Heck, my mom talk to me mostly through it. She evens send me emoticons, pictures and voice notes!
Xmpp? Skype? Lync? Hangout? Telegram? TextSecure? etc. etc. I'm sure I forgot lots of somewhat sensible/popular options.
Basically it's not doing a lot, there are lots of alternatives, I see no way to keep users - or make them pay anything. I mean, I guess they pay with their privacy and/or first-born now that FB owns WhatsApp, but .. I - this is just me, my opinion - fail to see the point.
Plus, I said that I - again, as in me personally - don't understand these companies and what they offer. No need to agree ofc. I haven't been an AOL user, I don't have a FB account or a WhatsApp account. My mom has no smart phone. My dad doesn't use WhatsApp as far as I know. Last but not least: Why would I want to get emoticons(?) or voice notes(??) from my mom? The former is .. useless. The latter? We use my smart _phone_ as a phone for that.
I guess if you don't understand the value something brings to the table, everything is overvalued. I don't understand the value of smart watches. I don't understand the pay grade of football (as in, soccer) players. That doesn't mean that I want to slight the things I mention (or could add to the list), it's just that I am unable to understand these valuations. To see the value, you .. need to find value in something?
I disagree. I think everyone is capable of empathizing with a market and understanding why something would bring value, even if it doesn't bring value to you specifically.
Now that I think about it, I can come up two reasons:
1) The sums involved. Both for the deals in question (AOL, WhatsApp) or in my football example, the sums are mind-bendingly large. I .. cannot grasp those. Millions are already insane, but billions? I have no clue how to value _anything_ at those levels. Certainly not things that aren't entirely new or special. My gut feeling says "That's far too much" a lot earlier already, more or less regardless of what we're talking about.
2) I guess the market is hard to estimate if you're not only not part of it, you're actively surrounding yourself with people that are like-minded. Sure, every WhatsApp user can tell a story about friends and family getting a lot of value out of it. Of course! In a similar fashion I can point out that none of my family members (as far as I'm aware) use it, none of my friends seems to require it, it .. doesn't exist in my ecosystem and the last person that asked if I am on WhatsApp - about 3 month ago - was a manager at work. I mean.. WTH? "No, and certainly not for work". It's reinforcing the initial position, confirming my bias. "No one uses it, no one needs it".
Then again, maybe that _is_ a lack of empathy. You're the judge. I merely express my disbelief and sense of wonder here, if everyone thinks these values are cool then yes, I'm obviously wrong.
The second thing is the growth of messaging-as-platform in markets like China, where everyone is using wechat to query bank balances, order tickets, etc. It's a commercial platform, and to talk to young people in Shenzhen who's primary (maybe only) computer is a smartphone, the idea of having these interactions through a website is comical. It's really something to witness, and totally unexpected for those of us who grew up on desktop computers and laptops. FB is trying to turn messenger into a platform now in the U.S., and they have the whatsapp platform to fall back on or develop in other countries. Whatsapp could have become a threat to FB's growth in developing markets by adopting wechat's platform and timeline features, so the valuation was defensive. Time will tell if there is potential for messaging as a revenue generating platform outside of China/Asia.
The best counter-argument to the valuation is that Whatsapp had something like 20 engineers on staff when they were acquired. It's hard to imagine a future where a global messaging platform doesn't continue to need less employees to manage it. I figure that eventually, such important, but cheap-to-run infrastructure seems like something that will end up being run by a Mozilla/Wikimedia style foundation on donations.
But then you say 'wechat'. Note again: I don't use any of these apps. It seems that this is a competitor? How does "A competitor is really successful" translate to "you guys are doing something valuable"? And if you'd say "Well, any IM application with some traction can take away that spot again", how can WhatsApp make sure that a) it is the one to pull that off and b) it won't go away again when the next IM app comes around, and this time it's GREEN! And - I don't know - has cute cat and puppy images as part of the built-in 'emoticons'/icons to distinguish itself from the feature set of the inferior IM apps?
I understand that there might be a huge market for IM applications. I don't understand the market for any _specific_ IM application.
The way I see it? WhatsApp is boring. I can't do anything new or interesting. At all.
However, there's also a good argument that mobile messaging was a shift to a new platform (and the inevitable replacement of SMS). There are some fairly resilient network effects, mostly geographically focussed, Whatsapp, iMessage, Wechat. Wechat is just further ahead than the other networks in showing what a messaging platform can develop into, a platform, rather than merely a replacement for SMS. Naturally Wechat has also been sheltered from competition by the great firewall. So Wechat is an indispensable app if you live in China, but in the rest of the world almost no one knows that it exists. You don't only use Wechat to chat with your friends, but also to query your bank balance, pay at McDonalds, and shop online. It's all very weird, because the UX is chat, but if your first computer was a smart phone then it probably feels more natural.
Even though the switching costs between mobile messaging apps seem much lower with mobile and notifications (it's easy to have a dozen installed), it still takes a lot to convince all your contacts to install something new. If these apps become platforms that people get used to using to using to interact with their bank or sirline it beomces harder to unseat..
Consider how just a few mobile apps not being available on blackberry or windows phone makes switching to these minor platforms difficult.
WhatsApp is huge outside of the US. If memory serves correctly, SMS has always been expensive and MMS never really took off - once the data messaging platform came to be WhatsApp really served that market and has done well because of it.
http://www.statista.com/statistics/291540/mobile-internet-us...
AMA I guess, since apparently fellow Americans don't understand WhatsApp.