
What does WhatsApp’s upcoming monetisation mean for the company and its users? - dsr12
https://factordaily.com/whatsapp-monetisation/
======
skrebbel
I remember reading in some Brian Acton interview that Facebook leadership
believes that ads would bring in more money than charging businesses for
access, integrations and premium features.

Living in a country where WhatsApp is ubiquitous, I really don't understand
that. Is it just a lack of imagination on Facebook's part? Companies, from
tiny ones all the way up to enterprises, will pay _serious_ money to be able
support customers over WhatsApp in an effective way. And then I've not even
begun to consider the marketing channel WhatsApp could be (also without
turning into a spam hotbed).

Facebook is the gatekeeper to WhatsApp, effectively a monopoly to a piece of
core telecom infrastructure for a lot of countries. They could squeeze this
out to the max. Right now, they give all of this away for nearly free and
share the profit with the likes of MessageBird and Twilio. TBH i'd prefer they
tax businesses than my eyeballs.

~~~
johnchristopher
> I remember reading in some Brian Acton interview that Facebook leadership
> believes that ads would bring in more money than charging businesses for
> access, integrations and premium features.

Verbatim: it wouldn't scale.

 _Acton said he tried to push Facebook towards an alternative, less privacy
hostile business model for WhatsApp — suggesting a metered-user model such as
by charging a tenth of a penny after a certain large number of free messages
were used up.

But that “very simple business” idea was rejected outright by Facebook COO
Sheryl Sandberg, who he said told him “it won’t scale”.

“I called her out one time,” Acton also told Forbes. “I was like, ‘No, you
don’t mean that it won’t scale. You mean it won’t make as much money as…,’ and
she kind of hemmed and hawed a little._

It looks like to me that the multi-billion dollar company that Facebook is,
with all the very intelligent people working there, is a one pony trick that
only knows how to make money by putting ads everywhere.

~~~
threeseed
You make it sound like Facebook doesn't know how. Of course they do.

It's just that ads is significantly more profitable than having to run sales
teams in the 200 odd countries around the world. Especially since ads is
largely self service even down to ML models monitoring abuse.

~~~
netcan
Also, fb already have an ad business. They don't have a b2b software business.
If Salesforce had bought WhatsApp, they might be interested in the b2b idea.
They probably wouldn't be into the advertising idea.

~~~
usrusr
Keep in mind that Facebook's existing ad business is 100% B2B as well and they
don't use an is school Oracle/IBM/Yellowpages sales org for that. Selling API
access to WhatsApp would not necessarily have to be different.

Facebook already having an ad business can also be used as a counter-argument:
cannibalization. Some of the ad-spending going to WhatsApp would definitely be
spent on Facebook instead if WhatsApp remained ad-free. But I can't imagine
that they are not fully aware of this (even Hanlon's razer must have limits
somewhere), so what remains is that they consider the expansion of addressable
ad audience more valuable than other monetization strategies plus the massive
hit the WhatsApp brand will take from ad introduction. And because those ads
would be almost worthless without the targeting ad customers expect from the
Facebook brand, the whole thing is like an indirect confession about the
existence and quality of shadow profiles describing those who are not
registered with the mothership. Well, that group is about to shrink...

------
flurdy
When Netflix a few months ago prompted me with "Hey your number is a Whatsapp
account, do mind if we send notifications via Whatsapp?" I was generally
horrified.

It felt a serious transgression of my privacy. Though in hindsight I realised
it was an easy task, I can, after all, see if people are using Whatsapp if I
have their number so there is little to stop companies doing the same lookup
if they have my number.

But it felt very uncomfortable.

I don't want companies involved with my Whatsapp, it is exclusively for
messaging my missus, and group chats with friends and family. Nothing else.

I did read somewhere that one of the founders said the aim was to integrate
apps/companies into Whatsapp, but for me "No!".

I am dreading what the ad monetisation will be like. Since everyone I am
friends with, related to or worked with use Whatsapp, their market penetration
is ubiquitous here in my London ecosphere. Hope they don't ruin that.

~~~
Already__Taken
Whatsapp specifically though, it is just your phone number. You don't have
that control over your phone number. Seems a little harsh to hold that one
company to higher standards than literally anything else with your number.

Direct marketing rules should still apply, in the UK you can't legally cold-
call mobile numbers.

I mean, I get it I agree with you and use whatsapp the same way. The one time
I tried to use it to message for a takeaway they just ignored the order.

~~~
flurdy
To be fair to Netflix it was a polite question banner at the top of the
screen. Though fairly large and in your face. They did re-prompt a few times,
but I have not seen it for a while now.

But it caught me off guard as I was not expecting it. And did not welcome it.

I wonder what the stats are for their members' responses. Maybe was just an
A-B test.

~~~
tialaramex
I get that banner. I don't have WhatsApp and have never used it.

The container Netflix is inside doesn't know anything about me other than my
Netflix account. Presumably they've decided that annoying paying customers is
a good idea.

------
abhiminator
I still remember the first installation of WhatsApp messenger on an old
Samsung device of mine in 2012 as a high-schooler. It was incredibly
liberating to finally discover an IM app that enabled me to send unlimited
messages to my friends and not get hamstrung by SMS limits that existed in my
country; especially one that was resource-light enough to run on my device's
866 MHz processor.

I'd largely glossed over Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp back in '14 as
just another big tech company eating up a smaller 'potential future
competitor,' but in hindsight it looks like it was the beginning of the end of
WhatsApp as a simple, reliable and _ad-free_ private messenger.

Super glad I quit the platform in 2017 -- never been more tranquil.

~~~
baby
What? If anything, WhatsApp has become a better product since its acquisition.
It is currently the simplest, most reliable, ad-free messenger out there,
which also supports state of the art end-to-end encryption for its millions of
users.

Let's see how they deploy ads. But it would be a shame that WhatsApp shut
downs because Facebook cannot monetize the application. If anything, I'm glad
they're going this route instead of charging a fee to use the app.

~~~
kriro
I think the other two "mainstream" messengers I use (Telegram, KakaoTalk) are
as simple or simpler and also ad-free. Kakao also has E2E encryption after a
bit of a struggle, Telegram had it for a long time.

I think WA is the most widespread but I wouldn't call it the simplest or most
reliable. They are all pretty similar imo

~~~
tnova
As opposed to the two you mentioned, WhatsApp has e2e by default. Kakaotalk
and Telegram force you to use "secret chats" for that which are device to
device only and cannot be shared among different devices with the same
account.

~~~
BubuIIC
Uh, well, both WhatsApp and Signal are single device only to begin with.

~~~
oarsinsync
I can continue an encrypted chat in Signal from my desktop. I don't think I
can do that in Telegram.

~~~
fouc
Do you need a password to do that?

~~~
baby
Nope, scan a QR code

------
yazaddaruvala
Please join my protest:

If you see an ad on Facebook messenger or WhatsApp, don’t hide it, instead
Report It.

Report it as sexual content, report it as a scam, report it for whatever
reason.

Guidelines, try to use different reasons and try to make it a realistic
reason.

Facebook likes to gather our data for their ML, so let’s weaponize it. If we
feed their platform garbage data, the ML will block the ads automatically,
driving advertisers away or making report handling prohibitively expensive.

We likely only need 0.01% of users to feed garbage data to trigger their ML
decisions. They’ll eventually be forced to find a better alternative.

~~~
threeseed
No offence but this is hilariously stupid.

All you're doing is following the same blackhat strategy that has been tried
and prevented years ago. You know the one where you keep flagging your
competitor's ads as abusive in the hope of getting them taken down. It's
basically the same as click fraud.

In your case it's even more stupid since I assume you're doing so with a
logged in account and without using proxy services so your IP will be static.

I guarantee that your reports has changed nothing other than make it more
likely that your account is going to banned for abusing their terms of
service.

~~~
Freak_NL
Or just added to the bozo-file, meaning all your reports will be deleted
unseen automatically, but it looks like everything works on your end.

~~~
yazaddaruvala
Shh, don't tell anyone, but it seems like I've been put on a blacklist from
seeing ads altogether :)

Honestly, I assumed the same. That I would be put on a shadow-ban list for
reporting. However, the lifecycle looked something more like:

1\. Reports went through without getting any response from FB. Definitely
influencing their ML models.

2\. A few months later, I started getting emails from FB acknowledging the
report was investigated. I imagine that means manual effort.

3\. Its been atleast 2 weeks since I've seen a ad in the FB Messenger iOS app.

------
realusername
A better way to monetize than Ads would be to slightly follow the Telegram
model, they should create a store, ability to access an API, bots... Whatsapp
did not evolve much in the past 3 years, it's maybe time to make it larger
than just a chat app and create a real platform. Especially when you have
entire countries using the app.

~~~
avip
I believe whatsapp is so popular exactly because it did not evolve. People
love wa as-is, why break it?

~~~
realusername
They don't necessarily need to "break it" but to evolve it a bit into a
service. I'm sure you have people who would be happy to pay for bots, larger
groups and business features (including myself). In some countries, WhatsApp
is larger than a chat app, it's a social network but without any features,
there's a gap somewhere here.

~~~
msravi
That gap is the feature, and I'm willing to pay to keep it that way. The
moment bots start spamming my WA feeds/groups I'll be gone. I'll move to
Signal and if my contacts don't do the same, I'll just switch back to SMS with
spam filters.

~~~
realusername
When I meant "bots" I meant only manually. I can't subscribe manually to a bot
right now and I can't add a bot to a group I own.

~~~
acqq
I agree with you: if the subscription has to be by the user, the subscribed
entity is managed like other contacts and I never get unsubscribed
messsges/requests I would surely like to subscribe to the info that actually
matters to me directly (conceptually opposite to “following feeds” on
twitter). Completely personalized information and without installing one more
app for every subscribed entity.

------
addedlovely
Facebook killed their core platform by watering down the communication between
my friends and family with business adverts and pages.

I suspect they will kill WhatsApp the same way.

------
sergiotapia
Whatsapp daily user here. I understand the need for them to monetize but the
second they add advertising and companies into the mix, they lose the sheen of
their app.

whatsapp is purely for talking to people I know. That's their selling point
for me. I don't want to see companies, ads, offers, sweepstakes or curated
content. Just me and my family/friends.

~~~
avip
Call me naive, but I hope and believe there’ll be a paid opt out

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _I hope and believe there’ll be a paid opt out_

I don’t. This isn’t how Facebook works. Paid opt outs drain the highest-
earning advertisees from the pool. That removes Facebook’s ability to charge
dubious ad rates.

~~~
anticensor
Do you mean "user" by "advertisee"? If you do, it is like Stallman saying
"used" for SAAS users.

------
teekert
I have many friends and a whole family who don't care about this. I tried to
get people on Signal but it worked only for a handful.

It would be nice if at leat I could pay to keep WA clean (and please let me
pay to keep my addresses to myself as well), because leaving it completely is
impossible for now. Here in the Netherlands WA is _the_ communications
standard, even most company helpdesks are on it.

~~~
Freak_NL
I manage quite well without it, and many other Dutch do too. I will fight for
a society that doesn't depend on a tool that can only be used by getting into
a legal agreement with Facebook and makes owning either an Android or IOS
smartphone a requirement.

Fuck these walled gardens.

~~~
Maarten88
> I manage quite well without it, and many other Dutch do too

I wonder how you can manage without WA in the Netherlands. For me, all group
events, sports, kids' activities, trips, vacations, family things, etc are
managed in a whatsapp group. To "App" has entered daily Dutch vocabulary as a
verb (meaning sending a whatsapp message). I'm in dozens of groups (none of
them created by me) and participating in anything without it would be very
unpractical.

~~~
Freak_NL
People mail, text, or call me. Those who use WhatsApp know this and have the
decency to take that into consideration.

I'll gladly deal with any downsides if that means maintaining the principled
standpoint that being a member of society doesn't require owning either an
Android or IOS smartphone, being forced to run someone's black-box proprietary
software, and agreeing with some foreign mega-corporation's dubious terms of
agreement. It's harmful for democratic society as a whole to engender such a
dependency.

Besides, if the experience of friends and colleagues is anything to go by,
opting in to Whatsapp means you get its downsides too: that one group member
who keeps spamming everyone with noise, the constant demand for attention, the
gossipy, sometimes down-right stalkerish neighbourhood watch groups (glad my
neighbourhood hasn't hung up those sycophantic Whatsapp street signs), not to
mention Facebook looking over your shoulder at the metadata level.

~~~
krageon
Every friend group has one or two people that interact with others like you
do: It has to be on their terms, they have principles that get in the way,
etc. That's beautiful and all the more power to you for doing so, but if you
believe it doesn't impact you much more heavily than you make it seem here you
are deluding yourself. You've made it so that including you in anything is
_effort_. Effort that people need to expend consciously, and will not be the
ground state. You've isolated yourself (to a certain degree) for your
principles.

~~~
Freak_NL
Principles rarely come for free, and I accept plenty of usable alternatives
that don't suffer from the limitations of Whatsapp — it's not like I'm
shunning the internet, computers, or even electricity. If people don't feel
like including me is worth the effort because they are stuck in a walled
garden, then good riddance. No one around me feels like that though. They
readily accept that expecting everyone to buy either an Android or an IOS
smartphone on top of any other computing devices they may own is not
reasonable.

Besides, I'm not alone in taking this particular stance here in this country.

------
tmalsburg2
I like WhatsApp because it works really well and is easy to use. But on the
day I see an ad and no option to get rid of ads by upgrading to a paid
subscription, I will close my account.

~~~
atomicnumber1
> I will close my account. And here lies the issue. Just you closing the
> account doesn't work. Your friends, your family, others you talk to on
> whatsapp shall also migrate. And that's the biggest issue.

~~~
tmalsburg2
I previously closed a ton of other social media accounts and guess what, my
friends are still my friends and my family has not abandoned me. In fact I
have _more_ time for friends and family now. In hind-sight most social media
use was just a giant waste of my time. Now people just call me or send me an
e-mail when they need to contact me. Signal-to-noise is much better.

~~~
atomicnumber1
I think this explains my case clearly,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18432085](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18432085)

------
garysahota93
I really don't mind the ads - they are a business after all. This will just
push me to stop using the platform.

HOWEVER, I wish they had chosen a different monetization tactic. I would have
_much_ rather paid their $1 a year for the service. And given the amount of
users they have, that could generate more than enough revenue for them to fund
development.

Additionally, monetizing businesses and their integration into the platform
also seems like a great idea. The businesses that find value in the platform
will more than happily pay for the service.

Or, another idea: why not make me just pay for chat backup (like $1 a year for
the app, $10 a year for chat storage, $20 a year for chat and pic storage, $30
a year for chat/pic/video storage) or something like that. That's something
that's user AND privacy friendly.

It just makes me really sad that these ads are what Facebook chose. It's an
excuse to not innovate and find creative ways to increase their revenue. It
seems like they're taking the easy way out.

~~~
dbbk
They already had that setup. Facebook removed the $1 a year subscription when
they bought it.

------
gaius
I wonder if this will prompt Apple to open up group iMessage, such as
BlackBerry (belatedly) attempting to go cross-platform with an app. Charge
Android users $1/year or /month for access to the ecosystem or something. Bye-
bye WhatsApp overnight, in lucrative developed markets.

~~~
product50
If only it was so easy. Why would users pay when they can send messages sent
for free? Also, iMessage is not materially adding new feature against what
Messenger and Whatsapp already offer - so adoption is going to be a massive
uphill battle.

iMessage succeeds on Apply only because it is the DEFAULT SMS app which Apple
took over and converted into a full blown Messenger solution. Highly unlikely
this playbook will work out on Android.

~~~
gaius
_Why would users pay when they can send messages sent for free?_

A combination of awareness that TANSTAAFL and network effects - RIM sold
plenty of BB hardware to people who just wanted access to BBM because that’s
where all their friends were, so there’s precedent.

I think it’s pretty safe to assume that even if there were a paid option for
FB, Insta, WhatsApp they would still do everything they could to monetise
personal data, because that’s just the kind of company FB is, rapacious.

~~~
Freak_NL
You're not going to reach the tipping point with just that. Most users don't
care one iota about why their lunch is free. They know you feel strongly about
that topic, but feel that they just have nothing to hide, that targetted
advertisements are really pretty convenient, that they are rather good at
ignoring advertisements, that they are not the real target after all with
their modest income — that you are just fighting the inevitable based on some
vague principle.

The majority at this point in time does not seem to care about privacy, but
they do care about the price.

Also, what's the point of moving to just another walled garden? Apple will
still keep the service proprietary and closed to third party clients, so
you'll also lose the vocal software freedom folk in your approach.

------
tsunamifury
Its interesting that many people here don't seem to know that in most of the
world WhatsApp is already the go-to business messaging platform and a large
portion of its user base subscribes to business services via WhatsApp. Organic
promotion groups, local business contacts, and messaging lists have existed in
India and other regions for a long time now. Its interesting to me that it
seems that in the EU/US users generally so shocked by this.

------
Yizahi
I highly doubt that Whatsapp was ever for user privacy. Have you tried
installing it first time? It won't function without permission to intercept
your SMS, it won't function without giving it complete contact list (as
opposed to select few numbers) and so on. And of course that data is sold...
er... how they say it now - "analyzed" or "exchanged".

~~~
user5994461
The SMS interception permission can be disabled.

It's only used the first time you register your phone number to whatspp, to
send a SMS with a unique code to verify the number. Someone thought it was a
good idea to intercept all SMS rather than have the user write the code.

------
garyclarke27
After moving to Portugal from UK, and terrible experience with local telecoms
provider MEO (lies and horrific bills) I have to use VOIP. Recently I’ve
switched to using WhatsApp instead of Skype for most voice calls, curious if
others are doing the same?? Audio Quality is mostly good and it’s much easier
to find contacts than with Skype, because it’s based on their mobile number
not a Skype ID. On monetisation I would pay for voice calls to
landlines/mobiles. Also maybe they could do some kind of deal for
international data roaming packages linked to a separate WhatsApp number.
Predictable reasonable costs for voice and data - linked to a single mobile
number - is still a major unsolved problem for travellers.

~~~
umichguy
I am in the UK/ EU as well, my friends and I mostly use Whatsapp, FB
messenger, Facetime for voice/video calls (especially when traveling/roaming)
as most of them use this. Skype is mainly used for business or other "non-
quick" purposes.Quite a few of them don't even have Skype enabled in the
"always on" mode, open and login only when needed, unlike the others I
mentioned.

------
aneeqdhk
As a business owner, I would love to use Whatsapp to communicate with my
users. Not to spam or advertise, just communicate. The email open rates for
our target audience (Indian college students) are abysmal, and SMS is just too
unpredictable (but what we end up using because that's the best we've got).

I reckon that there would be similar business owners in my predicament who
would just like to genuinely notify users. Just like with email, users can
have an opt-out option as well.

I think some of this functionality is already there in their Business API
(which is quite opaque fwiw).

On the other hand, I can see how this can quickly devolve into spam if used
incorrectly (which is inevitable).

------
sxp62000
There's no stopping Facebook from shoving ads down our throats, but I hope
they consider creating an option to remove the ads and provide extra features.
For example, charge me something per year to add chat+media backups and group
video calls.

Also, before Whatsapp was acquired by Facebook, didn't they charge something
like 99 cents per year to provide backups?

------
onetimemanytime
Whatsapp paid for itself, more or less, IMO. A lot of people don't need FB to
stay in touch with extended family, just Whatsapp groups. They are still in FB
ecosystem, of sort.

FB needs to worry about the next quarter so they might ruin this and allow
other apps to take over.

------
intopieces
The article mentions ads on the private feed. I don’t use this feature, is it
the leftmost tab — statuses?

Since most of the world runs on Android, they are already accustomed to ad
supported software. While not a welcome change for me, I doubt I will ever
encounter them.

------
pier25
I would gladly pay a "pro" subscription to get rid of ads.

I've already tried to move friends and colleagues to Signal. It didn't work.

~~~
pgm8705
Why do you think it didn't work? I've had the same experience, but with trying
to move friends from telegram to signal. For me, I think it is because
telegram is such a better experience from a UI standpoint. Signal is getting
better, but it still feels clunkly.

~~~
pier25
I think it's simple inertia.

Maybe I should try again with Telegram. It looks quite nice.

------
thinkloop
Signal is open-source and can be forked if they ever add ads, it's the final
answer.

~~~
sandov
AFAIK, It requires Google play services, which is a deal breaker.

~~~
redsparrow
For others, who may not have seen this reply to the same comment above, it's
no longer required:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18434172](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18434172)

------
tmaly
If I start seeing ads, I will move back to regular SMS. It is that simple.

~~~
anoncoward111
I use whatsapp for tons of foreign numbers and sending images. SMS is
torturously bad for this use-case!

I would tolerate any amount of ads for this service, or alternatively pay
maybe $10 a year.

------
fragebogen
What about us who actually paid 1€/$ for WhatsApp in the first place?

~~~
thijsvandien
That was a price per year and it's been a while since you paid that.

~~~
ahakki
Initially IIRC it was a 99 Cent App on the App Store without an annual fee, as
there were no in-app purchases on iOS yet

------
Mc_Big_G
Hopefully it means everyone stops using Whatsapp (Facebook)

------
calimac
Can Anyone build a what's app replacement and does anyone want to JV to market
and scale the app through the wave of pissed off users that is eminent upon
the roll out of WhatsApp Monetization.

We know one thing. Whats app monetization will be so nefarious and parasitic
that there will be a mass exodus. Be there to catch the fall out and provide a
responsible replacement that respects data sovereignty of individuals.

The opportunity is inbound now.

------
Pica_soO
I wonder, could one use users as bridges- like in irc - and communicate with
whats app groups from outside the walled garden?

