Tag: WhatsApp

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WhatsApp Low Tech Good Facebook Long Strategy

Still Pondering the WhatsApp Deal by Facebook

 

Looking into Facebook’s giant payment for WhatsApp continues to occupy my attention, and maybe I understand it a little more today than yesterday. http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/02/21/whatsapp-ceo-on-facebook-deal-its-about-staying-independent/?KEYWORDS=whatsapp

 

Surveying the leading message services across the planet, many have added a few bells & whistles such as games, shopping, or extra communication functions. But not WhatsApp! Instead, WhatsApp offers very simple text messaging for the low price of $1.00 per year. As a result, it has attracted nearly half a billion users in the developing economies of Asia, South America, and to a limited degree Africa. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/21/us-whatsapp-facebook-idUSBREA1K0U120140221

 

That brings into focus the reason for the $19B price to be paid by Facebook. Who would FB want to prevent from future competition? The obvious candidates: Google, Apple, and maybe Amazon and Microsoft. By essentially buying half a billion customers in the largest market on earth, Facebook has strategically placed itself in the emerging markets on the bet that half a billion will turn into three or five billion within a decade. That means Facebook will grow into a dominant, if not the dominant, player in the social net business of the next decade. http://www.forbes.com/sites/hollymagister/2014/02/21/whatsapp-19-billion-secret-formula/

 

Too forward looking? Too strategic? Maybe, but it fits the present data to explain why the huge price tag for a rather ho-hum text messaging service. http://www.afp.com/en/node/1277993

 

That’s the view from analysts at http://HamiltonFinanceServices.com, but what do you think?

 

 

hamilton.jerry

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FB To Buy WhatsApp for $19B, But Why?

b2ap3_thumbnail_FB-Twit.jpgCommunication, Content and Cyber Society

 

Facebook’s focus on the content of light verbal bursts and replies coupled more recently with images of common themes will expand to include more concentrated text exchanges, if the WhatsApp acquisition by Facebook announced today for $19 B comes to pass. Who really knows how FB might expand? The huge price implies big changes should be expected all the same. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/19/us-whatsapp-facebook-idUSBREA1I26B20140219

 

A subtext runs with this latest business deal, once you pass the sticker shock of multi-billions paid for texting tech. What could possibly be worth mega bucks to Facebook? Apparently a robust market segment vehemently declines participation in the FB fashion of trivial talk, preferring instead mobile texting as the primary method of content exchange, and that’s what FB seeks to include in its social net. The attraction for users: Avoidance of carrier fees to send text. The attraction for FB: More users. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/20/us-whatsapp-facebook-idUSBREA1I26B20140220

 

Still, the persistent question runs beneath the surface of tech and money: Why do people FB in the first place? Or why do they blog? Why do they text? Why do they bother sending almost meaningless trillions of words and images to each other if they really have almost nothing to say? What is it about the human species that needs to show images of kittens and babies, food and sex, or sunsets and ocean waves to each other? Why do people jabber on and on about how babies smile, lovers hug, and party people drink or smoke so much? http://www.fastcompany.com/3021749/work-smart/10-surprising-social-media-statistics-that-will-make-you-rethink-your-social-stra

 

Sure, FB tracks the jabber, sells stuff based on the inane exchanges, and calls it good on the bottom line when beans are tallied. That justifies the big ticket for WhatsApp, perhaps, although it remains to be proven with actual returns on such an investment. But why do people act as they do with either FB or WhatsApp? What’s the appeal? http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2011/07/google-facebook-twitter-and-blogs-when.html

 

Maybe some humans beings feel connected and therefore more secure when they friend, tweet, or poke another human being, or maybe they fill so much time with reading and replying or writing and reading and…replying because they’re fundamentally bored and disconnected. Analysts at http://HamiltonFinanceServices.com hope this blog entry will rise slightly above the shallow chaos to pose a meta-query about the big picture. What is the point of all this chatter? What do you think?

 

 

From HamiltonFinanceServices.com, this is hamilton.jerry