Total Pageviews

Thursday, February 11, 2016

A data-driven argument on why Marc Andreessen is wrong about Free Basics

A data-driven argument on why Marc Andreessen is wrong about Free Basics — Medium: "This is particularly sad because contrary to what Marc and others say, data connectivity is not expensive in India. There are some plans that give you 2GB of data for just $1.5 a month.

One can parse this in two ways.
Firstly, imagine how many users Facebook could have brought online with this same spend if they had diverted the budget to subsiding first-time users like how Aircel and others have done. By some estimates, two-thirds of India’s online users already access at least one of Facebook’s properties (Facebook itself or WhatsApp) once a day — widening the funnel without any artificial constraints would have inevitably been a net-win for Facebook given this monopoly dynamic.

Secondly, the explosion of mobile phone usage in India even among folks who could be regarded as “poor” aptly demonstrates that contrary to what some people might believe, poor people are more than capable of demonstrating agency and adopting technology on their own — as long as they see a clear and visible path towards a better standard of living." 'via Blog this'

No comments: