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WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

(www.nytimes.com)
713 points greenburger | 1 comments | 16 Jun 25 13:38 UTC | HN request time: 0.299s | source
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robertlagrant ◴[16 Jun 25 14:20 UTC] No.44289775[source]▶
> When Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014, the messaging app had a clear focus. No ads, no games and no gimmicks.

This sort of analysis is very surface-level I think. My impression is WhatsApp offered that by running on VC money and had no plan to run an actual business. That's not a question of focus. It's an unsustainable, please monetise me later land grab.

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rchaud ◴[16 Jun 25 22:40 UTC] No.44294042[source]▶
Have you considered that you may be making the surface-level analysis? I paid $3 for Whatsapp in 2010 on the Blackberry app store. They had a staff of ~20 people handling messages across almost 200 countries.It became the defacto global messaging app because it was available on every single platform, not just the Apple/Google duopoly VCs cared about.
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1. hn_throwaway_99 ◴[17 Jun 25 04:28 UTC] No.44295775[source]▶
Sorry, but the original commenter is correct. They received relatively small amounts of seed funding in 2009 and later charged a nominal amount to cover text verification, but they still were a classic VC-funded play: receive tens of millions in VC dollars to operate at a loss for years to build market dominance. From the Wikipedia page:

> In April 2011, Sequoia Capital invested about $8 million for more than 15% of the company, after months of negotiation by Sequoia partner Jim Goetz.[63][64][65]

> By February 2013, WhatsApp had about 200 million active users and 50 staff members. Sequoia invested another $50 million, and WhatsApp was valued at $1.5 billion.[26] Some time in 2013[66] WhatsApp acquired Santa Clara–based startup SkyMobius, the developers of Vtok,[67] a video and voice calling app.[68]

> In a December 2013 blog post, WhatsApp claimed that 400 million active users used the service each month.[69] The year 2013 ended with $148 million in expenses, of which $138 million in losses.

I mean, when Facebook bought WhatsApp for billions, what did people expect? How else were they going to monetize?