That's not true. They were charging $1/user/year (possibly only on Android and in some countries) before their acquisition. And their costs were low. I'm pretty sure they were profitable.
> WhatsApp’s six-month revenue for the first half of 2014 totaled $15.9 million and the company incurred a staggering net loss of $232.5 million, though the majority of that loss was for share-based compensation.
It doesn't seem to be too relevant: it's the year of acquisition and the loss is due to the "share based compensation". Remembering what I've read, before they were really small company with small number of servers properly handling all the uses.
Not true - that loss was based on employee compensation due to the size of the deal and realized stock appreciation. WhatsApp could have covered operating costs indefinitely from user $1 payments.
Let’s be honest, nobody would have paid that $1 (you had a free year before you had to pay IIRC). Everyone would have switched to another free service.
WhatsApp is in a good position to become a "lightweight" Slack competitor, since so many small companies already use it for work.
In my country (Argentina) it became a de-facto platform for selling for small businesses, grocery stores and restaurants. There are a couple of 3rd party e-commerce platforms that generate the order and then simply drop it through WhatsApp so you can continue through there and handle the payment manually.
... There are many ways in which WhatsApp could have explored making profits. Facebook simply made it stagnate.
> WhatsApp’s six-month revenue for the first half of 2014 totaled $15.9 million and the company incurred a staggering net loss of $232.5 million, though the majority of that loss was for share-based compensation.
WhatsApp was always running on VC cash.