The next big turn of events in the WhatsApp story came in January when the service was made free for everyone. The answer is no. Starting this year, we will test tools that allow you to use WhatsApp to communicate with businesses and organizations that you want to hear from. That could mean communicating with your bank about whether a recent transaction was fraudulent, or with an airline about a delayed flight. We all get these messages elsewhere today — through text messages and phone calls — so we want to test new tools to make this easier to do on WhatsApp, while still giving you an experience without third-party ads and spam.
The Facebook power grab finally came in the form of a WhatsApp privacy policy update in August , informing users that some of their data would be shared with the parent company Facebook.
You can learn more, including how to control the use of your data, here. With WhatsApp having operated independently for two years after the Facebook acquisition and with no plan of ads being displayed in WhatsApp, the privacy update move was more about Facebook trying to cash in on the acquisition and less about WhatsApp being able to track user metrics and fight spam. The only silver lining in this episode was that WhatsApp confirmed that end-to-end encryption was still in place, and neither WhatsApp nor Facebook would be able to see user messages.
When Facebook acquired WhatsApp in , not only were the founders promised that they could operate independently, Zukurberg even assured the founders that they would have zero pressure on monetization in the next five years. However, the pressure to monetize came earlier than promised, leading to disagreements over how WhatsApp was to be monetized.
While Facebook wanted to implement ads in WhatsApp, an app that had unequivocally been anti-ads, Brian proposed moving towards a metered-user model, wherein users would be charged after a certain number of messages were used. Jan Koum, followed suit, leaving in April , after waiting out his vesting period.
By , WhatsApp had more than 1 billion users. In the same year, the company announced that it was doing away with the subscription-based model and would instead be completely free. Users could have a verified profile on WhatsApp, create a business profile, add links to their websites and social media and integrate the WhatsApp for Business API.
Businesses can integrate their business with WhatsApp, allowing them to send notifications to their customers automatically. Getting messages about movie ticket bookings, flight updates, confirmation of making a food order and more, are instances where this integration comes into play.
If businesses respond to messages from customers after 24 hours, they would be charged for every message they sent. The goal is to have people communicate directly with their banks, airlines, etc.
With more than million users in India alone, in , WhatsApp reported revenues of Rs 6. After Facebook acquired WhatsApp in , there were worries that Facebook, which is infamous for its issues with privacy, would make use of the abundant private information that Whatsapp was responsible for.
As of now, Facebook maintains that it does not use data from Whatsapp to optimise its ad services. However, some amount of data is still shared with Facebook. So this method of revenue generation that seems like the only visible revenue generation scheme is actually not generating the revenue.
All the conversations on Whatsapp are backed up on Whatsapp servers constantly. Our conversations reflect our interests, likes, dislikes and majorly depicts our preferences. This information is invaluable to big firms where relevant tailor made products can be offered after data sorting. Whatsapp users have been ever increasing since the launch currently numbering out users on any other competitor. Given such high number of users, the number of messages exchanged per day is also incredibly high in case of Whatsapp- peaking as high as 11 billion.
With such extensive information available on Whatsapp backups, the big companies are willing to pay handsome amounts for information extraction. This data management scheme is merely a speculation. As evident, Whatsapp is not involved in ad marketing. Any user can vouch for the fact that it does not support advertisements. To prevent ad spam, the company restricted the ability to send messages. Businesses can only send messages to people who have contacted them first, but the API will also help them programmatically send shipping confirmations, appointment reminders or event tickets to their customers.
The company is already working successfully with clients like Booking. This means that the businesses will be able to respond to messages from users for free for up to 24 hours , but will have to pay a fee for every message sent after 24 hours.
The charge is fixed but is different for different countries. The businesses can also choose to reply manually through their own tool or apps like Zendesk, MessageBird or Twilio. Now, most of you must be thinking that the businesses can always use their WhatsApp for Business application to reply late to the customer inquiries.
WhatsApp has introduced a payments option P2P payments within the application for Indian users which will further boost its position in the market and will make it a preferred application for sending money just like Venmo in the USA.
0コメント