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Who's On WhatsApp, and Why?
theodp writes "In announcing its $16B acquisition of WhatsApp, Facebook confessed it had very little data on WhatsApp's estimated 450 million users. Asked about the user data, Facebook CFO David Ebersman said, 'WhatsApp has good penetration across all demographics but you are not asked your age when you sign up.' Wall Street analysts concerned by Ebersman's answer won't be comforted by GeekWire reporter Taylor Soper's (non-scientific) poll of UW students, which suggested that WhatsApp may not exactly be BMOC (Big Messenger on Campus). 'I don't use it at all,' replied one UW junior. 'I've heard of it but I have so many other things I do online that it would just be another time-consuming thing. I use Facebook or texting to talk to people.' WhatsApp did fare better in a survey of Soper's Facebook network, where responders said they used WhatsApp mostly for communicating internationally and in groups. So, are you or someone you know using WhatsApp, and what's the motivation for doing so?"
she's 16 and uses whatsapp all the time because it's cheaper than SMS. I guess they get their demographics by analysing word frequency histograms, age being inversely proportioal to LPS ("like" per sentence)
I only heard of it because of its acquisition last week, and haven't used it.
I'm a 20 year-old in a South American country. Here WhatsApp is the chatting program of choice and I'm on the following groups:
-One group for the guys on my university classroom
-One group for the close friends
-One group for friends living on different states (Dota 2 players)
-Another group for other friends
Usually young men also have groups for exchanging NSFW pics of female friends and ex-girlfriends.
I'm a 5-digit /. user, i.e. an old guy, but I do use WhatsApp. Only with international friends, though. Even then I tend to use Facebook messenger, but there were a few people who wanted nothing to do with Facebook, and they were actually the ones who pushed me to WhatsApp. I wonder what will happen with them now.
Almost everyone I know that has a smartphone (~80% of the people I know) uses WhatsApp for messaging one-to-one and for groups.
I'm a South African and most of my friends and family use WhatsApp. In South Africa, as in many other developing countries, SMS text messages are expensive and WhatsApp is used to save costs. BlackBerries are also (still) popular here - free BBM was a main reason for its popularity. WhatsApp's cross-platform capability (iOS, Android, BB and even Symbian) makes is a very attractive option.
Please see the article below:
http://mybroadband.co.za/news/...
I use email.
I use it, it's pretty popular in the Netherlands. However I am looking for an alternative.. But not Telegram (which seems to be picking up a lot of refuguees).
I would love something open source, so I'm going to have a look at Wazapp (a.ka. OpenWhatsapp). Anybody have any experience with it?
WhatsApp has recently overcome a similar dilemma, albeit with a differing strategy.
Zuck has exhibited an ability to transition from product creator to successful CEO, so it's entirely plausible he knows what he's doing here. Of course, by default, it's also plausible he doesn't.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
...lots of people aged 12-50 are using it as their main texting and groupchat app. I have friends, family and colleagues in there and everybody I know on it uses it extensively. Also, anytime there is some event (be it sports, nights out, bachelor parties, holidays) or any type of real-life group is established (roommates, classmates, families, close friends, fraternities), WhatsApp is there to facilitate. By the way, any comparison to traditional texting is ludicrous: with recorded voice, "I am here" GPS location with maps integration, multimedia sharing, etc. Just like most of its competitors, I'm sure.
I have seen the app in the Google Play store, but since I have unlimited messaging from Verizon, felt no need to use it. The app appears to be more popular overseas than in the States due to the high charges that foreign wireless providers charge for SMS. This app allows users to avoid those charges. It looks like this is a play by FB to tap into the large international user base of this app, imo...
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
Just providing my own anecdote to the conversation. Seems like the entire* country of Dominican Republic is using WhatsApp. From what I recall, BlackBerry Messenger had become the IM app of choice. People saw it as "free SMS". Everyone wanted a BlackBerry, just for the messenger app. Long after RIM had lost most of it's marketshare here in the US, it was still going strong there. Eventually though, they couldn't ignore the iPhone anymore, and WhatsApp was one of the few IM apps that worked across the phones. Now, black berry is dead, and iPhones have iMessage, but WhatApp has momentum, and much better group messaging features. I personally don't know of anyone in the US that uses WhatsApp without there having been a need to communicate which someone internationally that has it. Stop looking for users in the US. That's not where the WhatApps users are.
Someone invited me to use it a few months ago. A quick google search turned up some horror stories about security problems and privacy issues (some people reported that it downloads and spams your phone's entire contact list), so I took a pass on downloading it.
Probably right up Facebook's alley, though.. :)
So will WhatsApp bring more than 16 billion in net profit throughout its lifetime?
Because that would be needed to break even on the price they paid, that, or to find someone else to pay 16B or more. At 450 million people, that would require each one of their users to pay $35 dollars for 16B dollars revenue, not profit. If their users are 7 billion instead (the entire world population), that would require $2-3 dollars from each one.
I have WhatsApp installed on my smartphone, and the only reason I use it is to NOT PAY for sending SMS messages. That's what their user-base is - people who don't want to pay. How they plan on getting more than $35 from each and every one, is beyond me.
I assume the girlfriend and fiancée is the same person, otherwise you could get into trouble if you chat to both at once! ;-)
A few college students in America say they don't use it.
But so what if _all_ college students in America don't use it? College students in America are Facebook users already; they aren't why Zuckerberg bought WhatsApp.
There's a big wide world out there, theodp.
Am I the only person who can't understand why anyone in their right mind would pay 1 billion, (let alone 19 billion) for a company that pretty much just does IM for phones? I mean, there are a ton of instant messengers out there. Most have good phone integration. Whether this will break even for Facebook or not is a given. It wont. They may not loose their shirt, but there is no way they are going to make their 19 billion back from a company with 40 million in revenue. The math doesn't add up. Even if paying ~$40 a user was a good move for a company like FB, there is no reason people will stay on WhatsApp if they don't want to. It's not like FB where leaving can be tricky if you have a lot of content there you don't want to loose access to. You aren't going to see a mass exodus of FB, but within a matter of months, you could in WhatsApp. Having said that, the creators of WhatsApp get massive props. Creating a platform that does something that 50 other competitors have and are already doing, and then selling it for 19 billion dollars is massively impressive. With these numbers, I'm going to have to reevaluate Blackberry's stock price. Valued currently at under 5 billion, BBM has to be worth at least 10 billion by itself. Which means the stock should double in the next few days, as Google looks to acquire BBM to compete with Facebook.
A friend did a quite decent analysis on Telegram's shortcomings regarding what they offer:
http://blog.tincho.org/posts/T...
He points at this second article, that strongly criticizes Telegram's supposedly strong, proprietary crypto:
http://unhandledexpression.com...
Nothing like texting "hey beautiful! Good morning!" to your "loved ones" group at 7PM!
Lots of people have packages with tonnes of text messages making them, essentially, free or very low cost - however SMS doesn't do anything beyond 1:1 communication in plain old text. So picture sharing and group chats are out.
MMS can do that, but it's often excluded from SMS packages - so after a few messages it can start to get rather expensive. Even more so when you are sending these things to different countries.
iMessage can do that too and it's nicely integrated into iOS. If your friends aren't using iOS though then it all falls down.
So, combining these all together gets you the following wish list:
WhatsApp (and the like) fill this gap.
In the future, I expect to see an update to WhatsApp on Android that allows it to take over as the main SMS application. That way it can work in the same way as iMessage on iOS - if you send a message and the recipient is on WhatsApp then it goes via them. If not, then it gets sent as a plain old text message.
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I’m a European expat working in Malaysia. I never heard of WhatsApp before getting into the country one year ago. Now I’m using it every single day. It seems the whole country gave up on SMS and using nothing but WhatsApp for everything from photo sharing to group messaging.
I do the exact same thing free with what is built into the iphone. imessage is 100% free except for the data charge. Mind blowing that android has not done the same thing.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It's a mobile messenger app similar to the old PC version of ICQ or the BB messenger. People around the world started using alternate messaging apps like this to get around hefty fees some carriers charge for SMS. If your country/region has free or low cost SMS, these alternate messaging plans are not as popular. WhatsApp happened to be one that became more popular than others. I guess Facebook calculated that if they can get all of these people around the world using it under the Facebook umbrella, it will give them more eyes, more users, and more user information.
I installed WhatsApp (iOS) as it was one of the first cross platform messengers that allowed me to send messages on the cheap while traveling to international congresses with my coworkers, some of which used BBM and early Andriod-based phones. This was about 5 years ago, and have used it since with, primarily with Indian nationals as well as Pharmaceutical Industry professionals.
My family got WhatsApp while traveling in Europe, with no data plan on our US phones. Since most hotels have free WiFi, it was the low cost way for my wife and I to communicate with our kids when we split up for a week to different countries.
Back home, it is still being used, as it is handier to group people than SMS/MMS... I was thinking of paying for it when my free year was up this summer, but now that FB bought it, I will drop it. I am not a FB user.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
He creates/offers/buys a free service that by its nature can learn a lot about its users. He then gradually relaxes privacy assurances and changes the sharing defaults to "we can do whatever we want with information we collect about you", and sells the info to advertisers.
Anybody who thinks this won't happen to WhatsApp hasn't been paying attention.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Twitter is run by 13 people. 13 people!
And Twitter has yet to turn a penny of profit so I'm not sure what your point is. If they can't turn a profit with overhead that low I would be rather concerned if I were an investor.
They don't care about revenue, they want your data and they want lock-in. And they'll trade lock-in for data and omnipresence at any time.
Yeah we heard all the same BS arguments back around 1998-2001. They were bullshit then and they are bullshit now.
We are moving head on into a post-scarcity economy, at least in terms of digital connectivity...
"Post scarcity"? You've been watching too much Star Trek.
The purchase might bomb, yes, but it might as well just turn out to be a real bargain. And if it bombs it won't even do a blip on FBs bank account.
If you think a potential $19 billion write-down is just a "blip", you really don't understand finance. This is an investment that even under the rosiest scenario I can come up with, will take decades to break even. WhatsApp may be valuable but there is no way in hell it is worth that much money right now.
The world is changing, and it's changing fast. The dot-bomb era was just people getting ahead of them selves in a way that wasn't good for them. The hardware wasn't there, Databases and IDEs costed more than luxury cars, and what passes as a toy today was a cray workstation in 2001 that would set you back 30 grand. It was silly back then. It isn't now.
I love watching people who think the laws of economics have suddenly been repealed. It's hysterical. We heard all the same stupid arguments 15 years ago. Every other fool was trumpeting the "new economy" as justification for their stupid business plans and bad investments. A stupid valuation is a stupid valuation. There MUST be some way to recoup the investment or it is a waste of money no matter how many eyeballs it delivers or how much the company thinks they have "locked in" their users. If you can give me even a vaguely plausible way that this purchase makes financial sense at $19B, I'll eat my shoe in barbecue sauce.
I just got back from traveling through Bedouin country in Jordan, and several Bedouin men who live miles from civilization without wired electricity and whose extent of knowledge of technology is how to drive their truck and charge their feature phone from solar panels separately told me that they use WhatsApp to communicate with other Bedouin families and friends. The cost savings over SMS is key, but the brilliance of WhatsApp was the decision even in this day and age to implement Symbian and J2ME clients.
I have to pay extra for unlimited SMS (and this is recent, a few years ago SMS was absurdly expensive).
SMS at almost any price is absurdly expensive. SMS is about the closest thing in the known universe to pure profit. The primary cost of it is administering the billing system.