I agree. You have people out there like Marc Andreessen comparing SnapChat to Tencent and saying it's potentially worth $100B or so. These people are off their goddamn meds. They are pure vulture capitalists, and poor mom and dad out in Nebraska are going to get stuck carrying this stinking mess when their 401k inevitably implodes.
You want to see how much eyeballs are worth, look at reddit. They are pretty much a corporate charity, with their reddit gold scam going on.
When people get accustomed to not paying for things, they don't pay for things. I'm not going to pay for a newspaper when I can read it all online. And yet, I'll happily go to dinner one night a week and spend more than it costs for an entire year's subscription to the local newspaper.
WhatsApp is $1 a year. That's great if you're running with a few hundred employees and have such a massive user base. That's doing more than okay, in my book. But $19B? You're not getting that back. Certainly not in any timeframe that matters. Because what's hot today will not be what's hot 5 years from now. We all know that. It's how the tech industry works.
You want to see how much eyeballs are worth, look at reddit. They are pretty much a corporate charity, with their reddit gold scam going on.
When people get accustomed to not paying for things, they don't pay for things. I'm not going to pay for a newspaper when I can read it all online. And yet, I'll happily go to dinner one night a week and spend more than it costs for an entire year's subscription to the local newspaper.
WhatsApp is $1 a year. That's great if you're running with a few hundred employees and have such a massive user base. That's doing more than okay, in my book. But $19B? You're not getting that back. Certainly not in any timeframe that matters. Because what's hot today will not be what's hot 5 years from now. We all know that. It's how the tech industry works.