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by bikamonki 3695 days ago
Monetization strategy is what's stopping Whatsapp. Eventually, there will be an official API so business can hook CRMs to clients' Whatsapp accounts. However, FB is first trying that with Messenger API/bots. I assume Whatsapp API/bots comes next.

FB did not pay billions for the most popular chat app just to let 1 billion people use it for free forever...
1 comments
lucb1e 3695 days ago
Free? Every WhatsApp user paid Facebook on day one with the contents of their address book and how frequently one person contacts another. This is of huge value if your business model is exactly to gather this kind of data.
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lunula 3695 days ago
All the talk about encryption and privacy seems to ignore this basic point. Association can be dangerous and this does not protect people from exposing themselves in that way.
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bikamonki 3695 days ago
True, but to be honest I am not sure that alone is worth 22B, in particular when you have to show shareholders how you plan to make that money back.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-10-28/facebook-s...

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