Chat platform What’s up turns 15 this Saturday, consolidated as the most popular communication tool in the world, with more than 2,000 million users using its free and encrypted service, something that just complicates its profitability.
The instant messaging application was created on February 24, 2009 by two former employees of the company. Yahoo, Jan Koum and Brian Acton, and in 2014 it became part of today’s Met, when its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, for about 19,000 million dollars.
According to the last one IAB Spain Social Network Study (2023), WhatsApp It still reigns as the most valued app of its kind, the one that is used most often – several times a day – and with greater intensity, and the most transversal, since it is a favorite of millennials, zeta and alpha generations.
2 billion users What’s up worldwide, outpacing messaging rivals such as China’s WeChat (1.336 million), Facebook Messenger (979 million) and Telegram (800 million), according to website Statista.
The ‘application’ includes increasingly complex innovations: from video calls or voice notes, now basic, to the ability to create groups, and now leave them without all members knowing. Its latest innovation is that it allows you to edit already sent messages.
As expected, Artificial Intelligence (AI) It has already crept in among the new features, though they are anecdotal due to their private nature: users can use the technology to generate emoticons, images and chat with an assistant within “boundaries.”
“AIs can read what is sent to them, but your personal messages are still end-to-end encrypted so that no one, including Meta, can see them”the company says on its website, though it anticipates making the technology available to developers and businesses, one of its lifebloods.
And as of 2018, the ‘app’ offers the WhatsApp Business platform for corporate communication, with around 200 million users willing to pay cents for every conversation with their customers and what seems to be a solution to the problem of profitability.
Minority income within the ‘target family’
Meta does not break out WhatsApp’s business volume, which some analysts believe is around 1% of the total, and prefers to refer to its “family of ‘apps'”, which includes Instagram and Facebook, with a large advertising business, and which in 2023 had a combined turnover of 133,000 million.
According to specialized media, the app’s potential monetization was one of the reasons its founders left Meta a few years after Zuckerberg’s purchase, as they criticized people not wanting to see ads while chatting with friends and family.
According to data from Insider Intelligence gathered by CNBC, WhatsApp’s biggest country penetration is happening in Spain, Italy and Argentina, although other sites point to countries like Brazil and India. Where it hasn’t really caught on is in the US, where classic phone text messages (SMS) predominate.
Source: Panama America
I’m Ella Sammie, author specializing in the Technology sector. I have been writing for 24 Instatnt News since 2020, and am passionate about staying up to date with the latest developments in this ever-changing industry.
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