←back to thread

WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

(www.nytimes.com)
713 points greenburger | 1 comments | 16 Jun 25 13:38 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
d3vmax ◴[17 Jun 25 06:18 UTC] No.44296182[source]▶
Alice Newton-Rex, head of product at WhatsApp: “Alongside of private messaging, people were saying they wanted to hear more about topics, teams and organizations across WhatsApp.”

- I am pretty sure NO ONE asked to hear about more topics and organizations across whatsapp.

replies(18): >>44296234 #>>44296318 #>>44296357 #>>44296745 #>>44296815 #>>44296987 #>>44297065 #>>44297198 #>>44297231 #>>44297394 #>>44297429 #>>44297694 #>>44297901 #>>44298313 #>>44298320 #>>44298336 #>>44298717 #>>44317586 #
camillomiller ◴[17 Jun 25 06:49 UTC] No.44296318[source]▶
How do one cope on a day to day basis with this level of blatant bullshittery, apart from justifying it with a golden salary? Is this person aware that her role is to enact a farce, or even engineer such farce?
replies(5): >>44296474 #>>44296614 #>>44296730 #>>44296769 #>>44297072 #
yarekt ◴[17 Jun 25 07:41 UTC] No.44296614[source]▶
Pay for services that you use instead of forcing companies to rely on ad revenue to run their useful service?

I get it though, no one wants to pay for 100s of little free marginally useful things we use every day, but if you look back at what whatsapp did in the beginning, the £3 a year they were asking is so worth it

replies(6): >>44296628 #>>44296640 #>>44296671 #>>44296749 #>>44296755 #>>44296779 #
avhception ◴[17 Jun 25 07:46 UTC] No.44296640[source]▶
I remember when it was 1€/year. Absolutely totally worth it! And I'd gladly pay again if they would only let me!
replies(3): >>44296697 #>>44296802 #>>44297038 #
1. mrweasel ◴[17 Jun 25 08:16 UTC] No.44296802{3}[source]▶
It felt a little weird that they didn't differentiated pricing. Charging 1€ is adds a little to much overhead per transaction, and maybe not everyone has a credit card. It seems to me that an alternative would be to charge e.g. 5, 10 maybe even 20€ per year in western countries, then step the amount down depending on the economy in each region, bottoming out at e.g. 5€. Then just let the app be free in the rest of the world.

That way a user in Europe could "subsidize" 4-10 users in the developing world. Maybe that's a little to social democratic for a corporation.