Whatsapp elaborately explained how it was doing this to the public, it was with a technology (Erlang/OTP) that had rarely been used before, and that technology had been designed for and very successful in an almost identically shaped context (telecom switches.)
Also, more obviously, people you knew were using it every day. 450M is different than 4M, and way different than 300K. If Whatsapp were lying and saying they had 4.5B users, I'd expect JP Morgan to catch that within a few hours, too.
> Whatsapp elaborately explained how it was doing this to the public, it was with a technology (Erlang/OTP) that had rarely been used before, and that technology had been designed for and very successful in an almost identically shaped context (telecom switches.)
Sure. But the point is, Whatsapp had 0.5 total employees per 4 million users, and Frank had 20 support employees per 4 million supposed users.
Even if you think Whatsapp has a massive advantage, those numbers don't make it look like Frank is the one that's lacking in staff.
> Also, more obviously, people you knew were using it every day. 450M is different than 4M, and way different than 300K. If Whatsapp were lying and saying they had 4.5B users, I'd expect JP Morgan to catch that within a few hours, too.
For these reasons it would be much harder for Whatsapp to lie that way.
The corollary of that is it would be much easier for Frank to do it.
WhatsApp doesn’t need staff because they weren’t processing regulated financial transactions. Thr app operated in a best efforts basis since it was mostly free. You don’t need customer support staff for that — there is no support.
FWIW, around 1/3 of the 55 were customer support. That's not a lot of support per user, but it's not none. And it is enough to get lots of feedback to engineering about things users are having trouble with, because the better you make the product, the less overloaded customer support is.
Also, more obviously, people you knew were using it every day. 450M is different than 4M, and way different than 300K. If Whatsapp were lying and saying they had 4.5B users, I'd expect JP Morgan to catch that within a few hours, too.