What’s Up With Whatsapp? Facebook Might Want To Buy It, That’s What | Hacker News Reader

What’s Up With Whatsapp? Facebook Might Want To Buy It, That’s What

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37 pointsshivam1450 comments

Whatsapp is a little gem on a company which no one talk about. It's hard to get inside information about the company on the internet, and maybe that's the geniuses of co-founders. They don;t talk so much about the company and instead focus on building a quality product.

On a comparative note, the product is actually not so good(maybe because of the sacle they are operating on). They have problems with their backend, few of the front end apps are not so good eg blackberry but increasing number of users is an achievement which is the scary part for facebook. I am in Pakistan. This is a place where most people don't use credit cards on the internet, sms packages are dirt cheap like $1/month for unlimited texting, and we have no 3G internet(only EDGE) but still majority of the people use whatsapp. Almost everybody i know uses whatsapp and they have been using for more than a year. One you get hooked on whatsapp people are forced to pay.

Whatsapp has a lot of potential to challenge facebook to a certain extend. They introduced profile pictures a while back, and the 'last seen at' update is like a gold. Ramp up whatsapp with a few BBM like features, extensive photo sharing, and geo location features(anonymously chat with people near you) and they can be a worthwhile competitor.

Why would you call a gem, a company which proliferates insecure walled IM gardens (based on non compliant XMPP which precludes using any normal clients), instead of advancing secure and federated IM networks based on standard XMPP interoperable with any compliant client? Their approach is really ugly.

Did they fix the crucial security exploits pointed out previously?

http://fileperms.org/whatsapp-is-broken-really-broken/

I guess they didn't.

http://fileperms.org/whatsapp-security-fails-again/

No, they haven't :)

I reported on the IMEI/Android issue by the way: http://samgranger.com/whatsapp-is-using-imei-numbers-as-pass...

Ezio Amodio reported it for iOS & Windows phone shortly afterwards: http://www.ezioamodio.it/?p=29 & http://www.ezioamodio.it/?p=49

Am I the only one who's a bit sad that the biggest success of a nice open-standards protocol (XMPP) has been it's usage in a closed-down proprietary form? I mean, Whatsapp have done some cool stuff, but I really would have liked to finally see a dominant but open instant messaging network.

Howcome Google hasn't bought these guys?

My friends here in India use it because its free the first year. Almost everyone I know is on Whatsapp. But the moment they have to pay, everyone will switch. I know of nobody in person (who own the latest pretty expensive smartphones, except iphones which are not big in India) to have "ever paid for any" app.

Its not about being stingy, but more of a mentality where we know a hack/solution/pirated version/alternative will come around. It always does.

Besides, there's a small(very small or even very tiny) subset of mobile users who are actually using WhatsApp. Not even 50% of my smart phone using friends have 3G activated. Not 100% have Internet on mobile. So, you have to use SMS anyway, if you require messaging. + WhatsApp is very much broken - a broken identity management is one of the many broken things.

I ended up being textually abused by two persons when I first started using WhatsApp few months ago. The old cell numbers of many of my friends were assigned to others when they changed numbers and those were still in my phonebook. My friends forgot to dissociate the numbers from WhatsApp database and when I pinged(didn't pester) them(assuming they are my friends) two of them got pissed off real bad. And I was like - "WTF! This is WhatsApp?". So, WhatsApp assumes that as long as the user hasn't dissociated the numbers that user is still using WhatsApp and is doing with the same phone/account. See bottom

>>"the moment they have to pay, everyone will switch".

I can confirm at least three of my friends have already uninstalled the app after first year. It was eihter money or almost mostly very limited usability. the new player http://hike.in looks very promising. Hope it's not vapour. Especially the feature where it fills a huge hole - the other party doesn't need to have http://hike.in app installed and an internet connection is not a requirement for both the parties.

>>of nobody in person to have "ever paid for any" app

It's not as common place as in western countries(or purchases on that scale) but I sure know a lot in my circle who use paid apps. Really many. Well, I also pay for a lot of apps both on my Galaxy Nexus and Macbook Air but when it comes to buying one of those double digit dollar apps I do stop before buying and think whether I really need this? And is the free alternative isn't good enough? I have never had YES for either of the two questions, except once. I think this is good :-)

bottom: That was the last day I used WhatsApp. KakaoTalk is far better in that way, but except Koreans no else uses the app it seems.

I don't know where you live, but here in the Netherlands everybody is using it...

I've mentioned in the comment that I live in India, my bad if I didn't. I think OC had mentioned had mentioned it too.

What BBM could & should have been if those geniuses at the helm RIMM had any foresight. Apple made an iTunes version for Windows, Microsoft made Office for Mac. if those two could work past their differences for the sake of serving their customers, anyone can.

Early on, when iMessage was a pipe-dream &Gtalk a usability mess victim of Google's "everything must be web" orthodoxy, RIMM could have made a killing selling a robust no-frills honest-to-God messaging app for Android, iOS, Windows Phone & feature phones.What a waste.

A close friend of mine from RIM told me they came pretty close to doing it. But dropped the idea due to certain limitations/challenges 70% in.

Sounds plausible.They couldn't get email to work on the playbook when it was first released. I still have a hard time wrapping my head about how rigid an architecture must be to tie email to a specific device but it seems to be the way they've designed their systems.

"Apple made an iTunes version for Windows, Microsoft made Office for Mac. if those two could work past their differences for the sake of serving their customers, anyone can."

I understand what you're trying to say, but MS Office was first released for Mac (1989), then for Windows (1990). MS Word was released for Mac in 1984, later for Windows (1989).

Even before the Mac was released, Microsoft made products for Apple, like Applesoft BASIC and the Microsoft SoftCard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_office#Version_histor...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Word#Origins_and_grow...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applesoft_BASIC

http://apple2info.net/index.php?title=Microsoft_SoftCard

Do you thing that there would be enough of a revenue stream from cross-platform BBM that it could sustain RIM?

Aaaand that's the day I stop using it.

Why? Because one walled garden suddenly turns into another walled garden?

There are good reasons today not to use WhatsApp.

Personally, I don't really trust Facebook with my data. I still use Facebook, but as little as possible. I know WhatsApp may be data mining my conversations too, but Facebook is a known evil to me.

Repeating my comments from the previous thread which was deleted for some reason:

Why would people be OK with constant security risk, but not OK with one time registration step for normal XMPP service? XMPP clients are available for all major desktop and mobile platforms. So it's a really interesting psychological hook that Whatsapp developers catch their users on here, offering a completely inferior solution, with selling it of for the fake attraction. And it's a really nasty thing to do - to play on people's ignorance regarding security.

So why would Facebook want to buy this monstrosity? The only valid reason could be to convert it to proper XMPP, then I'd applaud them, but on the other hand Facebook's own IM service isn't federated, which defeats the purpose. So it doesn't look like it can improve Whatsapp in any way.

As a long time user who profited from their first free download promotion, I have been wondering how the hell whatsapp can remain profitable for many years to come. Moving to .99 cents/year sounds great, but expect a massive user exodus.

Many users out there are stingy as hell. I have actually heard people argue that they don't want an iPhone because you have to pay for whatsapp...

Let's hope that their dominance of the market is enough to incentivize users to pay forever. Oh, and that they do not actually sell out to Facebook.

Dominance does not guarantee users' loyalty. Whatsapp is huge in Euope, but LINE[1], the Japanese alternative is now having an impressive growth in Spanish speaking countries. Las time I heard, they had 75 million users.

This demonstrates that this market is not still settled down and can still be disrupted.

The main reasons people is switching to LINE are stickers (huge emoticons that you get for free and with extra paid packages) and they have a desktop client, along with the possibility to run on iPods and iPads, probably Whatsapp's most requested feature.

[1] http://line.naver.jp/

Whatsapp is the perfect example of "solve something people need". You don't need to solve it "perfectly" or "10 times better".

Combined with network and lock-in effects, it's a great business on a good enough application and an obvious idea. Which makes it even more impressive.

P.S. I think many tried to do similar things before or after but failed. So I'm not quite sure what make whatsapp stand out. Any ideas? First comer? Better UX? Cheaper? Better cross-platform support? Better marketing?

I think it's cross-platform support plus the fact that you didn't have to sign up to create yet another account id that led to it's success. You install the app, run it and bam! Whoever's already using it is ready to talk, without having to invite/add and such stuff

Well spotted, that particular simple design choice seems like increase the adaption significantly.

The lack of a sign-up is huge. Off the top head, for myself and my circle of contacts I'd say we're 4-5x less likely to try something recommended by each other if it necessitates signing up.

Despite what seem to be a surprising number of detractors here, lets not forgot that it's a pretty good product - fast, stable, nice enough looking and very reliable.

It's also worth noting that if Google Talk / Messenger weren't such an inconsistent / unreliable mess, I'd never have gone for looking another means of messaging.

This puzzles me. Let's compare one time action of registration for secure XMPP service (where you have an option of choosing your own ID (JID) and password which you can change later), as well as an option of using a client with extra security like OTR for text messages and ZRTP for audio/video conferencing, with the client which lets you skipping one time step of registration, but gives it for the price of broken insecure approach of using predefined IDs and passwords based on the device ID?

I'd say constant security risk outweighs the "burden" of one time registration step which is a pretty familiar for any user on the web and takes just a few seconds to complete. It's not a decent thing to do for Whatsapp developers to play on users ignorance.

>This puzzles me.

It really shouldn't.

Seems to me you're grossly over-thinking what's important and/or understood by any majority of the tens of millions using WhatsApp.

I understand the psychology involved, so my remark was rhetoric. One time comfort of avoiding registration lures users who are unaware of resulting security risks. In essence such tradeoff doesn't worth it. It's just unfortunate that such tricks are used by developers of Whatsapp - it's really indecent in my opinion.

Also, instead of promoting federated XMPP (which idea is exactly one time registration and communication with all other federated services), Whatsapp promotes its own walled service. Double failure the way I see it.

Whatsapp is a perfect example of how not to solve something in a crooked way. Whatsapp developers should be ashamed for exploiting people's ignorance, and for luring users with fake convenience of skipping one time registration step for the price of constant security risk.

Epic fail: "The messaging app has users in 250 countries".

Guys, he's actually right. There are 204 sovereign states (secondary source, can't find the primary [0]), plus a handful of countries that are disputed (Palestine, Kosovo, etc.)

There just simply aren't 250 countries.

0: http://imgur.com/rNDj4

(At the time of posting, parent was below zero)

Maybe they're counting country codes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_country_calling_codes has 275 in their complete listing; but then, quite a few aren't "countries"

In many uses, it's reasonable to consider a non-sovereign self-governing territory a country. Greenland is a country, Anguilla, Sint Maarten, Aruba, etc. are countries, etc., for the purposes of "Hi. What country do you live in?" informally.

As are the 4 constituent countries of the United Kingdom.

Palestine is recognised by the UN as a state now.

Yes, I was actually following that quite closely. However, I don't believe UN recognition is the definition of sovereign state. A country that is permanently occupied is hardly sovereign, no? If they don't have control of their borders, are under blockade, can't police their own, don't have say over who enters and leaves their territory, don't have their own currency, and are being literally split into 3 disjoin, non-connecting pieces (West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza) with no passages between any of the three under their control, is it a sovereign state?

Being split into disjoint pieces is not a problem. Russia is a country despite having a disjoint piece.

Wolfram thinks that Scotland isn't a country ( http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=is+scotland+a+country ) even though it has all of the things required by the definition offered by Wolfram. Even the equivalent of a Foreign Secretary in the Cabinet for External Affairs.

If the definition Wolfram cared to use was "Passport issuing state recognised by other passport issuing states" then we might agree.

I am sure it used sth official like that. Otherwise the number of countries maybe significantly more than what it is today.

States != Countries

The UK is a single state, but comprised of at least three countries. England, Wales, Scotland. Northern Ireland would not count as a 'country' I guess, though Ireland itself obviously is.

Whether Northern Ireland is a country depends on who you're talking to. And possibly the day you talk to them.

They are up to 10 billion msgs a day now.

So incredibly crazy- More than 100k messages a second.

What's the benefit over email? I still don't get it.

Free SMS/MMS, on countries which don't have a flat message plan, like Spain

Probably the reason ALL my Spanish friends have Whatsapp... it really is huge over there.

Whatsapp works faster for me than gmail on my android. I can insert images, audio, group chat, mute notifications per group, smilies, share my location, snap and send a photo. also, not everyone wants to mix their SMS and email.

seems like a logical step for me. facebooks messenger is still lagging behind whatsapp in terms of features (ie. it lacks video and audio sharing) and most likely also in users. plus in the past year I've noticed quite a shift from communication on facebook to dedicated whatsapp groups. it's just a much more convenient way to share and chat with close friends and depending on the group you're in it can be kinda addictive. needless to say I would be very disappointed when whatsapp would become part of facebook (especially if it would be linked to my fb profile).

“At every company that sells ads, a significant portion of their engineering team spends their day tuning data mining, writing better code to collect all your personal data, upgrading the servers that hold all the data and making sure it’s all being logged and collated and sliced and packaged and shipped out… And at the end of the day the result of it all is a slightly different advertising banner in your browser or on your mobile screen. Remember, when advertising is involved you the user are the product.” [Koum's emphasis.]

And that is just one reason why a Whatsapp/Facebook acquisition would be a surprise. At other times, Koum has been public about his distaste for startups that sell out quickly. “Totally agree with Vinod Khosla,” he wrote in July. “People starting companies for a quick sale are a disgrace to the valley.” (He’s also, btw, noted that getting on TC shouldn’t be a goal in itself. Too true.)

-- Sounds like another loss for the good side.

This sounds to me like a defensive move against the messaging giants of the east (Wechat, Line, Kakao).

Thoughts on this guys?

No idea why people use it when LINE exists

I hadn't heard of LINE before, but a couple of reasons might be Symbian(^3) and S40, both of which WhatsApp supports but LINE apparently doesn't.

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