WhatsApp was almost definitely cash flow positive at time of acquisition.
I wish I could get myself to take the hit and uninstall all my surveillance capitalism but I'm taking a middle road approach => install signal, try to talk to my friends on signal > whatsapp > messenger, try to persuade people to move to signal. Has worked sometimes. I ask anyone else too weak to go detox to try the same thing.
I made a clean break (never installed WhatsApp in the first place, in fact). I got many friends to install Signal and use it to contact me, but only since other people have started using it as their preferred messaging app as well is it reaching critical mass - friends who are not on Signal are now starting to use it due to FOMO.
So what I'm trying to say is: I've seen your strategy working, so it's a good one that doesn't require you to make too many personal sacrifices.
I tried Signal and it was hopelessly broken unfortunately. No matter what I did I could not get it to consistently send push notifications when I received a message which is practically the second most important feature of a chat app.
How long ago? My group of friends switched to Signal a few weeks back and there have been no issues with push notifications for me on iOS. It might be worth another look if it's been a while.
Only a couple of months ago (second time I tried, both times same issue). This was on Android btw. To be clear I meant the push notification on my own device didn't work (reading back I can see what I said could be misinterpreted). I suspect it had something to do with aggressive background process management but even switching everything to low power efficiency settings/ always on didn't work consistently. I've moved on.
Nobody actually paid for WhatsApp. At least, nobody I know off. They supposedly required you to pay 1€ a year after the first year, but everybody kept using it for free forever. I'd say they never made any money.
> Nobody actually paid for WhatsApp. At least, nobody I know off.
People did pay. Its just that the charging was somewhat selective. Obviously you and your friends weren't in the group that was selected.
Originally, it was a paid app ($1) on the iPhone. Eventually, that was dropped in favor of using in-app billing to actually charge the $1/year on Android... but this was only enforced in a few selected countries at first. Once the Facebook acquisition happened, this effort was dropped. If it hadn't happened, then charging users would have expanded gradually over time.
I mean, let's be honest, it's just a chat application. It is almost trivial to build and maintain. And since it uses your phone number, there is no friction to switch to another app--if they decided to charge for it, Telegram would eat it alive in months.
Are you suggesting that building a chat application where most of the chats are one-to-one is a complex problem, computer science-wise? The fact that there are hundreds of chat apps, and that they could manage hundreds of millions of users with just 50 employees proves that that is false.
I could build a chat app typing with my cock, and I'm sure you could too. We don't do it because we know the market is already saturated as it is... because of how easy it is.
I find it amusing just how many people make this assumption up-front. Probably because its one of those "problems" that seems simple on the surface, until you start digging deeper. This gets especially true once you take into account offline delivery, presence management, delivered/read receipts, group/broadcast use cases, efficient use of the network, complexities of reliable/efficient cross-platform media transfer across a variety of formats, and... robust end-to-end encryption.
And the bleed continues. Who important is still left? Soon enough it will only be the good little corporate grovelers that will implement whatever Facebook tells them.
The bleed shouldn't actually surprise anyone who knows how the acquisition actually happened. It only surprises tech reporters who are universally oblivious to this part.
If someone said: "We're buying the company you work for, and you're going to get $$$$$ out of the deal. You get some of it up-front, and the rest dolled out over the next four years."
Well, now the four years are up. Do you stay and continue to simply work for $, or do you take a break and find something new to do with your life?
Considering that they worked for $ beforehand and will likely not get more than $ at other places, there is at least the theoretical possibility that it didn't all turn to shit and that they would choose to continue working at the company for the same reason they initially started working there.
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[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 91.4 ms ] threadWhen Facebook bought it, the business model was to turn its users into the product.
So what I'm trying to say is: I've seen your strategy working, so it's a good one that doesn't require you to make too many personal sacrifices.
But not on iOS, they had to pay.
People did pay. Its just that the charging was somewhat selective. Obviously you and your friends weren't in the group that was selected.
Originally, it was a paid app ($1) on the iPhone. Eventually, that was dropped in favor of using in-app billing to actually charge the $1/year on Android... but this was only enforced in a few selected countries at first. Once the Facebook acquisition happened, this effort was dropped. If it hadn't happened, then charging users would have expanded gradually over time.
I can tell you with confidence that very few users in eastern Europe would pay even an euro for an app that used to be free and has free alternatives.
In fact my friends and I discussed that exact particular scenario when we once got a notification from WhatsApp about future payments.
I mean, let's be honest, it's just a chat application. It is almost trivial to build and maintain. And since it uses your phone number, there is no friction to switch to another app--if they decided to charge for it, Telegram would eat it alive in months.
I'm interested to know what you've made or helped to make that is more complex and more difficult to maintain than whatsapp.
I could build a chat app typing with my cock, and I'm sure you could too. We don't do it because we know the market is already saturated as it is... because of how easy it is.
If someone said: "We're buying the company you work for, and you're going to get $$$$$ out of the deal. You get some of it up-front, and the rest dolled out over the next four years." Well, now the four years are up. Do you stay and continue to simply work for $, or do you take a break and find something new to do with your life?