Probably a much larger international userbase for WA. Anecdotal, but I've found that most non-English subreddits are pretty dead (or have niche users in foreign countries), whereas when I meet Turkish, Polish, Russian, French, etc. people in the US and abroad, they all ask me to add them on WhatsApp.
Not just internationally: a much larger userbase in general. And, I believe more importantly: reddit is essentially a forum. Few people are super invested into forums. They get older, their interests change, they have less time to argue about politics, they move on from forums. Whatsapp is a messenger, people rarely move on from those - it's usually the messengers that abandon their users, not the other way round (aim, icq, skype...), and they do profit from a network effect, reddit doesn't.
Facebook messenger wasn't actually a messenger in the IM sense, it was a bad site chat, and too locked in. Hence buying Whatsapp = good idea (plus much more data to mine, obviously).
You're right though: things can change. But they usually don't do too quickly once the dust has settled and the giants have emerged. Yeah, yeah, there could be a Google killer tomorrow, but there probably won't. That's very different when markets are still developing and nobody has any clue what's going to happen in 6 months time, but monopolists don't just disappear over night because a new kid rode into town. That's what's different between snapchat, myspace and facebook.
Reddit has nothing even close to that kind of pull. To get to the advertising dollars, it will have to crack down on users and become sfw, and that will turn lots of people away. When there's money to be made, they will also have to deal with copy right, and that will shut down a good part of the meme subreddits, I'm afraid. I'm sure it'll still have a place in a few years, controlling a major discussion platforms is worth money after all, but I don't see it going to the big league by staying what they are now.
I believe WhatsApp had paying customers and profits at the time of acquisition. In addition, Reddit doesn't have the same network effects. Reddit is just something I do for fun, and if a certain user is not on Reddit, I don't really care as long as there are some users. With WhatsApp, the fact that my specific family member is there makes a big difference. Thus, the network effects are stronger for WhatsApp.
Because reddit's user base is small compared to whatsapp's. Reddit has about 330 million users while whatsapp has 1.5 billion. Not only that, whatsapp's user base is the more lucrative smartphone/app/mobile while a significant portion of reddit's users are desktop.
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[ 606 ms ] story [ 860 ms ] threadIn 5 Years, snapchat went from the next crazy thing to something I barely hear about.
Remember frontback ? They turned down $40 million 5 years ago.
I could go on and on. Meanwhile, reddit is in the top 10 most visited websites in the world for as long as I can remember.
You're right though: things can change. But they usually don't do too quickly once the dust has settled and the giants have emerged. Yeah, yeah, there could be a Google killer tomorrow, but there probably won't. That's very different when markets are still developing and nobody has any clue what's going to happen in 6 months time, but monopolists don't just disappear over night because a new kid rode into town. That's what's different between snapchat, myspace and facebook.
Reddit has nothing even close to that kind of pull. To get to the advertising dollars, it will have to crack down on users and become sfw, and that will turn lots of people away. When there's money to be made, they will also have to deal with copy right, and that will shut down a good part of the meme subreddits, I'm afraid. I'm sure it'll still have a place in a few years, controlling a major discussion platforms is worth money after all, but I don't see it going to the big league by staying what they are now.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-net...