Conversation-Based Pricing
developers.facebook.com
developers.facebook.com
This walled garden needs to die or I am hoping for some law changes requiring all messenger apps to open up their protocols. It is my data.
Telegram is the more consumer-friendly choice, partly because they have not entrenched their market position in the same way that WhatsApp has.
At the end of the day, how else will chat apps make money? Fundamentally, as long as it's one central service run by one company they'll have to make money by eventually milking their users once they have the marketshare. Whatsapp said they'd do it forever and now they are.
These parts highlight the strategy:
> 4. All the features that are currently free will stay free. We will add some new features for business teams or power users. Some of these features will require more resources and will be paid for by these premium users. Regular users will be able to keep enjoying Telegram – for free, forever.
> 5. All parts of Telegram devoted to messaging will remain ad-free. We think that displaying ads in private 1-to-1 chats or group chats is a bad idea. Communication between people should be free of advertising of any sort.
> 6. In addition to its messaging component, Telegram has a social networking dimension. Our massive public one-to-many channels can have millions of subscribers each and are more like Twitter feeds. In many markets the owners of such channels display ads to earn money, sometimes using third-party ad platforms. The ads they post look like regular messages, and are often intrusive. We will fix this by introducing our own Ad Platform for public one-to-many channels – one that is user-friendly, respects privacy and allows us to cover the costs of servers and traffic.
If you accept the co-founder's statement, Telegram is only going to monetize one-to-many communications, and not charge fees for one-to-one conversations (in contrast to WhatsApp). Telegram is privately held, not publicly traded, and has no obligation to prioritize profit maximization over their mission.
* The statement is linked from their FAQ: https://telegram.org/faq#q-how-are-you-going-to-make-money-o...
Generally, my preference is an open protocol because protocols can't be controlled by one person and they can't (eventually) be bought. For now, I support Telegram but the future has to be protocols for the sake of free and open communication. Of course, the downside is no one makes money off of that, or at least they don't as much just selling a server running a protocol everyone else can run. Or even worse for them, they can't exert as much control.
The reality is that nobody is paying a subscription to use a chat app. So they have to monetize the same way as always: ads and company bots. And that's at odds with the third-party ecosystem where they'll just block the ads and the company bots. This is just the same thing as always. It just hasn't been ruined yet.
Also list time I ran it synapse was a monster to operate requiring lots and lots of resources.
There's currently 2 billion WhatsApp users, it's about four times as large as Telegram.
What kind of price discrimination it is?
I think the consumer mindset changes as soon as something is advertised as "unlimited", because you no longer have to think about conserving resources.
I trust them less than most politicians, including some of those obviously nutjob politicians.
> All conversations are measured in 24-hour increments, or "sessions", that start whenever the first message from a business is delivered.
Not sure how to build competitive services for that region based on that pricing.
https://www.tellerreport.com/tech/2019-08-08---chatbot-maker...
Next they should work on app/widget model inside of the WhatsApp. That should cover 90% of use-cases for adhoc communication with companies.
Neither taxes or GDP can explain this well.
This is just the regular Facebook ad pricing playbook being pushed out to all "meta" properties. Instead of ad placements though, it's for bot messages.
The definition seems to be at the start of the page - it’s every “chat session” with a bot
I don’t see the link with advertising or targeting?
Bought that something from someone a few years back and gave your phone number to them? Thanks. Now their hot deals messages reside right next to the messages from your family and friends.
I'm expecting good amount of market share loss once a good alternative is found that focuses purely on personal or group messaging and not on business spam.