Because Facebook wants to run Snap into the ground. That is why they are trying to steal all of their users to their own messaging apps. Instagram Stories has done that some but they want more. There are also some users that would prefer to just use one app than have 5 to switch between. The carrot is 'You already use WhatsApp and now you can do Snapchat without leaving. Cool, huh?' I'm not sure I agree but I think that is the attack vector.

> Facebook wants to run Snap into the ground

I think it's more Facebook wants what Snap's got. Snap has visibility into bits of time social graph Facebook doesn't, and the latter doesn't like that. Vindictiveness isn't a good long-term strategy; ruthless territoriality is.

I think this is Facebook's 9th or 10th thinly-veiled attempt to siphon users away from Snapchat. Previous direct attempts at cloning included Poke (2012) and Slingshot (2014), which didn't work at all, so they've settled for slowly cloning and integrating Snapchat features into Whatsapp and Instagram.

Have to agree with the conclusion of this Guardian article that has documented the phenomenon:

"With attempts six and seven coming in the same month, and eight, nine, and 10 coming in the same weekend, it’s clear that Facebook’s attacks on Snapchat are accelerating. Some back-of-the-envelope maths suggests that at the current rate of acceleration, there will be more Facebook clones of Snapchat than there are atoms in the universe by the year 2030. And yet Snapchat will probably still be more popular among teens."

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/31/facebook-...

facebook learned well the myspace lesson - users don't like to use on multiple social networks - and the generational nature of cool - and snapchat is having monster growth in the younger population

> I think it's more Facebook wants what Snap's got.

You know, you can do both. Even though FB can get its users make stories in its apps, the teens/millenial audience which Snapchat has is what FB want.

The more I think about Fb's strategy, the less I'm convinced they are worried about Snap's dominance in the younger crowd.

Instagram Stories is FB's direct shot at Snapchat and from my understanding, it is doing pretty well and growing.

WhatsApp is barely used in the US but heavily used outside the US. I think WhatsaApp Status is FB's play to bring Snapchat to the millions of users not in the US - stifling Snap's international growth through network effects.

My bet is they'll add SMS ( maybe + RCS) support to WhatsApp soon as well and then more slowly go with the WeChat model of becoming your everything app.

I am intrigued. What messaging app do people in the US use? SMS? Or iMessage? What cross-platform messaging is the most common in US? I mean to ask "used overall" and not by a particular age group.

Here in India I used to think it's only WhatsApp pretty much then I realised there are many apps which have substantial user-bases e.g. hike messenger (hike.in). I was surprised that Viber still has decent number of users in India and then of course there is Fb Messenger.

people I know from US mostly use, Line or iMessage. And yes whatsapp is not much known in US to many people. Strange but true.

Teens aren't millennial. They're gen z.

Different users of the "Millenial" label start the cohort, by birth year, anywhere between 1976 and 1984 and end it anywhere between 1994 and 2004, with some assigning no end point yet or suggesting a potential later end point than 2004. [0]

Depending on the which of those end points is taken, either all teens, late teens, or no teens are Millenials.

[0] A (probably incomplete) breakdown is available on Wikipedia, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials#Date_and_age_ran...

Facebook is just never going to get the same demographics as Snapchat. Period. Snapchat is currently seen as something that is used exclusively by teens and younger people while everyone and their grandma is on facebook, making it "uncool". I'm curious to see what happens when the older generation moves into Snapchat.

You're making that assuming from a US viewpoint. In Germany every kid in school is on WhatsApp, as my teacher friends tell me. The same is probably valid for other markets.

In The Netherlands everyone is on WhatsApp, and instead of sending a text message or something like that, it is common to hear "Ik zal even een appje sturen" (I will sent you an WhatsApp message), or "Ik app je wel" (I'll WhatsApp you).

It got shortened... to just "app".

Brazil too. Everybody use WP.

But, to be honest, I think this is a horrible move. Make clear that WP will move more in the direction to become more Social. I have thousands of contacts saved that I have no intention of having any social interaction that is not straightforward. My mechanic, the person who cuts my hair, my gardener, a girl I met yesterday, the person I sold my car to. With all these, I interacted using Whats app. But with none of them, I want to share what I share with my friends, my relatives etc.

My facebook is frozen exactly because of this. WP, especially its groups, was a territory of segregated interaction, this was spectacular. Facebook inc could kill this by including functions like that.

I remember when MSN, Skype, and others message programs have tried put a feed inside their app. They failed.

Not cool, imagine sending your x-rated shit to grandma or dad. You could with one app, harder to do on different apps.

heh

> My parents use WhatsApp on generations-old phones - it performs great and it's simple enough to understand

WhatsApp dropped support for legacy phone platforms (Symbian, Android 2.2<, iOS 6, WinMo 7) at the end of 2016 in pursuit of fancy features.

> While these mobile devices have been an important part of our story, they don't offer the kind of capabilities we need to expand our app's features in the future.[1]

I miss the independent, $1/yr WhatsApp, it was all features and no bloat.

1. https://blog.whatsapp.com/10000617/WhatsApp-support-for-mobi...

> it was all features and no bloat.

Isn't Status a feature?

As with many things, the distinction between "bloat" and "feature" varies from person to person. That out of the way, Status is not a feature I would want or use, it's increasing system requirements with no benefit to me, therefore qualifies as bloat in my book

I guess WhatsApp will replace Facebook Messenger in a few years. Why should Facebook waste their time on developing two different apps that do nearly the same? Also, WhatsApp's userbase seems to consist of a lot of people that don't use Facebook anymore and Facebook wants them back.

Why does it want them back? It really just cares about the social graph. It doesn't need to know what you're saying, just who you're talking to. I've already seen that information used in Instagram: people I chat with more often in WhatsApp have their content (stories and posts) surfaced at the top of my feed.

Ugh I hope not, Messenger is exactly what I don't want WhatsApp to become.

I'm trying to stay away from Messenger but it does have one significant advantage over WhatsApp - it can be used on multiple devices seamlessly, which is useful when I have a work phone and my personal phone.

Almost impossible to square that requirement with strong end to end encryption.

You can figure out ways to do it, but it's pretty kludgy (messages addressed to you have to be encrypted with the keys of each device you've authorized) and you can't scroll back prior to when a device was authorized and its key was communicated to other participants, which users might not find convenient.

But it's why I don't use Whatsapp as well, personally. I prefer the cross-device seamlessness of Hangouts (and FB Messenger) to E2E crypto.

> You can figure out ways to do it, but it's pretty kludgy (messages addressed to you have to be encrypted with the keys of each device you've authorized) and you can't scroll back prior to when a device was authorized and its key was communicated to other participants, which users might not find convenient.

Apple seems to do OK with iMessage and it faces the same constraints.

> Apple seems to do OK with iMessage and it faces the same constraints.

Always had an impression that iMessage is not end to end encrypted.

It is, but it requires the sender to encrypt the message for every one of the recipients devices.

What isn't encrypted is iCloud backups, which are what provide the ability to scroll backup on new devices.

It's just overburdened and cooked at this point honestly. WhatsApp feels fresh compared to it.

It reminds me a little bit of Google+, they're willing to ruin every product they have so they can look more like the fresh new thing.

I hope not. I prefer Messenger by far. I want my conversations everywhere I compute, and WhatsApp seems very averse to that. I understand why, but it's not what I want in a messengong product.

Because different market have different choices. In developing world more people like to use WhatsApp as their messaging solution while on the other end in some countries WhatsApp is not popular and messenger is more popular

How will they harvest data from encrypted chats?

Especially ironic considering that they had promised that they won't venture beyond SMS when they were bought by FB, they backtracked on each promise I guess.

which commercially motivated shop would keep up its promises?

Yes, but the commercially motivated shop should not actively add features which most of its userbase doesn't care for? My mother uses whatsapp, I don't, she doesn't give a rat's ass for disappearing messages leave aside setting status that too disappearing, this is what happens when the parent company shoves down strategy on your throat!

Possibly a good point, but alternatively, take a look at what's happened with WeChat in China. http://a16z.com/2015/08/06/wechat-china-mobile-first/

It was originally a chat app, but is now a standardized authentication, payments and UI for tons of services, like booking a doctor, getting a taxi, etc. Truly seems like we're missing out by not having it.

The payment processors will NEVER let something like this happen. They will fight each other to the death before giving up a unified payment system to Apple, Verizon, etc.

I can see facebook trying to turn it into the west's wechat.