| WhatsApp is much better than Skype as an acquisition. 1. It's a single-purpose, specialised application which makes it hard to compete against. Once you can't subtract anymore from a software you are left with the essence of it. If you build that rock-solid you can eliminate any competitive threat on the product front. Kind of like unix utilities. 2. On the network front they played smartly by going after your phone book which makes them network agnostic (Skype, FB, Google, iMessage, BBM are all stuck within their own walls). At this point WhatsApp can just sit back and let network-effects do the work (they have spent 0 on marketing to date). Between 1 & 2, competing with WhatsApp is hard and they are resilient to disruption. That's a great relief for any tech acquisition. Another thing I like about WhatsApp is that they didn't do a whole lot other than fixing SMS. They did this by adding group messaging and reducing costs. And for now at least, I don't get any marketing spam on WhatsApp like I do over SMS. Skype's shelf life was always questionable to me. It was and will remain relatively easier to disrupt. |