I’m back in the Elon corner. Is he goes down, it’ll be doing something interesting at least.
Meta might have a head start with WhatsApp, but I don’t see them doing anything interesting or well.
It could take a while, but look at all the social media messaging apps from the past: ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, My Space, GChat, Orkut, Tumblr, Snapchat, FB messages etc
They come and go. I sure don’t know what the ultimate chat/social media app looks like.
WhatsApp is used by teenagers, great-grandparents, businesses, everyone. When you give someone your number in Europe, they won't ask how to contact you, they will just send you a message on WhatsApp 100% of the time. Only tech nerds and small groups use Signal etc.
To be clear, I don't think this is a good thing. But it is simply the reality of the world. It's been like this for 10 years with no signs of changing. WhatsApp could of course die one day, but only if Meta does something categorically stupid or unpopular that forces people off the platform (eg, what Twitter is doing).
WhatsApp is not a social media platform and that's precisely why it is so universally used.
In the US, if you met someone via online dating and said “here’s my whatsapp” 99% of people would think you are a scammer or something.
Nothing has to be anything and I feel like I got down voted because people hate Elon now. I’m not asking you to like him. I’m only saying he’s going to try and create something and maybe it’s good.
How was it more shitty than what it is now or what Musk is trying to turn it into?
At least it had a quite decent logo instead of as generic as it get X character.
> interesting
Also what so 'interesting' (in a non crazy/entertaining way) about what Musk is doing?
>At least it had a quite decent logo instead of as generic as it get X character.
It's just a logo. Companies come and go. Everyone needs to get over it.
Trying to duplicate WeChat is an objectively interesting strategy. At the very least, by integrating payments your social media platform doesn't have have to sell ads. You could buy items directly off a merchants Twitter/X page and Twitter/X can just take a merchant fee. You could have a market place with integrated payment methods rather than posting on Facebook and working out an intermediate payment method on the side.
oh.. I never personally liked Twitter. I was just thinking about the company itself rather than their products.
> It's just a logo
It also objectively sucks. I don't think we just handwave poor design instead of making fun of it and mocking it. The world is as already as ugly as it is..
> At the very least, by integrating payments your social media platform doesn't have have to sell ads
How much do they think they could get from these payments? 1-3%? Shopify's net revenue is lower than Twitter's was before they buyout and they are not even profitable. The interest payments alone on the debt Musk offloaded to Twitter as part of the acquisition are about equal to Shopify's quarterly revenue.
It's a very competitive field with basically no margins, I'm not quite sure what Twitters edge would be? They'd need to charge way more than their competitors if they wanted to use the revenue to fund the rest of the company after getting rid of ads...
> integrated payment methods rather than posting on Facebook
The lack of an integrated payment processor is not the reason Facebook Marketplace doesen't support direct payment payments. That's an insignificant problem compared to all the other stuff they would need to handle with huge costs due to significant overhead (just like at what Ebay does, also they charge 10%+ and they are not that profitable either).