WhatsApp is being remodeled in front of our eyes. Watch what happens because even if you don’t use the messaging app, the changes could reshape the direction of the internet.
Perhaps never before has an online property been so popular and made such little money. More than two billion people worldwide use WhatsApp regularly to text or make phone calls, but it scarcely generates any money for Facebook, which has owned WhatsApp since 2014.
That’s because WhatsApp is mostly a personal communications app, and Facebook doesn’t make money from that group chat with your cousins. This looks set to change. Haltingly, including by agreeing to buy a customer service start-up on Monday, Facebook is trying to use its trademark playbook to remake WhatsApp into an inescapable way for businesses to interact with us.
To continue reading this report in the New York Times, go to:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/01/technology/why-whatsapp-matters.html