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by danpalmer 132 days ago
I think that's an example of the opposite, the number was huge but how much revenue is being driven by WhatsApp? I think that would be a hard one to put a number on. I'm sure it's important for Meta overall, but it's not directly driving ad or subscription revenue.
3 comments
catlikesshrimp 132 days ago
Whatsapp claims to be E2E encryption, but it can still submit anonymous("") metadata("") At least they can identify you and your contacts by real phone number, real name and nicknames, and more often than not real pictures; the information can be crosschecked across all your contacts who in good faith provide good information.

There are also bussiness accounts which are really important depending on the location.

It is very hard to put a price to that, but its value is undisputable.

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danpalmer 132 days ago
This is exactly my point. I'm sure there's lots of intelligence that Meta can attribute value to, in a complex attribution process, but I doubt that it's as simple as a revenue stream or P&L.
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saidinesh5 132 days ago
That's the weird thing about WhatsApp though.. back when they bought WhatsApp it was still a paid service and a lot of people actually paid for it and it was on its way to get to a billion active users.

After that acquisition, they made it free for all and started chasing the $$$ with WhatsApp for business. And ads. No idea which is more profitable anymore. I think they'd still be able to monetize it more with WhatsApp payments and those ads in status updates. I'd definitely like to know what the numbers are looking like these days..

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danpalmer 132 days ago
> it was still a paid service and a lot of people actually paid for it

It was, but it was very cheap (UK pricing was £1 a year), and I believe had lots of free users anyway. My guess is that the revenue wasn't worth pursuing.

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SecretDreams 132 days ago
> the number was huge but how much revenue is being driven by WhatsApp?

Meta isn't a charity. If they aren't making money off WhatsApp outright, the users are the value and they're making money off them some other way, encryption be damned.

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