SaedNews: Users don’t pay to use WhatsApp, a platform with nearly three billion users worldwide. This raises the question: how does WhatsApp generate revenue?
According to SaedNews’ Science and Technology service, quoting Khabar Online, Nikila Srinivasan, Vice President of Business Messaging at Meta, stated:
“If we get all these elements right, our vision is to create a business model. Customers should be able to complete tasks seamlessly within a chat thread. For example, if you want to book a ticket or make a payment, you should be able to do so without leaving the chat thread and then return to your other conversations.”
Businesses can now choose to pay for a link that directly connects a new WhatsApp chat from an online ad on Facebook or Instagram to a personal account. Srinivasan believes that this feature alone is now worth billions of dollars to the tech giant.
Matthew Hodgson, one of the co-founders of Element, has announced that the 10-year-old company, with its multimillion-dollar revenue, is now close to profitability.
He believes that the most popular business model for messaging apps is the same classic digital model: advertising. Hodgson explained, "Essentially, many messaging platforms determine advertisements by monitoring what people do and who they talk to, then targeting them with the most suitable ads."
The idea is that even with encryption and anonymity, apps don’t need to see the actual content of shared messages to gather extensive information about their users. By acquiring this information, they can leverage user data to sell ads.
In the concluding part of his remarks, Hodgson said, “It’s an old story: if you’re the user and you’re not paying, there’s a good chance that you’re the product.”
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