Jakarta –
It’s been almost a decade since the founding of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, agreed to spend USD 19 billion to buy WhatsApp. This messaging service continues to grow in popularity, but the drawback is that WhatsApp doesn’t make money as expected.
More than 2 billion people rely on the app to chat with loved ones, up from 450 million people at the time of acquisition. But it still doesn’t make a lot of money.
Unlike Instagram, which was purchased in 2012 at a much cheaper price, which is around USD 1 billion, WhatsApp does not display ads, which is Zuckerberg’s core business. Various strategies were tried so that in the end WhatsApp could reap significant profits.
One of them is for big business to use it as the main way of communicating with customers. For each conversation, companies pay in the range of half a cent to 15 cents, depending on the type of chat and country.
“It’s been clear for years that people are trying to connect with businesses over WhatsApp,” Alice Newton-Rex, WhatsApp’s product director, said in an interview with CNBC. detikINET.
“If you go to India or Brazil and look around you will see WhatsApp numbers plastered in storefronts everywhere. This is how businesses want to interact with their customers,” he added,
Newton-Rex joined WhatsApp 4 years ago, leaving a high position at financial firm WorldRemit. At that time, WhatsApp only had 15 product managers which later swelled to 90.
The product group is now tasked with building features that could substantially unlock WhatsApp’s business opportunity and help WhatsApp fulfill the potential Zuckerberg has long seen.
Newton-Rex said Zuckerberg became a big part of the team and added that he regularly spoke with Will Cathcart, the current head of WhatsApp. “He’s a big part of our strategy,” he said of Zuckerberg’s support of WhatsApp.
So far, WhatsApp’s true value to Meta remains unclear. The company doesn’t disclose it. Nick Lane, founder of research firm Mobilesquared, estimates his revenue to be between USD 500 million and USD 1 billion, less than 1% of Meta’s total revenue. Instagram, by contrast, is expected to generate $40 billion in revenue this year.
“Facebook bought WhatsApp nearly 9 years ago. It’s been a long time having an app with massive usage, but where’s the revenue?” asked Debra Williamson of Insider Intelligence.
Watch Video “Three New Text Formats Being Developed by WhatsApp”
(fyk/fyk)
2023-09-02 08:15:58
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