21 ms·
Alice Newton-Rex, head of product at WhatsApp: “Alongside of private messaging, people were saying they wanted to hear more about topics, teams and organization
by d3vmax 1y ago
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.
- _Algernon_ 1y agoTranslation: After going through a far too large number of focus groups that didn't want it we finally found one that phrased a reply in such a way, that after removing context and playing Chinese whispers up the management chain, can be interpreted as them wanting ads.
- TeMPOraL 1y agoNah, it's even simpler than that: after shoving enough surveys in users' faces (as they seem to semi-regularly do across all Meta products; I've had at least 2 in WhatsApp alone over the past few months), they've collected enough misclicks and drunk responses to be able to interpret them as lots of people wanting ads.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- PaulHoule 1y agoI was playing a lot of Beat Saber in April and got a survey which asked bizzare questions like “Do I want to use VR to manage my calendar?” They went so far as to ask for times I might be available for a focus group then they ghosted me.
- imiric 1y agoYou think this decision was based on user feedback at all? The simplest explanation is that they want more revenue, and WhatsApp users were an obvious source they weren't exploiting enough.
- TeMPOraL 1y agoObviously, but Data Is King, so you need some to wipe and cover your ass even internally.
- averageRoyalty 1y agoAustralian? We're one of only a few countries[1] who call the game Chinese Whispers. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_game
- ben_w 1y agoNot the OP, but FWIW I'm British and we also called it that in the late 80s.
- arrowsmith 1y agoDon't we still call it that now?
- megaloblasto 1y agoIt's telephone now
- arrowsmith 1y agoI'm 34 and I have never heard anyone in the UK refer to this game as "telephone" (although I'm aware that that's what Americans call it.) Is this what the kids say now? Am I getting old?
- tialaramex 1y agoAs with "Chinese Fire drill" (referring to disorganised and chaotic efforts) the problem is that it's racist. Not like mid-20th century US "People who look different are the enemy" level racist, but it's still objectionable. So we should avoid doing this, "Telephone" is a perfectly good name for this idea, and it's not racist. There are lots of small changes we can make, which make the world slightly better for everybody.
- averageRoyalty 1y agoYou've made a gross assumption about the etymology of the term. There are multiple theories about the origin, some of the racist and some of them not.
- camillomiller 1y agoHow 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?
- JohnKemeny 1y agoIt is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
- Bluestein 1y ago(And, to begin with, the whole notion of them having to/having had to focus-group these decisions - so as to, perhaps - give them a "veneer" of grassroots pseudo-democracy is preposterous.- Why don't they just come out and say "because, profit!" or some good ol' fashioned BS about "value-creation" or some other American thing like that ...)
- yarekt 1y agoPay 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
- chii 1y agoat the beginning, they "charged" $1 (or £3 as you said), but this "fee" was often just waived. You never really had to pay it to use whatsapp. The money was there as a form of advertising, to differentiate whatsapp from the others - because by making it seem more premium via attaching a price, it makes the people using it feel more superior and thus the platform more easily propagates; and it's also why they "secretly" let you use it for free if you refused to pay.
- dontlaugh 1y agoFWIW, £3 is closer to $4.
- pfortuny 1y ago"People"->Management and C-suits.
- EbNar 1y agoI'd literally PAY for a mod taking away the "updates" tab. I don't care about stories nor I want channels shoved in my face. I just need to message someone, from time to time.
- fanwood 1y agoI found the solution by convincing all my friends and family, one by one, to move to Signal. I still use Whatsapp for people who did not migrate, but it's surprisingly possible (if not easy) to convince people to use another app
- sebastiennight 1y agoSame here. The trick is to never mention "privacy", "no ads", or anything similar (which has negative perceived value). If you talk about that stuff, people will dilly-dally with the usual "well I already have too many apps, I'm not sure I want to install one more" I tell people that the video calls are better (which was true in my experience, back when I still used WA). Instant install
- HenryBemis 1y agoThe fun fact is that those people have 100+ apps on their phones, which run in the background, draining their batteries, tracking the sh*t out of them, never actually use them (get value out of them) and they think zero about their privacy (probably use gmail or the sorts). Someone asked me to install Viber and it had 30 pages of advertisers/data brokers. I won't share a bowl of poop with them (WhatsApp, Viber, etc.) "Meet them where they are" doesn't work if they are in a pool of privacy-poop.
- tialaramex 1y agoI don't know about iOS but a modern Android will periodically delete permissions from apps you aren't using, the app stays installed but it's now just a harmless icon and wasted storage space as I understand it.
- anshumankmr 1y agoHow long before they make it into a Slack/Teams competitor?
- mirekrusin 1y agoI've never seen ads in slack?
- volemo 1y agoBecause you probably (or more likely your employer) pay Slack.
- statictype 1y agoThe free version doesn’t show ads. Come on.
- konha 1y agoThe free version is a loss leader to build mindshare amongst people who are (later) in a position to buy licenses.
- arccy 1y agoThey do try to upsell you hard though... 1st party ads are still ads
- parthdesai 1y agoHow is that an ad? You get limited set of features for free, if you want to use other features, they tell you it's only available in paid version.
- 1123581321 1y agoThey advertise in the sidebar, offer discounts for the first month, occasional free trials of Pro features. You don’t have to try to use a Pro feature to get the sales pitch.
- whiplash451 1y agoIt's the usual Facebook trick: run an AB test with and without ads, observe CTR and sales without too much drop off on one side and conclude that "everyone is better off with ads" (without really trying to filter out bot traffic)
- heresie-dabord 1y agoFrom TFA: "Meta’s ad business is “in as strong a position now as it’s ever been,” said Brian Wieser, an analyst and founder of the consulting firm Madison and Wall. The company’s share of the global digital ad business is around 15 percent, he said. Last year, almost all of Meta’s $164 billion in revenue came from advertising." TL;dr: Advertising business injects more advertising.
- yb6677 1y ago[dead]
- higeorge13 1y agoTBH the product team in whatsapp needs to find some way to be meaningful. What could justify being a head of product or product manager in a chat app? New emojis? Gif support? New backgrounds? No, let's just make whatsapp like instagram. She's going to get a promotion now or move on to some new business as chief product officer. No offence to the product team, i know that this is how it works in tech. It's the same for engineering and design teams in every single b2b/b2c business. There is no concept of feature completeness anymore, every single service has to copy from others or be something instead of 10 other services.
- zuppy 1y agothese guys don’t use their own product. everyone i know uses only 2 things: direct message and group chats. everything else is just noise.
- barrell 1y agoThe questionnaire that produced these results: Would you like to hear more about topics, teams, and organizations? If no, please explain using at least 1000 characters (required) [ ] yes [ ] no
- jasonjayr 1y agopretty easy to copy and paste the question about 100 times to get the 1k char minimum :)
- cout 1y agoI did appreciate the ads on Facebook circa 2010. They were often for niche products I had not heard of and were genuinely interested in. I can't say it's like that anymore, sadly, but I can imagine someone genuinely appreciating exposure to something new.
- storus 1y agoPeople = upper management in this case. They are people too (at least until they get automated away by some LLaMA in the future).
- jorl17 1y agoWhile I definitely oppose ads in WhatsApp, I do know several people who use WhatsApp as a tool to get news, know what's going on in their town and/or community (sports club, etc), among other things. It's their way of being in the know, their reddit, RSS feed, news client, etc. I am sure that no one asked for ads and that people will get very little value out of having ads shown to them. Also, no one went around "asking for ads". Nonetheless, I am also pretty positive many people do want to “hear more about topics and organizations across WhatsApp". In fact, until a year ago I wasn't really aware of just how much people live in these WhatsApp islands/bubbles, but clearly they do!
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- a4isms 1y agoThey had Sir Humphrey Appleby run a poll: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahgjEjJkZks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahgjEjJkZks
- mirekrusin 1y agoShe didn't mean "users", she meant "people at her work".
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- lisa117 1y ago[dead]