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this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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WhatsApp pre-Facebook acquisition was phenomenal. Had close to half a billion users paying $1-$3 per year. I think the team was no more than 15 and profitable.
It was actually private and secure, and obviously sharing no metadata with Facebook as it does today.
Oh, what coulda been. Gotta build and support Signal now. (WhatsApp cofounder Brian Acton is executive chairman of Signal now.)
I have used it since 2010, never paid a penny. Moving friends and relatives to Signal has been a waste of time, I feel like I have the first fax machine in the world.
WhatsApp used to be a yearly paid app. Even though they rarely actually "collected".
I wish it still was and Meta never got their grubby hands on it.
I was one of the suckers that actually paid for Whatsapp back in 2014. Back then it was just a way to support the devs. They'll never be able to charge for Whatsapp, with all these different free options like Telegram.
You're not sucker. Just a great guy.
I found a great little web thing in like '01: you put it in your mp3 directory and it launches a playlist when you hit it with your browser. It was tiny, elegant, reliable and clean. I paid the guy. Maybe I was the only one.
I paid him again when I used it somewhere else.
I lost it in a machine collapse, and my mp3s were merely generated data and not valuable. So I needed it again. I paid the guy again. He writes back and says "you're like half my total income on this. It's good. Never pay again, but if you come to the city we should grab a beer.".
He was a great guy. Never got to NYC after that though, just bad luck and an airplane crash, but I looked forward to it.