Hacker News Reader

Comment by diminish | Hacker News Reader

for messaging, there may be a rule similar to moore's for transistors;

... every 18 months a new messaging platform will be the go-to place.

This is pretty ridiculous. Whatsapp solved two important problems. It was the first non-SMS cross-platform messaging service for mobile (telephone number as address, etc), and carriers were (and still are) price gouging on SMS pricing. Whatsapp quickly picked up initial users because of this and growth accelerated as it benefited from the massive network effects of more and more users joining the service. It's not clear that Whatsapp has any major problems as SMS does that would allow an upstart to make a significant incursion into Whatsapp's user base. Whatsapp also has massive network effect now, the switching cost seems too high.

The switching cost being installing a different app?

No. The switching cost is getting all of your contacts to install a different app and use it regularly.

But they don't actually need to use it just have it installed and you can message them. If they respond with a different app or a text message nothing breaks.

Exactly - I know numerous people who use multiple apps for messaging. Most of my US friends use iMessage and Facebook. But my UK friends use iMessage and whatsapp. It's no big deal to use more than one.

The switching cost is virtually nil. You install another app in parallel, tell your friends you like it so much more, and if it's better they start using it. Eventually you pay less attention to the first app, spend longer before replying to messages on there or not at all, and so on.

This used to be true about social networks as well, but Facebook (still) seems to be the end of that.

You can have the service fallback to sending SMS but with an ad for the service before the actual message.

Pricing largely depends on location.

Certainly in the UK, and most of europe, receiving SMS is free. Sending them might be 10-12p per message, but in practice contracts allow "unlimited SMS(sending)".

That's one of the reasons why I'd be hard pressed to use an application on a phone for sending messages - I already have that with SMS, and I don't need to know usernames, etc, I just use the contact number I already have stored.

Apart from email, but yeah whatever.

Counterpoint: as long as these trivial services are attracting $19 billion valuations, eventually someone is going to do the obvious rational thing, and pay new users $10 each to switch to their competing service. Lather, rinse, repeat, until equilibrium is reached.

That's a pretty good idea. You could probably even do it for less, or in a way that guarantees usage over time - pay $1 per month they are active on the service and adding friends, over a year.

Especially since the bulk of WhatsApp users are reported to be in other countries. US $1 a month is likely to be a bigger incentive than it seems at first.

Asking seriously: How would you pay someone $1 a month, especially to users in third world countries?

For that matter, you could you efficiently pay users in the United States a dollar month?

To try to answer my own question, how about:

- give $1 lottery tickets (in a lottery that is well-known and recognized for each country in which you operate)

- give $1 credit that allows the user to buy any iPhone or Android app he wants (Is there a way to actually do that?)

iTunes gift card, the universal currency.

You can pay users to join your service and download your app, but that doesn't mean they'll become monthly active users, which is the metric your business will be valued on.

This is a user acquisition tactic like any other - it doesn't get around the network effect that WhatsApp and others capitalize on to stay in the lead.

>it doesn't get around the network effect that WhatsApp and others capitalize on to stay in the lead

I've seen over 5 IM platforms rise and die (ICQ, AOL, MSM, etc), in the last 15 years, so this "network effect" is not that great a barrier...

Then make the payment after a predetermined metric is hit

Whatsapp was completely destroyed in the Taiwan market about a year ago, simply because Whatsapp offered one year free while Line was free forever. When the year was up, people switched. People here laughed at the announcement - why would anyone pay 3 bucks for every person on Earth for a turkey like that? We weren't even willing to pay 2 dollars for ourselves.

their popularity was only viable once smart phones and data connections became ubiquitous with everyday life

Reply on news.ycombinator.com