The standout part of this article is that the latest Google attempt to enter the messaging market, Allo, is dead. Despite being a Google product with full access to the Play store, it got mere 50 million downloads. It is yet another example of Google’s inability to get focused. It struggles to simplify — which is kinda ironic because this is the company that removed all the clutter from search and made search great again.
Whatsapp co-founder Jan Koum gave a rare interview to a Russian journalist and it is my favorite read of the day. When asked how the $19 billion dollars sale to Facebook changed his life.
I still live in the same place. I have the same friends, and that is very important. And I have the same job. After the deal with Facebook, 90% of my life did not change.
I am a big admirer of his simple, no-nonsese and low key approach to business.
Just recently my friends Nick and Chrysta Bilton became the proud parents of Somerset Bilton. As someone who saw their romance blossom, this was the perfect way for the story to continue. The birth of a child is such a magical moment for the parents, a reaffirmation of human continuity. A child is a bridge from our past to the future.
When I was younger, we would get baby announcements through snail mail. Then it was over the phone. These days most people announce the arrival of their baby on Facebook or via an email with a handful of photo attachments. Nick and Chrysta, however, went a step further and shared the whole experience with a special group created on WhatsApp.
The group included some of their closest friends, and each had his or her own history with the couple. We all know one another, and perhaps that is why there is a sense of great intimacy in
Dean Bubley, a long time telecoms watcher says we are past the point of “peak telephony” and makes a compelling argument as to why. Agreed! Everyone is using different ways of messaging to communicate and not just SMS or voice calls. Read this!
Every year, much like every day, there is a moment where the end is the beginning. Today, perhaps is as good a moment to reflect on the year which is winding down. It was quite a wonderful year — travel, food, family moments and a chance to meet the mighty, the marvelous and the famous.
It has also been a year of self reflection — an attempt to slow down, get off Internet’s rigmarole, be less anxious and perhaps like a piece of chalk, soak in life. I have enjoyed reconnecting with old friends, made new friends and have slowly start to appreciate personal time.
But it hasn’t been the easiest of years. The relentlessness of internet publishing has a dangerously narcotic effect — the instant gratification and feedback on one’s work is enough to make rest of the world seem slow and plodding. My new life as a full time venture capitalist for True Ventures commands more patience and calm — and if anything 2014 has been a transition towards a more tranquil approach to life, crisis and creation.
Continue reading...Continue reading My 2014 Review & 2015 To-Do List
The saying used to say, water water everywhere, and not a drop to drink. It might as well be words words everywhere and not a single word to say.
I wonder if emotion in communication — our ability to express is vanishing from our lives as we are overrun by methods and mediums of communication. Email. Facebook. Whatsapp. Twitter. Sms. Phone. Someone has come up with Yo — what seems to be an atomic unit of optimal communique- stripped of meaning and extraneous letters, and an apt metaphor of our modern sped up lives.
It seems like I am constantly typing something. A small note to someone. A memo to someone else. A blog post. A Facebook post. A conversation on Whatsapp. A text message. Tweet. Tap tap tap. I doesn’t matter whether it is my phone, my computer or my iPad. Tap tap tap!
The more I type, the
Continue reading...Continue reading Words without meaning & the reality of networked communication
Facebook’s $2 billion bet on Oculus or $19 billion spend on Whatsapp or Google paying $3.2 billion for Nest — everyone is looking to find the next platform, argues Fred Wilson. Everyone is betting billions of dollars on trying to find what comes after mobile. Fred’s comments made me wonder: so are smartest minds of our time are as clueless about the future as rest of us? (Also, Dave Winer has outline nine reasons why Zuck bought Oculus.)
Chuckles aside, is it that both Google and Facebook realize that there is only so much they can do with web-based advertising and ensuing revenue stream? If you ask me, that is the real story here — realization that there is a glass ceiling to advertising especially as we shift gears and move away from the old desktop advertising ecosystem to a smaller, pocketable ecosystem that is less prone to cheap optimization tricks and is
Continue reading...Continue reading Billion Dollar Dart Throwing
It has been over a week since Facebook announced its intentions to buy WhatsApp for about $19 billion (all told.) The news obviously generated a lot of debate and a lot of commentary filled the airwaves. The stock market more or less approved of the deal, giving Facebook stock and market capitalization the requisite bump it needed. I argued that it was an irrationally rational deal.
Since I started a new gig, I sort of ignored most of the published commentary. A couple of days ago in a conversation with my new colleague at True Ventures, Keila Fong, we started talking about how different really is WhatsApp that it is worth $19 billion to Mark Zuckerberg. So we ran some numbers and compared WhatsApp’s numbers to some of the other social applications.
These charts show that not only WhatsApp is different, but it is exceptional and did well to capture the moment (i.e., rise of the mobile broadband) near perfectly. They are also not just exceptional, they are a standout with highest rate of growth and getting to that point the fastest.
Another day and another acquisition — and another one that is jaw dropping and seemingly insane.
Less than a week after Japan’s Rakuten acquired Viber for $900 million, Facebook co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced that he is buying WhatsApp for a whopping $16 billion in cash and stock. Add another $3 billion for WhatsApp employees may get over next few years in restricted stock, and this becomes a $19 billion company.
When I think about the deal, it actually makes what investor Paul Kedrosky calls “ridiculously rational” sense. It keeps WhatsApp out of the hands of Google and most importantly takes out an aggressive competitor for “attention” from the market.
Facebook is going to end up competing with apps like Line and WeChat in many markets for the consumer’s mobile minutes and WhatsApp gives the Menlo Park based company a strong competitive weapon. While potential monetization remains a
