So
Facebook is acquiring Whatsapp for a whopping $19 billion. That sure
is a lot of money for a mobile application but what does it mean for
the future of Whatsapp. Surely Facebook needs to make money out
of it, but how? Does this mean that we will start to see a bunch of
ads popping up during chats?
Surely
something has to change with Whatsapp for Facebook to monetise it and
tap into its growing 450 million plus users. Whether this will affect
the user experience or not remains to be seen. The guys at Whatsapp
say nothing is going to change.
Mark
Zuckerberg, Founder and Ceo of Facebook said "Whatsapp will
continue to operate independently within
Facebook."
He added that:
"Whatsapp
will complement our existing chat and
messaging
services to provide new tools for our
community.
Facebook Messenger is widely used for
chatting
with your Facebook friends, and Whatsapp for
communicating
with all of your contacts and small
groups
of people. Since Whatsapp and Messenger serve
such
different and important uses, we will continue
investing
in both and making them each great products
for
everyone."
So
why would Facebook pay so much for a mobile application company, is
it to simply "give people even more options for connecting,"
as Zuckerberg said. Sarah Lacy of PandoDaily says that Facebook's
interest in Whatsapp is to simply follow the photos. She states that
Facebook has become the biggest social network because it owns
photos. Adding Whatsapp's 500 million photos that are processed a day
would secure its dominance.
This
could also be a way for Facebook to accessing user data and
integrating it with some of their products and further bolstering
their advertising business. Whatever Facebook's intentions are
of Whatsapp will just have to wait and see.
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