WhatsApp, every mention
34 scenes · ← back to WhatsApp
tap a year for its mentions
every year anyone Benedict Evans 54Toni Cowan-Brown 4Bernadette Kevins 1
Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where WhatsApp comes up
Breaking and remaking media
- ▶ 31:34 Benedict Evans And so when WhatsApp comes along and suddenly you can have free SMS, what happens? 2 times in the scene
No Soup for You! Regulating tech M&A
- ▶ 0:32 Benedict Evans Um, and meanwhile, the FTC also has a case, um, trying to unwind the acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp from now almost a decade ago, which is kind of hilarious.
- ▶ 3:50 Benedict Evans Because it doesn't change out of recognition every five years, but in the tech industry, this relatively small acquisition of a relatively small company in what looks like a peripheral space might give you dominance in the whole new thing,…
- ▶ 27:06 Benedict Evans Facebook is basically it's Instagram and WhatsApp.
Figma, unbundling and $20bn of antitrust
- ▶ 26:58 Benedict Evans Which was always the problem with WhatsApp. 2 times in the scene
TV after software
- ▶ 7:16 Benedict Evans It's not like Facebook where everyone, it's not that, it's not like Facebook where everyone has to use WhatsApp because everyone's on WhatsApp.
The FTC's antitrust thesis
- ▶ 4:45 Benedict Evans Um, but so the sort of the thesis is, and this is kind of exemplified by things like Instagram and WhatsApp, but also things like Amazon buying Zappos and diapers is that these companies make acquisitions of relatively small competitors. 2 times in the scene
Three ways to say no
- ▶ 11:35 Benedict Evans The guy who runs, um, product manager for WhatsApp says, okay, so lots of people keep trying to spam my users. 2 times in the scene
Shein, TikTok and Netflix - thinking about limits
- ▶ 9:50 Benedict Evans Here, so here's a statistic, you know, one of the ways that I got interested in, in, in Shin, and this is sort of 18 months ago, which was, you know, when it was really taking off, was, I wish I'd written something about it explicitly, or… 5 times in the scene
Netflix isn't a tech company
- ▶ 3:20 Benedict Evans WhatsApp, because everyone in the UK is on WhatsApp, so you have to be on WhatsApp.
Ukraine
- ▶ 4:09 Benedict Evans Oddly, WhatsApp and Instagram haven't been blocked yet.
- ▶ 20:53 Toni Cowan-Brown And tied to that, I also just, not that I forget, but it's also, it was a reminder of WhatsApp and PayPal were both founded in by Ukrainians.
The retail reset
- ▶ 6:40 Benedict Evans You have things like WhatsApp's privacy blow up last year, where they, they didn't realize that when the lawyers write the terms of service, the terms of service are a marketing document too.
How to think about tech
- ▶ 17:22 Benedict Evans And then that happened again with WhatsApp. 3 times in the scene
The Meta reality
- ▶ 3:01 Benedict Evans I think that's right, and again, if you kind of dig into what is it that they were building that they are building, you know, there's Facebook, the blue app, there's the actual Facebook app, and then there's Instagram, and then there's… 3 times in the scene
Metaverse - beyond the buzzword
- ▶ 21:11 Benedict Evans It's, it's happening in Safari, it's happening in Instagram, and WhatsApp, and Twitter, and Telegram, and Signal, and those are all different things.
Telcos and Tesla
- ▶ 2:21 Benedict Evans And so like this whole internet thing and smartphone thing, kind of, and VoIP and WhatsApp and over the top messaging and video and stuff. 3 times in the scene
Creativity and Optimism
- ▶ 32:10 Benedict Evans Like, everybody has a smartphone, everyone is on Facebook, and WhatsApp, and Instagram, and not everyone's on Twitter, but, you know,
'Digital transformation' - beyond the silly slogan
- ▶ 6:21 Toni Cowan-Brown If I'm working within an organization or I'm working within a group team, like all of that conversation, all of that collaboration, all of that back and forth is happening now either via WhatsApp or text message or probably better via…
- ▶ 13:58 Toni Cowan-Brown Now, was it WhatsApp?
Tech in china, from inside and outside
- ▶ 15:11 Benedict Evans You know, WhatsApp is WhatsApp in, in all of those kind of markets.
Paying attention to Apple again
- ▶ 10:06 Benedict Evans I copied a chart in Excel on my Mac, opened WhatsApp,
Clubhouse and the endless cycle of social apps
- ▶ 26:31 Toni Cowan-Brown And I was thinking about this the other day, of just like, where does Clubhouse sit when you look at the social media platforms and networks, you've got, you know, you've got your chat, um, you've got your chat ones, the likes of WhatsApp,…
Why do we care about games?
- ▶ 7:48 Benedict Evans Um, I mean, you see, um, WhatsApp, um,
The FTC and Facebook
- ▶ 0:40 Benedict Evans That we have to break up Facebook, and in parallel, a whole bunch of the US states have filed another case that's slightly different, but saying the same thing, that we have to unwind the Facebook's acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp.
- ▶ 4:23 Benedict Evans Obviously, you can't argue that for, um, WhatsApp, which had, which was a twenty billion dollar deal, and had hundreds of millions of users, but you could argue that for Instagram.
- ▶ 6:14 Benedict Evans The first of these is, um, there's a lot of gerrymandering going on in the FTC and the state's argument, because they've constructed this argument that iMessage doesn't compete with WhatsApp in the USA, where iMessage probably has 10 times… 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 13:06 Benedict Evans And so this is why instead of saying Facebook has done these things, and we're going to tell them not to do it, they're saying Facebook has done these things because they bought Instagram and WhatsApp. 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 20:24 Benedict Evans Well, it's also, it's partly that, like, you could, yes, you could split, you know, you could split WhatsApp very easily. 7 times in the scene
Slack, Salesforce and the future of work
- ▶ 2:28 Bernadette Kevins And today you say, well, I know I wrote a note, but I don't remember if it's in Salesforce or Evernote or Google Docs or Gmail or WhatsApp or wherever the hell it is.
Is content moderation a dead end?
- ▶ 4:29 Benedict Evans A couple of years ago, there was this whole thing in India of lynch mobs forming based on wild rumors that were spreading on WhatsApp, which was super interesting because WhatsApp is not, doesn't have an algorithm and doesn't have… 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 15:51 Benedict Evans Um, it's like, you know, if Instagram, WhatsApp were separate companies, would you say it's okay to kick them off Instagram because they can go onto WhatsApp?
- ▶ 34:05 Benedict Evans Actually different answer is, It's hard to imagine something more structurally different than WhatsApp, and yet WhatsApp just has different problems.
How do you destroy a tech monopoly?
- ▶ 13:33 Benedict Evans The reason why Instagram has such a strong market position is not that it's part of the same company as WhatsApp and Facebook.