Mobile News - Facebook Buys WhatsApp & New Car UI

Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $19 Billion

(http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/02/is-facebook-paying-too-much-for-whatsapp/)

What’s interesting: with the same money, Facebook can buy Sony, Gap or 4 aircraft carriers

What is Facebook exactly buying:  Young users: WhatsApp - 450M monthly active users in 5 years, 3x more than Facebook & nearly 10x more than Twitter or Skype  A new business model: WhatsApp - subscription-based revenue model $0.99/year   Enhancements to the existing business model: WhatsApp - daily message volume of entire global telecom industry; Facebook - medium for big announcement can be better captured by metadata from messaging apps   Internationalization: WhatsApp - popularity in India & South America; Facebook - ned to join the global turn to mobile

How Things Change

(http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/19/how-things-change/)

So he and Jan Koum, a colleague from Yahoo, set out to do their own thing.

Today, they sold that thing to Facebook for 19 billion dollars.

Life is crazy.

Dear Car Makers: Please Hire People Like This

(http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/18/dear-car-makers-please-hire-people-like-this/)

Why should we care about it from the perspective of mobile interaction design?

Modern Cars: most expensive, massive, largest power supply, slow OS, poor UI -> dangerous

-current UI: build buttons on touch screen -> no muscle memory compared to previous physical button design

-voice control is expected to be more interactive in cars

A New Car UI: How touch screen controls in cars should work (Matthaeus Krenn)

(http://www.wired.com/design/2014/02/watch-ingenious-touchscreen-ui-inside-every-car/)

-not perfect, still requiring users to learn/memorize interface controls

-new trend in UI design for touch screens: a move away from skeuomorphic interfaces