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WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

(www.nytimes.com)
713 points greenburger | 2 comments | 16 Jun 25 13:38 UTC | HN request time: 0.422s | source
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snapcaster ◴[16 Jun 25 14:00 UTC] No.44289561[source]▶
Surprised it took them this long
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toast0 ◴[16 Jun 25 14:22 UTC] No.44289791[source]▶
They were working on it in 2019 when I left, I thought it was tested in one country after that and then it got shelved. IIRC, it needed a ToS change and there was too much pushback.

I had been voluntold to be on the ads team, because I had sent a list of things that needed to be done to make ads doable and not terrible. Of course, none of my ideas were deemed feasible at the time, including figuring our the ToS stuff, because no use building a product you can't launch and ToS changes aren't easy.

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1. blitzar ◴[16 Jun 25 14:29 UTC] No.44289893[source]▶
> things that needed to be done to make ads doable and not terrible ... none of my ideas were deemed feasible at the time

Don't sell yourself short ... they did all the things to make ads doable it was just not feasible to make them not terrible.

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2. toast0 ◴[16 Jun 25 15:01 UTC] No.44290259[source]▶
I mean, they didn't, at least at the time, because they couldn't launch it.

In my mind, early focus on ToS could have possibly gotten the change more palletable/directed the project towards more palletable choices or perhaps more likely gotten to the cancellation decision faster and people could work on different things.