
Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App - nicpottier
http://blog.textit.in/your-path-to-a-$16b-exit-build-a-j2me-app
======
coenhyde
The key take away from this article is not to build your app in J2ME but to
recognize how big the world is outside of America. American focused startups
face lots of competition in a relatively small market.

~~~
jrockway
The US is a pretty big market. 320,000,000 people, most with at least some
disposable income. There are also plenty of advertisers that want to market
their products to Americans, which means you can choose between ad-sponsored
or for-pay business models.

~~~
joelthelion
There are also plenty of companies targeting the US market. The rest of the
world? Not so much.

To give you an example: there is no reddit equivalent in French. The closest
things we have are a few French-speaking subreddits that have very few
subscribers since reddit scares people who don't speak English before they can
reach the French-speaking subreddits. We also have a few very poor quality
reddit rip-offs with no users.

Granted, the French-speaking world is not as big as the US market. But 100
million people is already a decent target, don't you think?

~~~
jedberg
Funny story about that. We (reddit) had a long debate about what the default
UI and content should be back when we internationalized (2008 I think?).
Should we use the Accept-Language header to select both the UI and the
content, or just the UI? We started by making the assumption that if your
preferred language was French, for example, you'd want French content.

We got a ton of feedback from French speakers that they preferred the English
content, so we ended up settling on selecting a UI based on the A-L header but
giving the default English content (unless you specifically set it otherwise).

~~~
joelthelion
That's interesting. I think your decision makes sense, since your french users
all speak English and you have much more content in English. In fact it
personally irks me when I see reddit's UI in French (for example when I'm not
logged in) because I'd rather have the whole site in English than parts of it
in French.

In any case I think that if you really wanted to target the French-speaking
population, it would be best to have a separate site or at least a clearly
separated part of the site.

~~~
jedberg
There is a separate part of the site for French speakers:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/fr](http://www.reddit.com/r/fr)

There's one for every supported language.

------
avenger123
The message of the article is good but it's not seeing the forest from the
trees.

Having just read the Forbes artcile on the company and Jan in particular, some
interesting things stood out:

1) Jan had money to start and was able to take time to build a user base and
find the real value in the App and didn't need to go around "raising money".
The SMS component of the app wasn't the initial focus. The company didn't need
VC funding at any point. He was able to focus on product development and
revenues started to come in to cover costs.

2) Jan is a technical guy. He did the initial backend but hired out the iPhone
development. Either way he was involved. He developed the initial app for the
first 9 months or so before bringing on Ackon as a cofounder.

3) There is real value in the app. No one needs to question this. There's no
big pitch deck's, presentations, etc.The app was allowed to grow organically
due to its network affect. The business can scale into the millions and
billions of users.

The $16 billion exit is largely due to number 3. It's rare for a lot of
businesses to have that kind of scale.

Reading the Forbes article, my takeaway is that there is no way anyone can
"build a path to a xx billion exit". What one can do is find a business model
that can actually scale and generate real revenue. Maybe not to billion users
or hundreds of millions in revenue but enough to take it outside of the
"lifestyle" business mode. Also, having money of your own and technical skills
to execute doesn't hurt one bit.

I think one lesson that I would take away for the younger crowd is - slow down
a bit. Go work for a big corp or even a startup that pays well. Save every
penny. Instead of spending that $100 on the get together every other night
save it. Build your skills. At some point, go for it. You'll have money to
live off, money to test your business model and a fallback if it doesn't work
(get another job).

EDIT: Another big reason for the big exit is incredible leverage by Jan. He's
got the most equity. He doesn't need Facebook. He is already a millionaire and
the App can only get better. This is deal making at its finest. I can only
imagine how much back and forth happened, each time with a bigger number from
Facebook.

~~~
yohanatan
> 3) There is real value in the app. No one needs to question this. There's no
> big pitch deck's, presentations, etc.The app was allowed to grow organically
> due to its network affect. The business can scale into the millions and
> billions of users.

Can you explain this one? Something that seems to have been lost in all the
hype is how yet another messaging app is somehow novel, innovative, or
exciting. Is this somehow a major technological leap from other instant
messengers (which we've had for nearly 2 decades now).

~~~
twic
WhatsApp is different to most messaging apps in that it runs on dumb phones
(featurephones), not just smartphones. It's different to built-in text
messaging in that it uses data rather than SMS. Dumb phones are a lot cheaper
than smartphones, and for most people, data is cheaper than SMS.

There are an awful lot of people in the world who can't afford a smartphone or
a serious SMS habit. Those people use WhatsApp.

There is a parallel here to BlackBerry Messenger. In the UK at least, the two
groups that use (or used, a couple of years ago) BlackBerries are
businesspeople, who use it because it integrates with their corporate IT
whatnot, and schoolchildren, who use it because BBM is free, unlike SMS.
However, BBM is tied to a shonky and still not that cheap hardware platform
that uses special snowflake network services that are not available
everywhere, whereas WhatsApp is portable.

~~~
yohanatan
That sounds rather trivial to me. Facebook has a huge userbase and I'm sure
that if they made FB Messenger run on J2ME as well, it would have massive
uptake. Seems like Zuck just wanted to spread the love around a bit and
generate some news (or has some serious lack of confidence in the competence
of his own developers).

~~~
aestra
A difference is you don't have to create a WhatsApp account, it just uses your
phone number. It is plug and play.

~~~
yohanatan
Trivial to implement.

~~~
roel_v
Yes, everything about WhatsApp is so trivial that Facebook with their billions
and billionaires and 1000's of high-quality engineers decided to spend 18 _B_
illion dollars on it. But of course they're all dumbasses because you say it's
all 'trivial', right?

~~~
yohanatan
I think it's pretty clear that Facebook didn't buy WhatsApp for the technology
itself but rather the large market penetration/installed user base. Whether
that was stupid or not is up for debate.

------
antirez
The j2me is just a piece of "it just works".

1) Covers a huge amount of devices. Yep, because j2me, but also because what
could be the top-1 competitor, Apple iMessage, can't inter-operate between
Apple and Android devices (very stupid tactic, it will get marginalized).

2) Does not require an account, so it is not bound to Facebook, Twitter, ...
You may ask, what's the problem with having an account? That you capture in
your use base non-social people. Hey mom, put this in your phone and we'll
exchange messages for free.

3) Because it just works and is not bound to a specific social network /
company, people see it as SMS that is both free (hugely important because of
stupidly overpriced SMS are, and especially, were). And... an improved version
of SMS because MMS are totally a fail: limited, costly, lame.

4) Add to this business smartness behind that: old users don't pay for premium
accounts, no ADV, resist to the temptation of fixing what is irrelevant for
the mass of people (security) if this impacts in any way the product aspect
(no account, trivial recovery of the account if you change phone).

5) Add to this product/technology smartness: don't archive messages server
side so the service runs with 1/100 of resources. No huge scaling issues.

So this is just a very very very well executed product, that was able to
provide what users wanted, and this is why they did a 16B deal, not for the
j2me app, every successful business is a mix of a number of critical things.

The ground that made this possible was the incredible situation where on the
internet era you had to pay 10 cents to exchange 160 chars between two phones.

~~~
zyb09
I agree, this is the real reason WhatsApp took off so quickly. Especially that
it automatically uses your phone number as account-id and then goes through
your address book to automatically populate your WhatsApp contact list.

No other Instant Messenger did that. It was always: Create account, exchange
account-ids, add to contact list. This adds huge amounts of friction for a new
service, and WhatsApp sidestepped this completely.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
Fairly sure Viber did the same thing.

------
dhawalhs
A comment [1] I made 829 days ago on Whatsapp

 _Its biggest plus is that it is cross platform. They have apps for
Blackberry, Android, iOS and Symbian. So you can talk with almost anybody out
there. At least in my home country, most people have Blackberry /Symbian.
Imagine having a group conversation with people on different platforms and in
different countries._

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3231053](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3231053)

~~~
diaz
Well they don't have an app for Jolla and are now sending takedown notices for
the existing apps that try to take on that problem.

------
keerthiko
This. This is the answer I have always looked for.

> "But, but, how is WhatsApp any different than iMessage / Facebook Messenger
> / Hangouts?"

I have made this exclamation multiple times, and my friends in India and
Singapore and other parts of Asia just turned up their palms with a "I dunno,
everyone uses it and told me to get it."

I refused to use it since I like to use as few messaging platforms as possible
(just Google Hangouts right now since it has most of my contacts, voice and
video) despite my friends pestering me.

J2ME is the most reasonable explanation. I see why it made Whatsapp itself
popular. But still? Almost everyone I know who's using it actually uses it on
an Android/iOS smart device. Who is this "everyone" of theirs using it on
feature phones? I doubt their friends circle intersects that heavily with
rural villagers living on $10/day.

And also, is this really a viable long-term play for Facebook? How does this
contribute towards the rest of their product plays?

~~~
furyg3
In Holland, WhatsApp dominates, and it's not a $10/day country.

It dominates because SMS rates were too expensive here. Even when Mom & Dad
would buy you an iPhone, kids were choosing Blackberries (!) as their primary
phone because of internet messaging.

WhatsApp was seen as something worked with non BB devices (iPhones, Androids).
It pretty much murdered the cell phone providers who were giving away cheap
data rates and betting on income from increased SMS usages. Whoops.

When iMessage and Hangouts came along it was really too late. The process flow
for most users who want to send a text is: go to WhatsApp first, if the user
isn't there or doesn't respond, send an SMS and be frustrated with them.

Anyone could have beat WhatsApp in NL, but didn't. If the telcos would have
given out unlimited SMS messages, it probably wouldn't exist. If BlackBerry
would have released iOS/Andriod versions, they probably would have been the
standard in Holland. If Apple would have released iMessage earlier, instead of
(presumably) not wanting to piss off the carriers, it would have stood a
chance. ... certainly if they also released apps for other platforms.

~~~
thirdsun
Yes and I would also add that using the phone number / imei as account
identifier helped them a lot to convince everybody and their mother to use the
service. Personally I'm not a friend of WhatsApp, but the reason even older,
far from tech-savvy people are using it is the ease of access - you don't need
anyones username or email - just install the app and your existing contacts
show up. I've seen people who couldn't remember their own email using the app
within seconds on a feature phone. Try that with Facebook.

------
colin_mccabe
Let's not forget Symbian and Blackberry either. WhatsApp also runs on those.

I don't think starting a new Blackberry, Symbian or J2ME project today is
really a good idea, though. It takes at least a few years for a company to
make an exit, and by the time you do, those burning platforms will have flamed
out.

~~~
blazespin
It absolutely makes sense to work on a J2ME app today if you have a product
aimed at developing nations. They won't be swimming in smartphones any time
soon.

~~~
acchow
Low end Android phones are approaching feature phones in price.

~~~
vishnugupta
They are already cheaper than feature phones! At least in India :
[http://tinyurl.com/la5g2ou](http://tinyurl.com/la5g2ou)

~~~
tim333
That link appears to show the cheapest Android phone at R 2699 and the
cheapest feature phone at R 699. I'm not sure that fits your point.

------
chubot
I'm pretty ignorant about whatsapp, but I paged through their blog a couple
hours ago, before reading this post
([https://blog.whatsapp.com/](https://blog.whatsapp.com/)).

And the fact that they had blog posts about Windows Mobile, Nokia, and
Blackberry clients really stood out.

I think Google, Facebook et al probably prioritize those platforms last, if at
all. So kudos to Whatsapp for their contrarian thinking.

Their blog also shows the achievements of 1M and 2M simultaneous connections
on a box, which I remember seeing here before on HN. So these guys are also
very talented and experienced engineers.

------
mik3y
Citation needed; I'd certainly love to know whether J2ME devices were a
significant chunk of WhatsApp's actives, but there's zero data to back up the
suggestion..

~~~
dsl
As of today: Smartphones outsold feature phones for this first time ever in
India. [http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/samsung-smartphones-
outse...](http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/samsung-smartphones-outsell-
feature-phones/1/344332.html)

From my personal experiences, international countries that have smartphone
adoption use Viber, and the feature phone countries use WhatsApp.

~~~
terhechte
WhatsApp is also really strong here in Germany and other parts of Europe. More
of my friends are on WhatsApp than Facebook (only very few more though).

~~~
sschueller
These numbers are going to drop significantly now. Everyone I talk to is
unhappy about the acquisition and will switch to something else like telegram.

~~~
ville
I'd say more than 99.9% of WhatsApp users haven't heard of Telegram.

WhatsApp users are mostly not early adopters like you and your friends. They
are ordinary people, because WhatsApp is is a simple communication tool
targeted to everyone. And that's why they keep doubling their user base.

------
_pmf_
> Writing J2ME apps is no cakewalk.

It's a bizarre perversion of everything that makes software development
bearable. I've created my share of horribly cobbled-together ad-hoc embedded
software development toolchains, but these can't hold a candle to the abysmal
monstrosity of a vendor-patched J2ME SDK.

------
gojomo
If anyone has used the J2ME version of WhatsApp, can they describe how similar
it is to the smartphone versions?

For example:

• Do you get a notification as soon as messages are waiting, even if the J2ME
app hasn't been run recently?

• Are photo/video messages available?

• Are the group messaging options the same?

~~~
thewarrior
Yes all of them work. Not just that they work surprisingly well. This is the
best J2ME app that I have ever used on my phone.

~~~
sspiff
Background notifications too?

I'm surprised - I wrote a Twitter client in 2009, and I couldn't find a way to
make that work. I didn't think J2ME could do that at all, to be honest.

~~~
gojomo
Maybe some form of this... ?

[http://www.javaworld.com/article/2071753/mobile-java/push-
me...](http://www.javaworld.com/article/2071753/mobile-java/push-messages-
that-automatically-launch-a-java-mobile-application.html)

~~~
lilspikey
Yep, that'd probably be it. You could listen out for SMS (on particular port),
TCP and UDP connections if I remember correctly.

------
doczoidberg
The key success of Whatsapp is IMHO that it uses your phone's address book as
contact list. There is no hurdle to use it what is very important for the
average user. The multi platform support from beginning is second thing. J2ME
as stated in the article is negligible. I can't understand why this article is
on top of HN.

~~~
enewcomer
The phone number as an id is a very important component to their adoption
indeed. So do you posit that WhatsApp's adoption rates being what they are
(compared to say Viber which does the same thing) is purely due to first
mover?

~~~
doczoidberg
yes that's my opinion.

------
vayarajesh
One of the key reasons whatsApp was successful was the simplicity for the user
to start communicating - No registration or username creation hence allowing
users not to care about remembering passwords. Another important feature was
that the user did not have to search for their friends in family if they were
on whatsapp and then add them or send request etc. They used the phone number
and users phone book. If you have a friend uses whatsapp it will automatically
show you.

WhatsApps is easy, simple, quick and beautiful! so the path to $16B exit is
not a J2ME app but an idea to get users start communicating with minimum
amount of effort and time.

------
auctiontheory
Speaking of J2ME, $16B is more than twice what Oracle paid to acquire Sun in
2010.

------
dlhavema
i dabbled with some J2ME development back in the day when palm pilots were
cool, i even made a basic app for the original (early 2000-ish ) Motorola
Razer.. it's not easy at all... i haven't looked for community resources for
J2ME in years but back then i could find hardly any...

~~~
616c
And out of curiosity I decided to search for J2ME on my laptop and Google had
very little resources except official Oracle docs and a Java blog tutorial ...
from 2005.

Good times.

[https://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2005/02/09/j2me1.html](https://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2005/02/09/j2me1.html)

~~~
dlhavema
what kills me is the initial release had support for the IR blaster that most
palm pilots had, the next "SDK" i found had it removed, and i later read it
was because of something along the lines of "most devices don't support this
so we removed it". the possibility of having a programmable IR remote control
on the cheap 12 years ago was amazing to me. I think its kinda cool that newer
android devices are starting to have IR blasters again..

------
72deluxe
J2ME is interesting. Each phone supported Java Specification Requests (JSRs)
and you could look up which JSRs a phone supported. For example, JSR82 is some
Bluetooth supporty thing.

The real problem was that between different phones and JSRs, some
implementations were really bad (I remember having a Nokia 6500slide with
dodgy implementations) and varied between phone models. This was especially
odd on Nokia phones considering that there were hundreds of phones running S40
or S60 and yet there were differences between those phones. (If I recall
correctly, I had a 5200 and 5300 and there were differences between them).
Highly unreliable.

But $16bn unreliable for testing? Not sure. Well done for getting bought
though.

~~~
enewcomer
They aren't paying for a J2ME app and the requisite testing. They are paying
for the results of the network effect made possible by it.

~~~
72deluxe
So, the $16bn is for a massive network of end-user testers? :-)

------
ck2
Pretty sure facebook could give a darn about the app, they are buying access
to the customers, to either get their data or show them ads. The app itself
will probably be bloated or ruined within a couple years.

~~~
apetrovic
The point of the article is that WhatsApp built that customer base not having
only shiny iPhone or Android app, but also having a presence on feature
phones.

------
brisance
Framed another way, it goes to demonstrate the ridiculous price paid for the
company. How are the "other 3 billion people" without smartphones going to
contribute to Facebook's bottom line? When they don't even have Facebook? That
they don't even view ads? And that the cost of switching is practically close
to zero, with many other competitive products like WeChat?

It all seems to me that it's just to pad the "total number of active users on
Facebook and associated platforms" column during earnings season.

~~~
eru
> How are the "other 3 billion people" without smartphones going to contribute
> to Facebook's bottom line? When they don't even have Facebook?

That makes them even more valuable. Why should Facebook buy users they already
have?

~~~
brisance
As WhatsApp's user base grows, the probability of users who are also on
Facebook increases and vice versa. Which means you are supporting my argument
that this is just a play for "number of users", since it's very likely a good
proportion would be counted twice instead of uniquely.

------
apunic
Wrong.

Whatsapp didn't start with a J2ME app, they started with the smartphone
versions first and later they provided J2ME versions when they had already
significant market share.

~~~
nicpottier
The point isn't actually which came first, it is that they are ubiquitous. The
difference between WhatsApp and Viber is that WhatsApp put far more effort in
being on every possible platform, and for something that relies on network
effects, that effort was worth it.

------
szatkus
"And you know what, on $10 a day you probably don't have an iPhone or an
Android handset."

Most people I know who earn ~10$ a day have smartphones with Android or WP.

------
kyberias
Just amazing example of cargo-cult phenomenon! The idea that using a
particular technology (here J2ME) would allow one to get a $16B exit.
Hilarious!

~~~
twic
Imagine how much they would have sold for if they'd used node.js!

------
enscr
Really? The viral growth & popularity of Whatsapp is due to early J2ME
versions rather than the widespread adoption of Android. I think it's the
latter but maybe I'm mistaken.

------
sibbl
Guess how long ICQ has a J2ME app...

------
theknown99
Your path to happiness? Don't be so obsessed with money. Build something
that's fun, and meaningful, that makes you, and others happy.

------
krisgenre
One more thing.. I doubt anyone 'updates' a J2ME app, they had to get most of
the stuff working perfectly the first time itself.

------
loup-vaillant
Funny how Paul Graham came up with "schlep blindness"[1]: It's a subset of
LessWrong's "ugh fields"[2].

[1]: [http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html](http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html)

[2]:
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/21b/ugh_fields/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/21b/ugh_fields/)

------
rglullis
On the other hand, how does Facebook expect to monetize these millions of
users who are living on $10/day?

The number being thrown around yesterday was that Facebook paid $40/user.
Bearing in mind that a good percentage of these users will never provide any
ROI, it is one more reason to look like it was way overvalued.

~~~
sokoloff
A significant portion if the deal value is defensive, IMO. AKA: so Google or
VK don't buy them and strangle off a major tentacle of user adoption and
stickiness of the FB ecosystem.

Facebook doesn't have to directly monetize THOSE $10/day users for this to be
a smart decision. They can monetize some users directly, but not having a
competitor own whatsapp is worth a lot to FB.

~~~
im3w1l
How long will it be until they have to purchase Whosdown for the same reason?
How much time did they buy?

------
transfire
Awesome, now Facebook can spy on everybody!

------
webdisrupt
I completely agree with most comments about catering for most operating
systems but I also think that this acquisition was also due to Facebook
"panicking" about losing ground (e.g. teens) and WhatsApp having a great
number of monthly active users.

------
buster
For this article to really make sense, we will need to know how many J2ME
users _really_ us Whatsapp. Yes, there are many users with featurephones. But
how many of them use Internet on it? Can i afford an internet flatrate with
20$/month income? Nope.

------
porker
OK, how is Whatsapp different to using SMS to communicate with friends? What
am I missing?

~~~
Aissen
It's cheaper (free). All this value stems from carriers's infinite greediness
in making us pay (international) SMS and MMS.

~~~
veb
It's only free if you have a data plan, right? (or connected to WiFi).
Historically in NZ, SMS has been basically free, unlimited but data has been
10mb, 100mb etc.

We're now trying to catch up on the world with our data plans on 3G and 4G
networks, but even then it's about $50 NZD for 1gb data.

------
pastylegs
Is WhatsApp popular in the states? I'm Irish and living in Spain and in both
countries it's incredibly popular. Most of my communication is channeled
through it (I'd rather send a WhatsApp then call in most cases)

------
sgloutnikov
[http://openwhatsapp.org](http://openwhatsapp.org) \- One example of how
powerful the community around WhatsApp has been. Certainly loved it when I was
on my Nokia N9.

~~~
kefs
:(

[http://openwhatsapp.org/blog/2014/02/13/mass-dmca-
takedowns-...](http://openwhatsapp.org/blog/2014/02/13/mass-dmca-takedowns-
whatsapp/)

------
praetorian84
Boy, that 2 in J2ME (and J2EE for that matter) just never goes away.

~~~
twic
J2EE is officially JEE now:

[http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javaee/overview/index...](http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javaee/overview/index.html)

But yeah, i still call it J2EE too.

------
sandeepspatil
The article makes it sound a big deal to develop J2ME app. This app basically
has just 2 screens, so I wouldn't think it would be any big deal to replicate
those screens across platforms. Their challenge is more on the server-side,
scaling for all the billions of users that they have - again, no big deal for
plain text but mostly the pictures and the videos that are shared ...few big
datacenters somewhere...again, nothing great. And hey, they dont even support
voice calls. I dont buy that the app itself is a deal breaker. It's mostly
their user base that they have been paid for.

------
trhway
reminds me about Sun buying StorageTek for 4B - a company whose technology and
market had very visible end. J2ME on smartphones - basically an oxymoron if
one knows why and how J2ME was designed 15 years ago - doesn't seem to be
happening (despite predictable post-WhatsApp influx of crazy VC money into
such combination in the next half year) and cheap $10-$20 smartphones are the
next billions of devices.

------
fredgrott
Only problem is that low cost android is disrupting that, which I imagine is
part of the reason for the decline in fb stock price seen yesterday.

------
swah
Also, at least in Brazil, Whatsapp became a tool for journalists on the
streets. A very interesting use...

~~~
mmmm
And in Sweden (some) police men were discovered using Whatsapp - sending
sensitive information about suspects[0]. They were discovered when they
accidentally misstyped a phonenumber. Whoops.

The police in Sweden have some Blackberry encrypted services, but apparently
these police men were not given one because they're expensive.

[0] Swedish source: [http://computersweden.idg.se/2.2683/1.547026/polisens-
chatt-...](http://computersweden.idg.se/2.2683/1.547026/polisens-chatt-miss--
hemlig-spaninfo-pa-drift-i-whatsapp)

------
sdegutis
How many people still have the exit strategy "die old"? Are we a shrinking
group?

------
cturhan
Facebook paid 16B Dollars for 400,000,000 active phone numbers and all the
personal info bound to them. It's not the app itself it's the data, you know
it well too.

~~~
mattsyd
That's not the case. WhatsApp barely holds any data. The user doesn't have to
give over their personal details. It ties them to their mobile number &
messages are stored only until they're pushed to the client. Once pushed they
are then removed from WhatsApp servers.

~~~
icebraining
I'm curious: how do you know that they're removed?

~~~
JetSpiegel
They pinky sweared, of course!

/s

------
ausjke
it looks so much like WeChat from Tencent(one of the largest IT company in
China), and WeChat is totally free.

------
dschiptsov
I is only me who is thinking that everything that worth $16B is happened on
the server side and J2ME is just a crap?)

------
notastartup
can someone explain how a free app ends up generating $40 per user?

more importantly, if facebook keeps buying large MAU at costs exceeding their
revenues (not profit), at what point will those purchases start generating
revenues (if at all)?

at what point will they no longer have money to buy MAU or even generate
revenue on those users they purchased and own?

Are we in a new economy now just like 1999?

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greatsuccess
I have to say this is the wrong conclusion. J2ME and the stuff that runs it
runs on is in the past.

Its simply a waste of time. So Im not sure why the OP focused on this. Let's
not make up reasons this guy got bought out beyond a few dinners with Zuck and
a whole lotta luck.

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teemo_cute
You forgot the marketing and promotion. (BTW I'm a techie trying to be a
humanie :)

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yungether
Did anyone else chuckle at the title including "Path"?

