How people make money
How people make money? How will WhatsApp be financed now that it is completely free? WhatsApp has ruled out advertising as a means of receiving revenue.
WhatsApp users will no longer receive on their smartphones the notice that reminds them to pay the subscription to continue using the instant messaging application.
This week, to the delight of many users, WhatsApp announced that their service will be completely free.
Jan Koum, the president of WhatsApp, currently owned by Facebook, confirmed that the platform will stop charging a dollar as a subscription.
“For years we’ve asked people to pay to use WhatsApp after their first year as we’ve grown up, we found that this method has not worked well, many WhatsApp users do not have credit or debit cards and they worry about it. to be able to lose access to their families and friends after the first year, “he said.
Once you withdraw the annual usage fee, the company will not get any income from the instant messaging application.
The service also does not have publicity, a mechanism that other free sites, such as Facebook, use as a business model.
So, how do you plan to make money? Without advertising For a while, Jan Koum kept a note on his desk that read: “No ads, no games, no tricks”.
And that’s how you plan to continue since WhatsApp has made it absolutely clear that it will not open the door to ads.
“The answer to whether third-party advertising will be introduced is … no,” the company said in a statement Monday.
It is a strategy opposite to that followed on Instagram, also purchased by Facebook in 2012.
Advertising has been the only income channel for an application used by 400 million people.
New tools
The WhatsAPP strategy to make money is professional services.
“As of this year, we will be testing tools that will allow you to use WhatsApp to communicate with businesses and organizations, which means communicating with your bank about whether a recent transaction was fraudulent or with an airline for a flight delay,” the company said.
It would be a kind of customer service payment service, where large companies pay WhatsApp to communicate and record the requests and claims of their customers.
In this way, WhatsApp would become a digital platform as Facebook Messenger has already done, the other messaging application of the social network that has 800 million users.
WhatsApp has 990 million users around the world, so having a communication service with companies will surely affect the entire customer service software market, as well as models based on phone calls to make claims.
More common in Asia
At the moment they have not informed dates or details about that product that they will offer to the companies but in Asia this type of strategy has been a success.
Wechat Author’s rights of the Millions of WeChat users in China take advantage of the service to send money to friends, buy shoes and even ask for an appointment with the doctor.
Messaging applications from countries such as China or South Korea have been profitable by becoming electronic commercial platforms with an infinity of services and products.
The clearest is, with all security, Wechat, founded in 2011 in the heart of the Internet giant Tencent and with 650 million users.Currently, it is not just an instant messaging application between individual users and large organizations.
It also includes a social “wall” similar to Facebook where all types of content are shared.
Added to this is the possibility of allowing a large number of daily activities.
For example, ask for a taxi, arrange a medical appointment or pay a fine. The phenomenon is also advancing in the United States and other countries.
Uber reported last month that it will allow users to order a car through Facebook Messenger, a message service similar to WeChat.
Uber reported last month that it will allow users to order a car through Facebook Messenger, a message service similar to WeChat.
For its part, Google is developing a new chat application that will use artificial intelligence.
The Snapchat application already incorporates news, while the startup Slack Technologies has been a pioneer in the chat platform as a center of communication and collaboration in the workplace.
According to analysts, messaging applications, being easy to use and having a large number of users who spend a lot of time, are ideal centers to develop other services.
