Just for comparison, $19 billion is what the first operational fusion power reactor is budgeted to cost. Instead of Whatsapp, the world could have fusion power. Tell me that makes sense.
> Instead of Whatsapp, the world could have fusion power.
I'm sure if HN could combine savings from annual budget the $5 lattes and $2,000+ annual refreshes of the Shinybook Pro, we'd be halfway there. But hey, maybe the value provided in an affordable SMS replacement to a billion people isn't all that, right? It's just a replaceable app, why don't they get iPhones and use iMessage. /s
HN can be hilariously condescending - "I don't use this, it doesn't impact me, I don't understand it - therefore it can't be worth much".
> Tell me that makes sense.
WhatsApp provides massive value to its users, especially when they supported feature phones. What's the human value of a poor rural farmer sending a message to their child in the next city over "Your mom isn't feeling well, please send money for a clinic visit"? I bet it is more than the $1/year WhatsApp originally charged. Communication is a force-multiplier - someone smarter than me has probably already calculated the value WhatsApp has added to the world by merely existing.
I'm not a Facebook fan- I hate that Facebook changed the monetization model and are dropping WhatsApp support for feature phones in pursuit of features. However, Facebook paid $19 billion because WhatsApp was potentially an existential threat to Fb. Why don't you and a small team develop a fusion reactor and see how much GE/Saudi Aramco will pay - I bet it would be north of $19 billion.
First it starts by claiming that I don't understand, use, or appreciate messaging in general. This is of course without any background or support, and is simply an ad hominem. I have a more extensive background in messaging than most people in tech. There is no condescension in making a value judgement of yet another messaging application vs a fundamental energy source technology.
Next you make some statements in support of value for WA. Regardless of the value of messaging in general, WA is is simply yet another app in a very crowded market. Its purchase was clearly anti-competitive, rather than innovative, and as such can not be justified based on function.
Last you hurl some weird non-sequitur that implies my judgement is incorrect because I'm not a fusion researcher/implementor working on disrupting the world energy market, combined with some kind of conspiracy theory about Saudi Aramco? That's just plain specious. One can clearly judge the value of working fusion energy without being a physicist.
So please, re-read the posting guidelines and reconsider how you address others and their arguments. Thank you.
Just as a side note, that's such a weird thing to compare against... What intuition does the average reader have about the price of container ships? If anything, I learnt that container ships are less costly than I would have guessed...
It’s probably a misunderstanding of common media units of measure. If an Olympic swimming pool or an Empire State Building are a valid unit of measure, why not a container ship?
Those are probably weird too, but most people have some idea of how tall tall buildings are (even if they haven't been to NYC), and likewise have probably been to a pool.
people i know are using it less because of how buggy/slow it has gotten and how hard the basic activity of curating your boards has become. i also now avoid clicking anything related to pinterest because they break the web and make it hard to visit the source website and view their site on mobile. Too many walls around that garden.
I once clicked on a recipe that was pinned to a Pinterest board and it would not allow me to view it without registering for an account. They lost my eyeballs forever that day and I'm sure there's many others like me out there. Given their target revenue model was presumably ad/affiliate referral based, keeping potential consumers outside the wall made zero sense to me.
Same for me. I think this might be the actual reason they're losing out. The moment they started requiring to log in to view stuff discovered through Google anyway was the moment I stopped using them, even though I actually have an account.
The funny thing is that you are obviously right about their problems and despite the fact that an anonymous stranger on a forum can easily answer this, the billion dollar machine won't change to save its life.
Exactly, been thinking this for years now. It's scary how fast a company can grow too big to actually do anything remotely new or change a small thing to save itself. Same actually how SpaceX came to be, stop tossing away perfectly fine rockets.
I am one of those guys. I don't really understand the value of pinterest. So a drop in performance made my exit far easier. I am probably not their target user.
Just shows where humanity’s overall priorities are, funny enough.