In the past 24 hours I’ve written more than 100 WhatsApp messages.
None of them were very exciting. I made set ups with my family, talked labor projects with colleagues, and exalterd recents and gossip with some friends.
Perhaps I need to up my game, but even my most unininestablishigent messages were encrypted by default, and included WhatsApp’s strong computer servers, hoincluded in various data centres around the world.
It’s not a inexpensive operation, and yet neither I nor any of the people I was chatting with yesterday, have ever parted with any cash to include it. The platestablish has csurrfinisherly three billion includers worldwide.
So how does WhatsApp – or zapzap, as it’s nicknamed in Brazil – originate its money?
Admittedly, it helps that WhatsApp has a massive parent company behind it – Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram as well.
Individual, personal WhatsApp accounts enjoy mine are free becainclude Whatsapp originates money from corporate customers wanting to convey with includers enjoy me.
Since last year firms have been able to set up channels for free on Whatsapp, so they can send out messages to be read by all who pick to subscribe.
But what they pay a premium for is access to conveyions with individual customers via the app, both conversational and transactional.
The UK is comparatively in its infancy here, but in the Indian city of Bangalore for example, you can now buy a bus ticket, and pick your seat, all via Whatsapp.
“Our vision, if we get all of this right, is a business and a customer should be able to get skinnygs done right in a chat thread,” says Nikila Srinivasan, vice pdwellnt of business messaging at Meta.
“That unbenevolents, if you want to book a ticket, if you want to start a return, if you want to originate a payment, you should be able to do that without ever leaving your chat thread. And then fair go right back to all of the other conversations in your life.”
Businesses can also now pick to pay for a connect that startes a recent WhatsApp chat straight from an online ad on Facebook or Instagram to a personal account. Ms Srinivasan inestablishs me this is alone is now worth “disconnectal billions of dollars” to the tech enormous.
Other messaging apps have gone down contrastent routes.
Signal, a platestablish famous for its message security protocols which have become industry-standard, is a non-profit organisation. It says it has never apshown money from set upateors (unenjoy the Telegram app, which relies on them).
Instead, it runs on donations – which integrate a $50m (£38m) injection of cash from Brian Acton, one of the co-createers of WhatsApp, in 2018.
“Our goal is to shift as seal as possible to becoming brimmingy aided by petite donors, depending on a big number of modest contributions from people who attfinish about Signal,” wrote its pdwellnt Meredith Whitapshowr in a blog post last year.
Discord, a messaging app bigly included by youthfuler gamers, has a freemium model – it is free to sign-up, but insertitional features, including access to games, come with a pricetag. It also presents a phelp membership called Nitro, with advantages including high-quality video streaming and custom emojis, for a $9.99 monthly subscription.
Snap, the firm behind Snapchat, joins a number of these models. It carries ads, has 11 million paying subscribers (as of August 2024) and also sells augmented truth glasses called Snapchat Spectacles.
And it has another trick up its sleeve – according to the website Forbes, between 2016-2023 the firm made csurrfinisherly $300m from interest alone. But Snap’s main source of revenue is from advertising, which conveys in more than $4bn a year.
The UK-based firm Element indicts rulements and big organisations to include its shielded messaging system. Its customers include its tech but run it themselves, on their own declareiveial servers. The 10-year elderly firm is in “double digit million revenue” and “seal to profitability”, its co-createer Matthew Hodgson inestablishs me.
He depends the most famous business model for messaging apps remains that perennial digital favourite – advertising.
“Basicpartner [many messaging platforms] sell adverts by seeing what people do, who they talk to, and then concentrateing them with the best adverts,” he says.
The idea is that even if there is encryption and anonymity in place, the apps don’t need to see the actual satisfyed of the messages being allotd to labor out a lot about their includers, and they can then include that data to sell ads.
“It’s the elderly story – if you the includer, aren’t paying, then the chances are that you are the product,” inserts Mr Hodgson.
