What's App
 

Are you one of the 450 million users? $18 BN is a staggering price for Facebook to pay, although I suppose at $40 per user there is some logic to it.

Re: What's App
 

I use it to text people back in the UK. Everyone used to use BBM (including myself) before BlackBerry imploded. Now with iPhone and Android plus the few unlucky souls still on BB a cross platform app was needed for me to text everyone.. and so WhatsApp it was/is!

Re: What's App
 

Ditto.

Although I've not used it for more than a year after I had to pay for What's App and decided not too...

Re: What's App
 

I've never had to pay for it. I have had a few notifications in the past telling me that my one year free trial has been extended.. for a another year. I therefore assumed that having to pay after 1 year was a myth!

A funny side note to the guys who created Whatsapp, they were both rejected by Facebook after applying for jobs there. Now they have become FB's biggest acquisition by some margin.

Re: What's App
 

As above, but also because too few of my contacts had it downloaded - same fault all texting apps have. I don't do facebook, but imagine giving all the users a text tool would help promote it.

Re: What's App
 

The cross platform nature (and free usage) made this app a no-brainer. It would be nice to have been missing said-brain five years ago! :D

Re: What's App
 

I suppose it'll be a major shock to you to learn that I'd never heard of it before FB bought it.

Re: What's App
 

No not such a shock. I'd heard of it but have not used it.

Re: What's App
 

If BlackBerry had released BBM for iOS and Android when it was clear that they were not going to claw back their market share then they could have taken cross platform messaging easily. BBM was the main reason a lot of retail customers chose BlackBerry in the first place.

Whatsapp come in at the right and took a large chunk of the market.

Have no idea where they get these valuations from though..

Re: What's App
 

The fact that Google bid $1BN for the company last year does show that the valuations are being plucked out of the air. Supposedly it has been done on user base.

Blackberry really is a case study in how to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Re: What's App
 

That's all well and good having millions of users.. but how do they make $$ from it? I just don't understand it haha

BlackBerry is a joke! To watch how slowly they were reacting to their competitors was ridiculous.

Re: What's App
 

$18 billion is staggering. Although my understanding is a large chunk of that was paid with overvalued Facebook stock.

WhatsApp supposedly had revenue approaching around $100 million per year and is growing by 1 million users per day so it is does have some value. I'm sure the profit margin must be healthy with just 50 employees.

I'm sure Facebook could have acquired Blackberry and had change with that money. They would have picked up a lot of patents, BBM and real estate. I'm not sure how WhatsApp can be worth more than Blackberry although clearly not losing as much money.

Re: What's App
 

There was a large amount of FB stock in the deal. Basically they are subsuming a potential competitor from what I have read.

Re: What's App
 

I think it was $12 billion shares and $3 billion preferred shares .. give or take a billion haha

Re: What's App
 

Have used it briefly but not anymore. Generally use either iMessage on the iPhone or BBM on the iPhone. I found at the time what's app didn't work very well, too many ads and crashes. I'm sure it's better now or will be with Faecesbook money behind it for development.

Re: What's App
 

I rather like the expression Faecesbook.

Shitfaces could describe it's users.

Re: What's App
 

It's also part of a struggle for relevance. People who use Facebook are older and don't have the disposable income of the youth of today. For the Facebook corporation to drive advertising revenues they need a way to reach a younger market.

Re: What's App
 

Hang on. Older people don't have more disposable income compared to txting addicted tweenies?

How do you work that out?

Is it just that slightly older users who use Facebook are incapable of earning a decent screw?

Re: What's App
 

Ouch!

Re: What's App
 

I thought that to be accepted wisdom. Parents don't, in general, have any money because they have children. Those who do are set in their ways, they'll just keep buying Calvados no matter what the price of vodka and Red Bull. The people who can collectively shell out a fortune for a new product or service are the txting tweenies; that's who advertisers want to reach.

Re: What's App
 

Sorry.

Re: What's App
 

A weak argument. Surely it's time for a geriatric messaging system, like BE.

Re: What's App
 

It's called Facebook.

Re: What's App
 

:thumb::thumb: 's okay :thumbup:[

QUOTE=Novocastrian;11142212]Sorry.[/QUOTE]

Re: What's App
 

Oh.

Re: What's App
 

Whatsapp doesn't carry any ads. They actually have quite the anti-ad philosophy.

Re: What's App
 

I used the whats app a few times, not any longer though, but never paid anything for the service.

Makes me wish with an acquisition like that and others, that I was a creative tech type....lol

Re: What's App
 

Never managed to get (various) phones to cooperate/collaborate with Whats App, despite aid from teens. Settled for Viber to facilitate free overseas communications with the famdamily.

I got involved with Fbook a while back to keep tabs on aforementioned teens, then got caught up in it for a while. I now tend to drift in and out of it, at widely varying intervals. It has also been useful for finding/being found by/keeping in touch with Long Lost Relatives who are apparently otherwise technologically challenged.

SB

Re: What's App
 

use both Whatsapp and viber

Re: What's App
 

At the club where I drink it's considered bad form not to return the classified section of the paper to the bar after doing the puzzle because the obituaries are in there. We call it 'Facebook for old people'.;)

Re: What's App
 

What they need to come up with is a Facebook for the deceased, so that they can keep in touch with their social network from Heaven or Hell or wherever they end up. That would be a real killer app!

Re: What's App
 

Involuntary reaction - thought of Brooks, Ab.

Re: What's App
 

I read somewhere that nowadays people are having bar codes or whatever inlaid into their headstones so that visitors to cemeteries can use an app on their phone to scan it and a load of info comes up about the dead person!

I think that's really quite cool, I love wandering (or should I say when I was in the UK I did) round looking at all the old graves and wondering who these people were - this would give you an insight!!!!!

Re: What's App
 

I used WhatsApp for a while but not going to pay for it now my free trial is up. Just got a tablet so wanted to find a cross platform chat/video app for BBM/Android/IOS......settled on 'oovoo'. It has ads but it is not intrusive. Just a shame it only supports BBM10. I like the features including sharing desktop etc.

Re: What's App
 

Give you the creeps you mean! :rofl: As for the bar code I also have to disagree - if you're dead and 6' down in a box or ashes in a cookie jar don't you think a little privacy is warranted?

Re: What's App
 

I think its at the request of the dead person (before they died obviously!!!!)

Re: What's App
 

I go to old grave yards (some still in operation, some not) when I see one, I find it interesting to see how far back some go.

The graveyard where my grandfather is buried is mostly retired, its an old civil cemetery in Oklahoma, and only way into it now is to have been born before 1940, and have a relative buried there, but its not maintained, so its very overgrown, but goes back to the 1870's, and the amount of young people who are buried, really brings home how much things have changed since then.

Re: What's App
 

Mike and Jim were looking at headstones and Jim shouts from the far side by the road, "There's a man here was 125!" "Really?, says Mike, what's his name?"
"Miles, from London."

Re: What's App
 

:)

Re: What's App
 

The group chat function is useful. A few mates back home use it and I join in. Usually to co-ordinate what time we'll all be available for a game of Battlefield 4 :)