Whatsapp almost exists for five years now. And during this period of time it recruited 450 million users. The (almost) free application which runs on internet allows you to talk with your friends and family in a chat kind of way. It looks a lot like SMS, except this version does not have the big costs that come along with SMS.
All these users are using Whatsapp for a long period of time now. During this period Whatsapp never had any form of advertisement in it. And for Apple users, such as myself, I only paid 79 cents in order to download it and never had any other payment done. I love the fact that the application is so cheap and does not have any advertisements.
Recently Facebook, the new owners of Whatsapp, announced that they don’t have any short term plans in order to earn money from Whatsapp. However they are talking about short term and not about long term plans. What does this mean for the future of whatsapp?
I personally believe that one day, although it might not be any time soon, Facebook will start with advertisements. And I think that this will be the beginning of the end for Whatsapp. Its users are now so used to now having to deal with advertisements. And I strongly believe that other companies and application developers will advantage hereof, because they will develop something which has the same purpose but without advertisements. Telegram is a strong example for this.
What’s your opinion about this? What will the future of Whatsapp be when Facebook starts advertising on the application?
I definitely agree with you that it will be the beginning of the end for WhatsApp when they start incorporating advertisements in the application. When Facebook announced that they bought WhatsApp, many people were afraid that their private conversations and photos would be used by Facebook and other third companies. In addition, they also thought that WhatsApp would now become like many other applications, namely full of advertisements. As a precaution, many WhatsApp users switched to alternative messenger applications, such as Telegram. However, when Facebook ensured that they will not invade the privacy of the WhatsApp users nor that they will sell their private information to advertisers, many users switched back to WhatsApp. The fact that many people already took these precautions right after the announcement by Facebook indicates that when WhatsApp really turns into an application that uses private data from its users to attract advertisers, it will indeed be the beginning of the end for WhatsApp. Thus, WhatsApp will not have a bright future when Facebook decides to use advertisements in the application.