WhatsApp

It is debatable if WhatsApp was worth $19B in real world but given its continued rapid growth in India, it is obvious why FB had to buy WhatsApp. In India, WA is used for any range of personal, social and increasingly business communication.  It is common for street vendors use this app to take orders.

My parents actively use a group for their siblings and cousins, another one for their offsprings, one for their employees, one for the neighborhood that they live in and few more for good measure.  I see them exchanging jokes with friends and family that they had lost touch with. The convenience of using this app has refreshed some of these connections. They are more avid WA users than FB. 

Takeaway 1: WhatsApp may not be worth $19B but FB’s worth would have been that much less if WhatsApp’s users were not part of its user count. Kudos to FB to recognizing this and having the heart and smarts to pay the price.

Whatsapp users see value in separating their communication in these groups.  Targeted sharing when social network is spread thin seems to be the differentiator. It is worth noting that at least one more company started its social network around the same idea of groups as opposed to public posts. Google+ started around the same timeframe and really pushed it “circles” as opposed to FB’s global posts. Google+ failed miserably even though it had same idea and significantly more resources behind it than WhatsApp. WhatsApp being a startup and its low budget focussed only on basic messaging for mobile users across all platforms and it caught on rapidly. While G+ reimagined social network and focussed heavily on web  experience and its integration to core corporate entity and got nowhere.

Takeaway 2: Google might have had the social network that they were looking if they had run it as a lightweight entity as opposed to burdening it with corporate expectations.