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The most hated man on the planet .............. by Phone networks !

sufferingsam

ULTIMATE Member
Has got to be Mark Zuckerberg for making Whatsapp calling worldwide for free (so long as you have data) ! Revolutionary IMHO.

Its eaten into their breakfast, lunch and dinner, desserts, afters et al, due their eye watering roaming charge gougings. The phone networks must have lost (rather not not earned) £/$ billions over the years.

For all the faults of his social media empire, thats one hell of a good thing he has done & achieved ! Worthy of an award and honour.

Saved me thousands over the years the way my family chats everyday overseas. (sometimes hours on end) .
 
I was making free international calls long before Facebook bought WhatsApp. We had MSN Messenger, Skype, etc, before them. Three even sold a "skypephone" for a while which allowed users to make free skype-to-skype calls. Apple's FaceTime was introduced in 2010.

The problem is that most people didn't have the technology to make calls. With a computer, you'd need an internet connection and a headset. Phones only got to a point where these apps could be useful around 2009-10, but not everyone replaced their dumb or even the smart-ish phones right away... and even if you had the best iPhone, data was still a problem in most countries.

WhatsApp already had lots of users by 2014 when Facebook acquired them. Adding free calls was another good feature and with more people with "smart phones", internet at home and, sometimes, some data on go, plus it was cross platform... so yeah, it took off. Other apps did the same in other parts of the world. For example, this article from 2013 about Viber talks about them disrupting the old way of making money with calls. Viber was and I believe is still very popular in eastern europe.

Zuckerberg didn't do anything revolutionary. I think the most important thing he did was to leave WhatsApp alone... Microsoft managed to kill MSN Messenger with that transition to Skype and then made Skype unappealing to regular users. Google, well, they can't create an app and leave it alone.

The internet, new devices, and 3G/4G is what "killed" the old business. Now they have to be more "data networks" than "phone networks".
 
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I was making free international calls long before Facebook bought WhatsApp. We had MSN Messenger, Skype, etc, before them. Three even sold a "skypephone" for a while which allowed users to make free skype-to-skype calls. Apple's FaceTime was introduced in 2010.

The problem is that most people didn't have the technology to make calls. With a computer, you'd need an internet connection and a headset. Phones only got to a point where these apps could be useful around 2009-10, but not everyone replaced their dumb or even the smart-ish phones right away... and even if you had the best iPhone, data was still a problem in most countries.

WhatsApp already had lots of users by 2014 when Facebook acquired them. Adding free calls was another good feature and with more people with "smart phones", internet at home and, sometimes, some data on go, plus it was cross platform... so yeah, it took off. Other apps did the same in other parts of the world. For example, this article from 2013 about Viber talks about them disrupting the old way of making money with calls. Viber was and I believe is still very popular in eastern europe.

Zuckerberg didn't do anything revolutionary. I think the most important thing he did was to leave WhatsApp alone... Microsoft managed to kill MSN Messenger with that transition to Skype and then made Skype unappealing to regular users. Google, well, they can't create an app and leave it alone.

The internet, new devices, and 3G/4G is what "killed" the old business. Now they have to be more "data networks" than "phone networks".
True, but initial iterations of others were very buggy and proprietary, in that one had to have the same versions of software between callers/receivers and very poorly implemented. No cross platform compatibility. (control freakery at its best)

MS was the wrecker in chief with MSN messenger , when they decided to buy Skype for around £8 billion (thanks Balmer and his massive ego), but then hoping to cash up & recoup the monies . They could not monetise it .

Viber didnt really take off, since it did not have a huge captive market like Facebook to incorporate in their system. And FREE, without any subscription shenanigans.

Google never caught up with the trend. (since no money to be made)!

Mark had the vision and guts to make it happen and changed communications worldwide forever at scale. Cemented his place as a pioneer of sorts.

And I agree. The networks need to be the dumb pipes they are supposed to be . Leave the rest of Apps based businesses to others.
 
Apps like Whatsapp started with the best intentions but was not commercially sustainable and they eventually sold their souls. Now owned by another massive US corporate.

I don't regard Mark Zuckerberg or the others to be benevolent (although they might of been once). Most of the well known founders of the giant companies either stole ideas from other people or grew on the shoulders of others more talented. Just read the detailed histories Jobs, Gates, et al.

We appear to have lost the importance of open source and how the big boys should not be allowed to retain excessive monopolistic control on technological development via multiple layers of patents. You could not be able build a mobile phone today without thousands of patents.

There was a time when people shared their ideas and I applaud those that stick with it.
But these companies are simply too big now.

Remember also chaps if its free you are the product.
 
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Rinse and repeat for Lync / Skype for Business / Microsoft Teams (with an honourable mention for a half-hearted effort from Cisco) to consign the majority of corporate PBXes to the annals of technology history.
 
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