"how is WhatsApp any different than iMessage / Facebook Messenger / Hangouts?"
That's not the right question to begin with.
The right question on this is: are those instant messenger users on WhatsApp worth much financially, will they ever produce financial returns, such that you justify $19 billion in any respect. I say no, the value of messenger bytes is nearly zero unless you can hold the users hostage and extract large sums from them (as AT&T and Verizon did on SMS). All user actions are not created equal in terms of the economic value they generate - one network of actions is not inherently as valuable as another; this premise will eventually burst the myth of Snapchat and WhatsApp being worth their current valuations.
How much are all those users worth? Not much if they don't actually generate cash, which is why webmail and traditional instant messaging is worthless financially.
WhatsApp was a threat to them, and that demonstrates just how financially dark Facebook's future is. Facebook will have to perpetually destroy its shareholder value buying up non-performing businesses to try to stall those upstarts from destroying Facebook's temporary ad platform. Facebook is likely to get Craigslist'd (replaced by an endless parade of dirt cheap social apps with no business prospects), because the real financial value of what it does is low.
The app itself is very useful to its users, but it's not financially worth much, no different than Gmail or Yahoo Mail (which both have hundreds of millions of users that send bazillions of messages per day).
Take away: the messages aren't worth much financially; the users aren't worth much financially. Five years from now, people are going to look back on all of this, and think it was crazy how much was being paid for "users" and "messages."
> I say no, the value of messenger bytes is nearly zero unless you can hold the users hostage and extract large sums from them (as AT&T and Verizon did on SMS).
Exactly. Look at all the messenger platforms of yesteryear - ICQ, MSN, AIM, Y!M. Did any of them make any money aside from some ad scratch money to keep the lights on?
I agree. You have people out there like Marc Andreessen comparing SnapChat to Tencent and saying it's potentially worth $100B or so. These people are off their goddamn meds. They are pure vulture capitalists, and poor mom and dad out in Nebraska are going to get stuck carrying this stinking mess when their 401k inevitably implodes.
You want to see how much eyeballs are worth, look at reddit. They are pretty much a corporate charity, with their reddit gold scam going on.
When people get accustomed to not paying for things, they don't pay for things. I'm not going to pay for a newspaper when I can read it all online. And yet, I'll happily go to dinner one night a week and spend more than it costs for an entire year's subscription to the local newspaper.
WhatsApp is $1 a year. That's great if you're running with a few hundred employees and have such a massive user base. That's doing more than okay, in my book. But $19B? You're not getting that back. Certainly not in any timeframe that matters. Because what's hot today will not be what's hot 5 years from now. We all know that. It's how the tech industry works.
That's not the right question to begin with.
The right question on this is: are those instant messenger users on WhatsApp worth much financially, will they ever produce financial returns, such that you justify $19 billion in any respect. I say no, the value of messenger bytes is nearly zero unless you can hold the users hostage and extract large sums from them (as AT&T and Verizon did on SMS). All user actions are not created equal in terms of the economic value they generate - one network of actions is not inherently as valuable as another; this premise will eventually burst the myth of Snapchat and WhatsApp being worth their current valuations.
How much are all those users worth? Not much if they don't actually generate cash, which is why webmail and traditional instant messaging is worthless financially.
WhatsApp was a threat to them, and that demonstrates just how financially dark Facebook's future is. Facebook will have to perpetually destroy its shareholder value buying up non-performing businesses to try to stall those upstarts from destroying Facebook's temporary ad platform. Facebook is likely to get Craigslist'd (replaced by an endless parade of dirt cheap social apps with no business prospects), because the real financial value of what it does is low.
The app itself is very useful to its users, but it's not financially worth much, no different than Gmail or Yahoo Mail (which both have hundreds of millions of users that send bazillions of messages per day).
Take away: the messages aren't worth much financially; the users aren't worth much financially. Five years from now, people are going to look back on all of this, and think it was crazy how much was being paid for "users" and "messages."