WhatsApp is a messaging app with over 1 billion active users. The company is now looking to monetize its user base by introducing new features that will allow businesses to send and receive messages, as well as make money from ads. WhatsApp has been testing a new feature that will allow businesses to send and receive messages, as well as make money from ads. The company is calling this feature “Meta.” Meta will be available in the next version of the app, which is set to be released in the coming weeks. The idea behind Meta is simple: businesses can use it to communicate with their customers. For example, a restaurant could send out notifications about reservations or updates on the menu. Alternatively, a business could use Meta to communicate with customers who have opted-in to receive marketing messages from them. This isn’t the first time that WhatsApp has looked into ways of making money from its user base. In January, the company announced that it would start charging users for voice and video calls. At the time, CEO Jan Koum said that WhatsApp was looking for ways “to generate more revenue so we can continue building great products for everyone.” ..
WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging services in the world, but its owner Meta (formerly Facebook) hasn’t quite figured out how to make buckets of money from it. Now the company has a new feature that might change that.
Meta announced that it’s rolling out the WhatsApp Cloud API to all businesses worldwide, which has been in beta testing since November. The functionality allows companies to integrate WhatsApp messages from customers or clients into their back-end systems. For example, someone could send a message to a local computer repair shop about their broken laptop, which could then be automatically added to the shop’s task system, and someone from the shop could message back with answers about the repair.
Importantly, Meta will charge businesses to use the cloud APIs, which is part of the company’s long-term goal of monetizing the app without upsetting users. Meta tried to place advertisements in the app a few years ago, which caused one of WhatsApp’s co-founders to leave the company in 2018. Meta reportedly gave up placing ads in WhatsApp in late 2019.
The good news is that, as long as businesses are willing to pay up for chat tools, WhatsApp will probably keep working the same for normal people. Plans are always changing, but for the moment, Meta doesn’t have any (public) intentions to put Facebook or Instagram-like advertisements in WhatsApp.
This new business product isn’t completely new — it’s just a cloud version of the WhatsApp Business API, which was also a paid product for companies. However, Meta expects more groups will use the new cloud option, since it runs entirely on Meta’s servers (companies don’t have to host their own) and can supposedly be set up within a few minutes.
Source: TechCrunch
