It must be hard working at Facebook, you finally got to a point in your career that you are working at one of the biggest hip new names in technology. However every time you and your colleges invent something new and ‘awsome’ it is hated on by everybody and you seem to be the cause of frustration all around you. In the beginning I believed this was a phase of facebook, but with the recent hated Facebook-film and further alteration of main features like search and messages to an almost unworkable mess. It can at least be said that Facebook is on more than just an unlucky streak.
Facebook has given us a perfect example of totally misunderstanding the market in combination with an amazing piece of mismanagement. Their latest move, and probably/hopefully masterpiece in mismanagement, has been to buy Whatsapp for a mind boggling 15 billion Dollars. Not that the price is anywhere close to a real number since any acquisition above the 100 Million bar is hard to comprehensive. Let alone if such a deal is in almost only intangible goods such as concepts, users, code and goodwill.
This being said, it is understandable Facebook would make such a move. Facebook, as being the first true social network, has by now proven to be more interested in the way we communicate and having multiple assets to serve this need. This is the same reason why Facebook bought Istagram and this is why they bought Whatsapp. Istagram introduced a way of communicate via pictures in a mobile app whereas Whatsapp changed the way we communicated mobile with each other, one-on-on as well as ongoing groups of friends, colleges chatting away.
The way Facebook wants to be leading in the evolution of human communication is both impressive as it is scary. For this exact same reason this latest acquisition could end up biting Facebook in the ass. Whatsapp is aimed to be private talking along people and friends, the model was kept believable by saying you needed to pay a dollar or some cent to use it, but until now the app never got blocked since they were still growing the market. Now that Facebook has joined the table a noticeable amount of people has started looking and thinking about alternatives. The reason for this is that Facebook tends to see consumer data as their way to make money and therefore people are getting worried about the privacy that Whatsapp will offer to them.
Alternatives for Watsapp
Since that notorious Thursday a people became aware and started looking for alternative of Whatsapp. There are old timers like BBM, Skype, Viber and eBuddy getting a new review, as well as a bunch of Asian favorites like WeChat, Line and Kakao. But also relatively new players such as Telegraph, Kik and Hike are passing the review, with parties as heml.is and kim.com still need to make it to the market with their app. All in all there is a lot to chose so lets make a list with some of the most prominent rivals and why others won’t be that interesting in the instant messaging space.
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