^^^ what @LZ1 said. @bing could use it to text me for free, but he refuses to get a modern phone 
I see parallels with Yahoo here but only time will tell. I canāt imagine Facebook, given the documented failures of Yahoo, would go down that road. But politicians do something similar all the timeā¦
wtf is whatsapp?
yeah i know that a lot of people use whatsapp and after reading some of the stuff in the last 24 hours i get it.
because itās data-based you can use it to get around roaming for international users. As a result the app is HUGE in Europe, Africa, Asia etc. where Facebook is weaker.
On a per user basis the valuation seems light. $42 per user vs like $177 per user is Facebookās valuation and $212 is Twitter.
Strategically it makes good sense but that doesnāt mean it will pan out for FB. I hope it does thoughā¦ because if FB goes down someone PE firm or a media group will do a proxy on themā¦ iād rather Zuckerberg ran the show than some hedge fund manager
Speaking of companies that had insanely large market share and a planā¦
Anyone still use AOL?
who was running AOL though?
Some of the best people at the time?
My point is this HAS happened before - Dot-com bubble - Wikipedia
At that point it was anything internet related fast forward 10-15 years now itās social media/mobile apps.
Just say mobile/social media and you can get a few million in VC funding
You think a company that charges $.99 a user for 1 year of service with 450 million users is worth 19 billion? Youāre in completely uncharted territory when you look long term at mobile.
There was a time when nobody thought blackberry would fail for example
well they couldnāt have been that good but sure, hindsight is 20/20
you know there are so many ways to monetize metadata without ever touching the customer. Linking Whatsapp metadata to FB data would increase the value of targeted advertising in a pretty big way. There are a number of ways to monetize without advertising or increasing annual rates. I dont know about reaching a $19b valuation without advertising but if anyone can do it it would be FB or Google.
WhatsApp claims nothing is going to change we shall see
nothing will change on the user sideā¦ itāll change on the data side.
I think theyāre going to figure out the amount of useful data in private conversations over SMS/chat is very little
At least facebook you like and interact with products/companies/etc it makes smart suggestions on ads based on that data.
Theyāll pick up some gps based data too, maybe link the whatsapp account with FB and Instagram and get their ad rev that way
early peeps are getting $160mil each
ā¦and iād retire.
After Canada took their taxes out youād almost have enough for a new GT3.
Canada???
nah, you hold your shares in trust through a holdco and then have all your friends and family on as beneficiaries and use up their capital gains exemptionsā¦ then pay corporate tax rates on the balance brah
IIRC facebook only made something like 1.3 billion in 2013
19B for phone numbers that are required for the app and are not required to be inputted into FB
If Facebook dies it will because of shit like this and businesses abandoning it.
PSā¦ subscribe to Veritasium on Youtube, he always posts good stuff.
Is this really true?
SpaceX is only worth 4.8 billion :ham: