WhatsApp used to charge $1 annual fee before getting acquired by Facebook.
It scrapped its $1 annual fee in the hopes of further enhancing its user base especially in developing countries, where it foresees a huge opportunity for growth.
If we assume that tomorrow WhatsApp starts showing us Ads it will easily be able to make billions of $ as revenue.
For now, WhatsApp is focused on:
1. Expanding its user base before thinking of monetization strategies that may limit its number of clientele.
It scrapped its $1 annual fee in the hopes of further enhancing its user base especially in developing countries, where it foresees a huge opportunity for growth.
If we assume that tomorrow WhatsApp starts showing us Ads it will easily be able to make billions of $ as revenue.
For now, WhatsApp is focused on:
1. Expanding its user base before thinking of monetization strategies that may limit its number of clientele.
2. Looking at novel methods to generate revenue. In early 2016, Jan Koum mentioned that instead of featuring third-party ads to make money, the company would be experimenting with B2C (Business to Customer) services.
In a blog-post WhatsApp said this: “Starting this year, we will test tools that allow you to use WhatsApp to communicate with businesses and organizations that you want to hear from. That could mean communicating with your bank about whether a recent transaction was fraudulent, or with an airline about a delayed flight. We all get these messages elsewhere today – through text messages and phone calls – so we want to test new tools to make this easier to do on WhatsApp, while still giving you an experience without third-party ads and spam.”
In a blog-post WhatsApp said this: “Starting this year, we will test tools that allow you to use WhatsApp to communicate with businesses and organizations that you want to hear from. That could mean communicating with your bank about whether a recent transaction was fraudulent, or with an airline about a delayed flight. We all get these messages elsewhere today – through text messages and phone calls – so we want to test new tools to make this easier to do on WhatsApp, while still giving you an experience without third-party ads and spam.”
3. Parsing / analyzing our entire chat data and using it to improve the intelligence of Facebook's advertisement platform. 'Intelligent advertisement platform', means showing as-much-as-possible relevant ads to its users. So, FB analyses WhatsApp's chat data and tires to understand what users want/need/think/hate/like/love/etc and then uses this data to show its FB users ads that they would most-probably click and hence hence let FB make trillions/billions of $s.
Sources:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2498075,00.asp
http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/18/whatsapp-is-ditching-its-annual-dollar-subscription-fee/
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