Facebook is Finally Taking Serious Measures to Monetize WhatsApp
WhatsApp is a messenger like WeChat, Viber, Skype, Line, etc. through which people can send messages to each other, can share pictures, videos, can call each other, all is free of cost, until and unless you have an internet connection. It is available for Android, IOS, Mac or Windows PC, and also for Windows phone.
How it all did start?
WhatsApp was founded by Brian Acton and Jan Koum in 2009. They created this as an alternative for costly messages. Firstly, this app allowed messaging services between the people who have had this app on their phones. With the passage of time, they invented and added more features like voice calling, video calling, group calling and then status sharing. These were the features which were available only in Facebook messenger before, and a majority of the people used to use it.
According to a Forbes report, In February 2014, WhatsApp was purchased by Facebook in $22 Billion and they decided to keep it free from monetization for about 5 years. This was the wish of its two co-founders. According to a media report, Koum left after a disagreement with Facebook about some advertisement on WhatsApp.
Sine quite a long time, Facebook has taken a shot at another monetization model for WhatsApp, subsequent to taking out the immaterial $1-per-year membership expense in 2016 soon after getting the start-up.
Rather, Facebook needs to adapt WhatsApp (and a Messenger) by helping organizations interface legitimately with customers, and it simply made a major move toward that path.
In 2018, WhatsApp became first instant messaging app used by almost 1.5 billion people. According to Statista, it beats Facebook messenger and WeChat in terms of usage.
WhatsApp Business – Another way for Monetizing WhatsApp
In January 2018, WhatsApp launched its business model, i.e. WhatsApp Business. In the beginning, that the app was only available in selected countries, but now it is available on i-store and app store as well. It was free for smaller businesses initially, but as the larger business profile joined it and gets them verified by them, by their business description, email address and websites, WhatsApp initially started generating the revenue. In this,Business clients will take care of everything, paying somewhere in the range of 0.5 cents to 9 cents for each message sent, depending upon the region.
It gained a lot of popularity among business sector. It was way more affordable and cost efficient for the people to pay only up to this much of the amount.
Further Plans:
In August 2018, Wall Street Journal reported that, Facebook is planning some other ways to monetize WhatsApp. According to this source, WhatsApp is willing to sell advertisements between the statuses of users. According to Business Insider’s report, WhatsApp status has 450 million daily active users, after Instagram stories, which has 400 million daily users. This number is greater than any of the usage of social platforms stories.
WhatsApp basically lacks the subscription model for its users, through which it could generate it revenue. For this purpose Facebook is investing so much for marketing purpose because it’s another way of generating the revenue. Another hurdle that could possibly be come in this way, could be, the user’s temperament, because WhatsApp is basically or generally used for personal communication with the users, as compared to Instagram, Facebook or snapchat. Advertisements on those platforms, maybe, aren’t bothering the users as much as they could here. Ultimately the brands would not get as much success on WhatsApp, as much as they could on other social media platforms and this advertisement strategy could go down. It’s our general opinion and we must say that, Facebook should not only work on the same business models for all of its projects. It must bring variations in them, according to their market place.
