[Helianthus]

If you want evidence that HN has a fetish for money, it's that the technical details of Whatsapp's success are only closely inspected now that gratuitous cash has been thrown around.

You may view this comment as too cynical for this particular topic, but the ridiculous surge in Whatsapp stories doesn't lie. And of course we should inspect the action of successful companies.

I am merely pointing at the crude vulgarity of the Valley's barometer for success.

[creamyhorror]

Is it really vulgar to desire money and take it as indicator of success, or are you holding people here to rather high standards?

[Helianthus]

>Is it really vulgar to desire money and take it as indicator of success

Yes? It is not only vulgar, it is utterly clueless.

[x0054]

Money is certainly not an indicator of true success, other than, of course, success of acquiring money. However, why is money vulgar. Sure, there are many vulgar things one can purchase with money. But money in and of it self isn't vulgar.

Many people here want to understand how WhatsApp managed to convince someone to pay so much money for it, perhaps so they can replicate this success and also become rich. What's so wrong with that?

[toomuchtodo]

> perhaps so they can replicate this success and also become rich. What's so wrong with that?

My theory: Perhaps because an ever growing population of tech professionals are disgusted with the race for more wealth?

I will be the first to admit, I'm an Elon Musk fanboy, although I think its justified. Instagram. Whatsapp. Messaging apps! Billions of dollars! For messaging! With that same amount of cash, Musk has delivered goods to an orbiting space station and has succeeded in changing the direction of transportation, something an entire auto industry wouldn't (not couldn't, wouldn't) do.

I could be wrong. Perhaps money is still the end goal for everyone. If its just to have money for money's sake, I feel sad for you. If its to pursue your passion, I think we can all empathize with that.

[x0054]

Money for money sake is silly. You can't take it to your grave, and you can't enjoy it unless you spend it. But there are a lot of cool toys money can buy, like space rockets or cool cars and motorcycles. In my case money would buy me time for tinkering with unprofitable projects and building things with my hands, which I enjoy doing

[gaius]

Musk had to make his fortune first...

[toomuchtodo]

I get making your fortune. My point was: Use the opportunity you get from it wisely.

[stingraycharles]

That totally depends on what your goals in life are and is highly subjective.

[Helianthus]

Forgive me if I'm contemptuous of those whose subjective goal is the acquisition of money.

[davidw]

I want the freedom to do what I want, and in my case that involves a certain quantity of money. Not tons of it, but more than I have now.

[Helianthus]

There's paying the bills, and there's lust for percentages of 16 billion dollars.

[samstave]

I respect your position, though please also consider that not everyone views money as the end, but rather a means.

I don't care about money; I care about living an enjoyable life.

I do work hard and desire success; which means to have the liquidity to support the activities and lifestyle that I prefer. This requires money.

[Helianthus]

In other words, you don't want money, but you are forced to deal with it.

[patrickaljord]

There's nothing vulgar or clueless with loving money and wanting more of it. Most startups got started thanks to people who have insane amounts of money and enjoy making more, this includes investors in startups that changed the world such as Google, Apple and Facebook. The world needs people who love money so they can fund people who love making stuff that put this money to good use. Simple as that.

So yeah, get off your high horse and please stop lecturing people with cheap and meaningless moral judgments.

[Helianthus]

>please stop lecturing people with cheap and meaningless moral judgments.

Ha. I'm not lecturing; I simply have no respect or consideration for your position.

You are not being lectured: you are encountering an attitude with which you disagree, and one that has no regard for your disagreement.

[patrickaljord]

I didn't say I personally enjoy making money more than coding/building cool stuff. I just said it was ok if some people do. And yes, when you call something "vulgar and utterly clueless", you're definitely making moral judgments.

> consideration for your position

You have enough consideration to feel like posting a comment about how much you feel about it.

[Helianthus]

>And yes, when you call something "vulgar and utterly clueless", you're definitely making moral judgments.

I know! My point is merely that I wasn't lecturing.

>You have enough consideration to feel like posting a comment about how much you feel about it.

I suppose I enjoy throwing the moral imperative into sharp relief; making it clear just how much I disdain your vulgar acceptance of the love of wanting money.

That moral imperative alone is enough to carry weight in this thread. It has wandered in as mere sentiment without ever presenting an argument.

...Now, of course, I have strayed into lecturing you about the mechanics of this whole thing--but note I still have not lectured you with the moral judgment itself. I don't care about convincing you that money is vulgar. Sanctimony is enough for me.

You are quite right, though; I have spent enough time here.

[bentcorner]

> Yes? It is not only vulgar, it is utterly clueless.

I don't have the knowledge or experience to say otherwise, so if someone were to ask me if WhatsApp was a success, $16B seems like a good reason to say yes. Are you implying that WhatsApp's sale was a failure case for their owners, and success for them would have looked differently? (reject the sale and continue growth of the platform?)

[MarkSweep]

I think the app may not be used much here so people were not expecting it to be bought for so much. Anecdotally I know people who use Line, WeChat, and GroupMe. I don't know anyone who uses Whatsapp.

[dodyg]

If "here" means the US, then yeah. WhatsApp is replacing SMS with I guess pretty much the rest of the world.

WhatsApp is also not associated with the titillating "share nude pics" culture of SnapChat.

[usethis]

Wasn't the US also slow in adopting SMS? http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/618c4f5c-37ac-11db-bc01-0000779e23...

[dodyg]

Yup - I lived in NYC and Chicago from 2000 - 2006 - and as far as I can remember, I didn't see much usage of SMS at that time.

[Kiro]

Just because you haven't seen this many articles about WhatsApp before doesn't mean they haven't been closely inspected before.

[Helianthus]

This article is from March 2012. It has been posted twice before to HN to little impact.

http://hn.algolia.com/#!/story/forever/prefix/0/Whatsapp%20s...

(Correction: the presentation is from 2012; I don't know when it was posted online.)

[saurik]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3028547

[dodyg]

It is quite well known that WhatsApp uses Erlang. I bet it must been discussed here already.

[amirmc]

Perhaps among the Erlang community but I only found out as a result of digging into the company.

Would be great to have someone from WhatsApp speak at CUFP this year [1]. If anyone reading this can encourage them to do so (or put me in touch with someone one there), that would be great.

[1] http://cufp.org/

[krakensden]

The Snabb Switch* people have been talking about it a lot on HN, and there was a link to their github the other day.

*My understanding is that it's a similarly architected system, but built on a Linux/luajit stack

[Consultant32452]

I disagree. If a food charity enhanced their distribution system in a way that allowed them to feed an additional million people internationally I think we'd be just as interested in what they changed in order to meet their goals. We're interested in any significant success. As it stands though, for any for-profit company, money is the primary measure of success.

[marknutter]

Please. Money is a measure of value, plain and simple. If a lot of smart people thought WhatsApp was worth 14B then it's probably worth taking a second look at what WhatsApp did to get to this point.

[Helianthus]

This seems to me to be an excellent example of the kind of poor thinking money promotes; do prove me wrong.

>If a lot of smart people thought WhatsApp was worth 14B

Why are they smart? Because they have billions of dollars? Because Whatsapp is valuable? Because Whatsapp was less useful before the smart people bought it?

Are you incapable of viewing the transaction of 16 billion as a possible utter mistake? As financial hand-waving assigning a liquid value to shares whose value might well be inflated?

Money is a poor measure of value. Plain and simple. Are you drawn to the volume of the transaction because you think it signifies true success?

> it's probably worth taking a second look at what WhatsApp did to get to this point.

Something I never contested and agreed with explicitly.

[parasubvert]

> Money is a poor measure of value. Plain and simple. Are you drawn to the volume of the transaction because you think it signifies true success?

Money is just a number. I can't quite tell if you're suggesting that value can't be quantified, or if you believe we could quantify value some other way that would be more functional than capital markets. Do Tell.

[Helianthus]

Value cannot be adequately quantified. At its best, money is an inadequate substitute for such a quantification that is often useful; at its worst, the failure to be mindful of that inadequacy exacerbates its inaccuracy.

[dodyg]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Warner

[gress]

I agree that money is not the only indicator, but how else do you propose that we direct our collective attention?