WhatsApp ostensibly charges its users $1 per year after the first year. WhatsApp already has a powerful revenue model, and other successful messaging apps are showing the potential for it to add many more.
So, again, Facebook really does appear to be buying "the next Facebook." In short, it allows users to do a lot of what Facebook does. (Facebook itself only has 1.2 billion users.) WhatsApp also does a lot more than "text-messaging." It allows users to send photos, videos, and voicemails to each other. WhatsApp is adding 1 million new users a day - 1 million! Facebook thinks WhatsApp could have 1 billion users in a few years, and this estimate seems conservative. Five years after its founding, the company has 450 million active monthly users, of which a staggering ~315 million use it every day. WhatsApp's growth and usage is absolutely mind-boggling.So buying WhatsApp allows Facebook to both own "the next Facebook" and prevent "the next Facebook" from eating Facebook's lunch. Now those users and their time do belong to Facebook. At the same time, WhatsApp's growth is gobbling up user messaging and connection time that once could have belonged to Facebook. If the company's growth continues, and it can continue to "monetize" its users, it will be worth an even more mind-boggling amount of money someday. WhatsApp is the fastest-growing company in history (in terms of users). WhatsApp has both offensive and defensive value to Facebook.Based on everything I do know, though, I think the odds are that it will end up looking brilliant. I don't know how Facebook's WhatsApp deal will end up looking - and neither, it's worth noting, do any of the pundits who are pronouncing it brain dead. And Facebook hasn't built a service used by one-sixth of the world's population in 10 years by being obvious, safe, and boring. If it were guaranteed to end up looking brilliant, it wouldn't be bold.
0 kommentar(er)
