[overfeed]

> You can use WhatsApp to talk to people across the world, you bet your ass that nobody would be using it in Indonesia and Brazil if it costed one dollar, vastly diminishing its value.

WhatsApp had payments (or a pilot) pre-acquisiton. At $1/year, it was an amazing value proposition even for those earning $1/day. IIRC, this was when WhatsApp had 3-500M users globally. Interestingly, they allowed people to pay the subscription on behalf of a contact, so the Indonesian expat in Australia could pay for friends and family in Indonesia, and the aervice could have reached a bullion users and 500M/year revenue with about 200 employees

[high_na_euv]

1 day salary for chat app?

Are you nuts?

[overfeed]

Did you know people below the poverty line would by $20 S40 feature phones just to be able to run WhatsApp? The other 2G phones cost less than half that amount, but you had to pay $0.1-$0.2 per SMS sent, in that light, spending $1 per year for WhatsApp's unlimited messages on a PAYG data package was a steal.

So no, I am not nuts, you just didn't think through the value proposition.

[high_na_euv]

Why not any other free chat app e.g discord?

[overfeed]

Network effects, similar to present-day Facetime in the US. There's Zoom and Google Meet, but if your family and friends are already FaceTiming, you're pressured into buying a iDevice.

[owebmaster]

People pay months of salary for a phone, what's one dollar for the most used app?

[high_na_euv]

One day salary for app is a lot.

Only web browser justifies that

[overfeed]

> Only web browser justifies that

There's a surprisingly number of people whose usage of the Internet is exclusively through WhatsApp, and may not even know what a "browser" is or how to use it to get in touch with their contacts.

[owebmaster]

I use whatsapp for more than 10 years, it would be quite cheap if it cost only 1 day of work and nothing more. That is not possible, tho.

[triceratops]

Phones were more expensive back then. Someone earning $1/day mostly didn't use WhatsApp.