18 ms·

What does WhatsApp’s upcoming monetisation mean for the company and its users?

178 points by dsr12 8y ago

sergiotapia 8y ago
Whatsapp daily user here. I understand the need for them to monetize but the second they add advertising and companies into the mix, they lose the sheen of their app. whatsapp is purely for talking to people I know. That's their selling point for me. I don't want to see companies, ads, offers, sweepstakes or curated content. Just me and my family/friends.
- batiudrami 8y ago
  The fact is that you will likely continue to use WhatsApp as long as all your friends remain on there though. The trick is to work out how much garbage can be stuffed into the app before people will abandon it en masse. I suspect the threshold is a little lower for Whatsapp than Facebook Messenger as WhatsApp has a higher third world user base who have older, slower handsets and will see performance difficulties - hence Facebook's Lite apps for Android.
  - msravi 8y ago
    That threshold is going to be very low, at least for me. If my friends decide not to move, I'll just switch back to plain old regular SMS. I already have an SMS app that has spam filters, and that'll do just fine.
    - roel_v 8y ago
      SMS can't do groups, those are a killer feature of whatsapp.
      - xbmcuser 8y ago
        The new rcs standard solves most of the problems of sms apart from end to end encryption. It might take off if mobile carriers support it.
        r_c_a_d 8y ago
        I was not aware of RCS until today. Looking at it I can see governments also being very keen to see it take off; since many of them are worried about end-to-end encryption hindering their ability to snoop on private conversations.
        petepete 8y ago
        It's going to be a long process. Mobile carriers, like mine (O2 UK) don't really stand to gain anything from RCS. Until companies begin to offer additional functionality for RCS users, like branding, rich media and bespoke action buttons[0] and normal people start moaning or switching to a network that does support it, I really can't see them budging on their stance. [0] https://www.openmarket.com/blog/rcs-to-eclipse-apps/ https://www.openmarket.com/blog/rcs-to-eclipse-apps/
      - saagarjha 8y ago
        > SMS can't do groups It can't? My iPhone seems to do this pretty well for SMS; what exactly is it doing to make this work?
        roel_v 8y ago
        You can send to multiple, I guess that's what you mean? When someone replies, it doesn't neccessarily get send to everyone. It's like email with a bunch of cc's vs listserv.
        saagarjha 8y ago
        So, when I form an SMS group, do my recipients not get it as a group? I was not aware of this. I thought that if I formed a group with A and B, and sent a message to A, it would show up on their side as "saagarjha sent a message to the saagarjha, A, and B group".
        roel_v 8y ago
        Not sure, maybe your SMS client has a way of encoding it somewhere in the metadata, and if the recipient uses the same client, it does show up like that? The SMS 'protocol' (if it's called that) doesn't have it, AFAIK, and no SMS I ever used had such functionality.
        mugsie 8y ago
        That is probably using MMS, which never really took off (at least in IE)
        baby 8y ago
        I think this is of iMessage? It's probably not working if one of the user doesn't have an iPhone.
    - ctack 8y ago
      What about Signal or Telegram?
    - baby 8y ago
      how do you SMS your friends abroad?
- product50 8y ago
  No ads are coming in the messages part of Whatsapp. This is all about showing ads in the Status feature of Whatsapp. I am not sure if that will be enough for you to lose the sheen of their app..
  - anilgulecha 8y ago
    Yet.
- avip 8y ago
  Call me naive, but I hope and believe there’ll be a paid opt out
  - tomcooks 8y ago
    At its very beginning, WhatsApp was a paid app so that wouldn't surprise me
    - breakingcups 8y ago
      It would surprise me. The first thing Facebook did when it bought WhatsApp was to rollback the price on iOS and to halt the Android pricing rollout. They don't want you to pay for it, it singles the remaining (ad-served) population out as being less willing to spend money. Not a good message to your advertisers.
  - chrisper 8y ago
    I already paid for this app. Why should I pay again?
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > I hope and believe there’ll be a paid opt out I don’t. This isn’t how Facebook works. Paid opt outs drain the highest-earning advertisees from the pool. That removes Facebook’s ability to charge dubious ad rates.
    - anticensor 8y ago
      Do you mean "user" by "advertisee"? If you do, it is like Stallman saying "used" for SAAS users.
  - Fnoord 8y ago
    I'd rather pay than see ads, but either way I got a better alternative waiting for a network effect (Signal).
- kayoone 8y ago
  In some asian markets messengers are exactly the nightmare you describe and it seems to work brilliantly for them, users essentially spend all their time inside those messenger and even buy a lot of the stuff they need from there. If it's convenient enough, sadly not a lot of people will care.
  - umichguy 8y ago
    China and WeChat springs to the top of my mind. You can pretty much buy anything you need using it, including giving tips, giving money to buskers etc.
realusername 8y ago
A better way to monetize than Ads would be to slightly follow the Telegram model, they should create a store, ability to access an API, bots... Whatsapp did not evolve much in the past 3 years, it's maybe time to make it larger than just a chat app and create a real platform. Especially when you have entire countries using the app.
- avip 8y ago
  I believe whatsapp is so popular exactly because it did not evolve. People love wa as-is, why break it?
  - realusername 8y ago
    They don't necessarily need to "break it" but to evolve it a bit into a service. I'm sure you have people who would be happy to pay for bots, larger groups and business features (including myself). In some countries, WhatsApp is larger than a chat app, it's a social network but without any features, there's a gap somewhere here.
    - msravi 8y ago
      That gap is the feature, and I'm willing to pay to keep it that way. The moment bots start spamming my WA feeds/groups I'll be gone. I'll move to Signal and if my contacts don't do the same, I'll just switch back to SMS with spam filters.
      - realusername 8y ago
        When I meant "bots" I meant only manually. I can't subscribe manually to a bot right now and I can't add a bot to a group I own.
        acqq 8y ago
        I agree with you: if the subscription has to be by the user, the subscribed entity is managed like other contacts and I never get unsubscribed messsges/requests I would surely like to subscribe to the info that actually matters to me directly (conceptually opposite to “following feeds” on twitter). Completely personalized information and without installing one more app for every subscribed entity.
gaius 8y ago
I wonder if this will prompt Apple to open up group iMessage, such as BlackBerry (belatedly) attempting to go cross-platform with an app. Charge Android users $1/year or /month for access to the ecosystem or something. Bye-bye WhatsApp overnight, in lucrative developed markets.
- batiudrami 8y ago
  Apple doesn't need 'em though. What's $1/year to a $265bn/year company? Maybe Apple converts a few hundred million of them to iMessage. 0.1% revenue bump in return for devaluing a USP of their product and increased ongoing development and operating costs. Plus I think you overestimate Android users' propensity to hand over even $1 in return for no ads. The reason Apple Music is on Android is that the larger userbase directly gives Apple more bargaining power with labels.
  - gaius 8y ago
    What's $1/year to a $265bn/year company? Maybe Apple converts a few hundred million of them to iMessage. 0.1% revenue bump in return for devaluing a USP of their product and increased ongoing development and operating costs. It would just be the same as them selling a 99c app, and the goal would be some of those users for their next phone switching to iPhone. And more high-ground kudos as “the privacy company” which is where their marketing is positioned right now. Plus I think you overestimate Android users' propensity to hand over even $1 It seems to be a general thing on all platforms, people will pay $1000 for a handset and $5 for a coffee but hesitate to spend 99c on an app.
    - batiudrami 8y ago
      I think iMessage is currently a strong unique selling proposition for iPhone (in the US anyway; no one cares about it elsewhere), and offering it for $1 would reduce the likelihood of switching to iPhone - not increase it. Apple isn't really in the business of making $1 apps (that I can think of) - just of selling them on behalf of others.
abhiminator 8y ago
I still remember the first installation of WhatsApp messenger on an old Samsung device of mine in 2012 as a high-schooler. It was incredibly liberating to finally discover an IM app that enabled me to send unlimited messages to my friends and not get hamstrung by SMS limits that existed in my country; especially one that was resource-light enough to run on my device's 866 MHz processor. I'd largely glossed over Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp back in '14 as just another big tech company eating up a smaller 'potential future competitor,' but in hindsight it looks like it was the beginning of the end of WhatsApp as a simple, reliable and ad-free private messenger. Super glad I quit the platform in 2017 -- never been more tranquil.
- cauldron 8y ago
  All company need to make money, it's just a matter of when and how, Facebook's resources may have even did them good, as they can stay away from predatory investment funds that otherwise would bite they hard in the end.
  - mnsc 8y ago
    Messaging is infrastructure and nothing that any single company should "need to make money" off. RCS can't come fast enough. https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/what-is-rcs-messaging/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/what-is-rcs-messaging/
    - cauldron 8y ago
      Tell that to Tencent. And their Wechat helped created the biggest misinformation system, the so called self-media.
    - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
      I don't get the "messaging is infrastructure" argument. When in the past has this been free? Phone calls, the postal service etc. have always had a cost for the end user.
      - 8y ago
skrebbel 8y ago
I remember reading in some Brian Acton interview that Facebook leadership believes that ads would bring in more money than charging businesses for access, integrations and premium features. Living in a country where WhatsApp is ubiquitous, I really don't understand that. Is it just a lack of imagination on Facebook's part? Companies, from tiny ones all the way up to enterprises, will pay serious money to be able support customers over WhatsApp in an effective way. And then I've not even begun to consider the marketing channel WhatsApp could be (also without turning into a spam hotbed). Facebook is the gatekeeper to WhatsApp, effectively a monopoly to a piece of core telecom infrastructure for a lot of countries. They could squeeze this out to the max. Right now, they give all of this away for nearly free and share the profit with the likes of MessageBird and Twilio. TBH i'd prefer they tax businesses than my eyeballs.
- johnchristopher 8y ago
  > I remember reading in some Brian Acton interview that Facebook leadership believes that ads would bring in more money than charging businesses for access, integrations and premium features. Verbatim: it wouldn't scale. Acton said he tried to push Facebook towards an alternative, less privacy hostile business model for WhatsApp — suggesting a metered-user model such as by charging a tenth of a penny after a certain large number of free messages were used up. But that “very simple business” idea was rejected outright by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who he said told him “it won’t scale”. “I called her out one time,” Acton also told Forbes. “I was like, ‘No, you don’t mean that it won’t scale. You mean it won’t make as much money as…,’ and she kind of hemmed and hawed a little. It looks like to me that the multi-billion dollar company that Facebook is, with all the very intelligent people working there, is a one pony trick that only knows how to make money by putting ads everywhere.
  - realusername 8y ago
    That's exactly it, Facebook is an advertising business and they struggle to think that they would be better and other ways to monetize a product, especially on WhatsApp where you have entire countries using it.
teekert 8y ago
I have many friends and a whole family who don't care about this. I tried to get people on Signal but it worked only for a handful. It would be nice if at leat I could pay to keep WA clean (and please let me pay to keep my addresses to myself as well), because leaving it completely is impossible for now. Here in the Netherlands WA is the communications standard, even most company helpdesks are on it.
- Angostura 8y ago
  The reason I don’t use WhatsApp is simply because it requires full, unfettered access to your entire contacts to work properly. When I explain to people that giving Facebook access to the contact details of my bank, psychotherapist, doctor, all work colleagues etc., they tend to understand
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > it requires full, unfettered access to your entire contacts to work properly I don’t give it these permissions. It requires punching in phone numbers, but that adds the right amount of friction to bounce communications to iMessage or a call.
    - crtasm 8y ago
      Is there any way to get (nick)names to show up instead of just phone numbers? I tried revoking the contacts permission then realised how it could be quite difficult to find a chat in a long list.
    - AdamSteel 8y ago
      Unfortunately on Android you have no choice.
      - macintux 8y ago
        That was long a differentiating factor between iOS and Android: Android's permissions were granted at install, iOS asked for each one individually, allowing much greater control. But, I thought that was changing. Is Android not moving to the more granular model?
garyclarke27 8y ago
After moving to Portugal from UK, and terrible experience with local telecoms provider MEO (lies and horrific bills) I have to use VOIP. Recently I’ve switched to using WhatsApp instead of Skype for most voice calls, curious if others are doing the same?? Audio Quality is mostly good and it’s much easier to find contacts than with Skype, because it’s based on their mobile number not a Skype ID. On monetisation I would pay for voice calls to landlines/mobiles. Also maybe they could do some kind of deal for international data roaming packages linked to a separate WhatsApp number. Predictable reasonable costs for voice and data - linked to a single mobile number - is still a major unsolved problem for travellers.
- umichguy 8y ago
  I am in the UK/ EU as well, my friends and I mostly use Whatsapp, FB messenger, Facetime for voice/video calls (especially when traveling/roaming) as most of them use this. Skype is mainly used for business or other "non-quick" purposes.Quite a few of them don't even have Skype enabled in the "always on" mode, open and login only when needed, unlike the others I mentioned.
- siquick 8y ago
  I always find the voice calls on WA much lower in volume than normal phone calls.
- nicoburns 8y ago
  Hardly anyone I know uses skype anymore, due to their call quality being significantly worse than the competition, and it eating up battery life. Facebook Messenger and whatsapp dominate the home market. Zoom.us, slack, hangouts and others are popular for business.
yazaddaruvala 8y ago
Please join my protest: If you see an ad on Facebook messenger or WhatsApp, don’t hide it, instead Report It. Report it as sexual content, report it as a scam, report it for whatever reason. Guidelines, try to use different reasons and try to make it a realistic reason. Facebook likes to gather our data for their ML, so let’s weaponize it. If we feed their platform garbage data, the ML will block the ads automatically, driving advertisers away or making report handling prohibitively expensive. We likely only need 0.01% of users to feed garbage data to trigger their ML decisions. They’ll eventually be forced to find a better alternative.
- namdnay 8y ago
  So you will make individual ads less effective, therefore lowering their value, therefore lowering their cost, therefore in order to secure revenue facebook will need to show you more ads?
  - tinus_hn 8y ago
    No, he is just making reports less effective.
- gota 8y ago
  This is interesting, but I have a feeling I'd face less resistance with friends and family if I just tried to switch them over to Signal and be done with the whole problem
  - 3eto 8y ago
    I've been helping family and closest friends to ditch WhatsApp for Signal, without much success, so decided to come up with a deadline, announced to everyone and will be deleting WhatsApp then. More friends have joined Signal the week I told them I was living by the deadline than in the previous years, where I was mostly ignored.
- thecatspaw 8y ago
  I click on all ads that my adblocker doesnt filter. Charges them the PPC price while still beeing worthless. If enough people do that it will stop beeing worth it to the advertiser
fragebogen 8y ago
What about us who actually paid 1€/$ for WhatsApp in the first place?
- thijsvandien 8y ago
  That was a price per year and it's been a while since you paid that.
  - ahakki 8y ago
    Initially IIRC it was a 99 Cent App on the App Store without an annual fee, as there were no in-app purchases on iOS yet
onetimemanytime 8y ago
Whatsapp paid for itself, more or less, IMO. A lot of people don't need FB to stay in touch with extended family, just Whatsapp groups. They are still in FB ecosystem, of sort. FB needs to worry about the next quarter so they might ruin this and allow other apps to take over.
aneeqdhk 8y ago
As a business owner, I would love to use Whatsapp to communicate with my users. Not to spam or advertise, just communicate. The email open rates for our target audience (Indian college students) are abysmal, and SMS is just too unpredictable (but what we end up using because that's the best we've got). I reckon that there would be similar business owners in my predicament who would just like to genuinely notify users. Just like with email, users can have an opt-out option as well. I think some of this functionality is already there in their Business API (which is quite opaque fwiw). On the other hand, I can see how this can quickly devolve into spam if used incorrectly (which is inevitable).
sxp62000 8y ago
There's no stopping Facebook from shoving ads down our throats, but I hope they consider creating an option to remove the ads and provide extra features. For example, charge me something per year to add chat+media backups and group video calls. Also, before Whatsapp was acquired by Facebook, didn't they charge something like 99 cents per year to provide backups?
Pica_soO 8y ago
I wonder, could one use users as bridges- like in irc - and communicate with whats app groups from outside the walled garden?
tmalsburg2 8y ago
I like WhatsApp because it works really well and is easy to use. But on the day I see an ad and no option to get rid of ads by upgrading to a paid subscription, I will close my account.
- atomicnumber1 8y ago
  > I will close my account. And here lies the issue. Just you closing the account doesn't work. Your friends, your family, others you talk to on whatsapp shall also migrate. And that's the biggest issue.
  - booleandilemma 8y ago
    I could never get my family on whatsapp in the first place, so I’m not too concerned.
  - reitanqild 8y ago
    Successfully participated in moving my entire family and in law family and another group of 300+ members since Facebook bought them. None of those people use Whatsapp anymore as they prefer other solutions. I still have WhatsApp on one device and it is active but nobody contacts me there anymore. Feels good.
    - beagle3 8y ago
      What did you switch them to?
      - reitanqild 8y ago
        Telegram. I know half of HN hates Telegram and I like it less than when I started moving (and to my defense that was before WhatsApp improved their crypto from close to nothing to state-of-the-art.) It has served us well but I don't like the constant bragging combined with breaking a number of best practices and I'm looking for alternatives now and might start moving users to a system that stresses me less sometime during the next year. Alternatives right now are signal, matrix etc. (Did I regret moving away from WhatsApp after they fixed their crypto? Not at all: they still uploaded all chats and sneakily tried to use all WhatsApp data to feed their spam cannon.
flurdy 8y ago
When Netflix a few months ago prompted me with "Hey your number is a Whatsapp account, do mind if we send notifications via Whatsapp?" I was generally horrified. It felt a serious transgression of my privacy. Though in hindsight I realised it was an easy task, I can, after all, see if people are using Whatsapp if I have their number so there is little to stop companies doing the same lookup if they have my number. But it felt very uncomfortable. I don't want companies involved with my Whatsapp, it is exclusively for messaging my missus, and group chats with friends and family. Nothing else. I did read somewhere that one of the founders said the aim was to integrate apps/companies into Whatsapp, but for me "No!". I am dreading what the ad monetisation will be like. Since everyone I am friends with, related to or worked with use Whatsapp, their market penetration is ubiquitous here in my London ecosphere. Hope they don't ruin that.
- yesforwhat 8y ago
  > I did read somewhere that one of the founders said the aim was to integrate apps/companies into Whatsapp, but for me "No!". Everyone on WeChat claims it's amazing, I hated it.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- gsich 8y ago
  >I did read somewhere that one of the founders said the aim was to integrate apps/companies into Whatsapp, but for me "No!". https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp
- Already__Taken 8y ago
  Whatsapp specifically though, it is just your phone number. You don't have that control over your phone number. Seems a little harsh to hold that one company to higher standards than literally anything else with your number. Direct marketing rules should still apply, in the UK you can't legally cold-call mobile numbers. I mean, I get it I agree with you and use whatsapp the same way. The one time I tried to use it to message for a takeaway they just ignored the order.
intopieces 8y ago
The article mentions ads on the private feed. I don’t use this feature, is it the leftmost tab — statuses? Since most of the world runs on Android, they are already accustomed to ad supported software. While not a welcome change for me, I doubt I will ever encounter them.
addedlovely 8y ago
Facebook killed their core platform by watering down the communication between my friends and family with business adverts and pages. I suspect they will kill WhatsApp the same way.
pier25 8y ago
I would gladly pay a "pro" subscription to get rid of ads. I've already tried to move friends and colleagues to Signal. It didn't work.
- pgm8705 8y ago
  Why do you think it didn't work? I've had the same experience, but with trying to move friends from telegram to signal. For me, I think it is because telegram is such a better experience from a UI standpoint. Signal is getting better, but it still feels clunkly.
  - pier25 8y ago
    I think it's simple inertia. Maybe I should try again with Telegram. It looks quite nice.
Yizahi 8y ago
I highly doubt that Whatsapp was ever for user privacy. Have you tried installing it first time? It won't function without permission to intercept your SMS, it won't function without giving it complete contact list (as opposed to select few numbers) and so on. And of course that data is sold... er... how they say it now - "analyzed" or "exchanged".
- user5994461 8y ago
  The SMS interception permission can be disabled. It's only used the first time you register your phone number to whatspp, to send a SMS with a unique code to verify the number. Someone thought it was a good idea to intercept all SMS rather than have the user write the code.
Mc_Big_G 8y ago
Hopefully it means everyone stops using Whatsapp (Facebook)
thinkloop 8y ago
Signal is open-source and can be forked if they ever add ads, it's the final answer.
- robjan 8y ago
  It has a place (I use to to communicate with my friends in China, rather than using WeChat) but it's clunky and delivery is unreliable even to people in countries without censorship. Sometimes messages take hours to arrive at the other side.
- sandov 8y ago
  AFAIK, It requires Google play services, which is a deal breaker.
  - redsparrow 8y ago
    For others, who may not have seen this reply to the same comment above, it's no longer required: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18434172 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18434172
tsunamifury 8y ago
Its interesting that many people here don't seem to know that in most of the world WhatsApp is already the go-to business messaging platform and a large portion of its user base subscribes to business services via WhatsApp. Organic promotion groups, local business contacts, and messaging lists have existed in India and other regions for a long time now. Its interesting to me that it seems that in the EU/US users generally so shocked by this.
calimac 8y ago
Can Anyone build a what's app replacement and does anyone want to JV to market and scale the app through the wave of pissed off users that is eminent upon the roll out of WhatsApp Monetization. We know one thing. Whats app monetization will be so nefarious and parasitic that there will be a mass exodus. Be there to catch the fall out and provide a responsible replacement that respects data sovereignty of individuals. The opportunity is inbound now.
garysahota93 8y ago
I really don't mind the ads - they are a business after all. This will just push me to stop using the platform. HOWEVER, I wish they had chosen a different monetization tactic. I would have much rather paid their $1 a year for the service. And given the amount of users they have, that could generate more than enough revenue for them to fund development. Additionally, monetizing businesses and their integration into the platform also seems like a great idea. The businesses that find value in the platform will more than happily pay for the service. Or, another idea: why not make me just pay for chat backup (like $1 a year for the app, $10 a year for chat storage, $20 a year for chat and pic storage, $30 a year for chat/pic/video storage) or something like that. That's something that's user AND privacy friendly. It just makes me really sad that these ads are what Facebook chose. It's an excuse to not innovate and find creative ways to increase their revenue. It seems like they're taking the easy way out.
- dbbk 8y ago
  They already had that setup. Facebook removed the $1 a year subscription when they bought it.
tmaly 8y ago
If I start seeing ads, I will move back to regular SMS. It is that simple.
- anoncoward111 8y ago
  I use whatsapp for tons of foreign numbers and sending images. SMS is torturously bad for this use-case! I would tolerate any amount of ads for this service, or alternatively pay maybe $10 a year.

178 points by dsr12 8y ago

Whatsapp daily user here. I understand the need for them to monetize but the second they add advertising and companies into the mix, they lose the sheen of their app. whatsapp is purely for talking to people I know. That's their selling point for me. I don't want to see companies, ads, offers, sweepstakes or curated content. Just me and my family/friends.

batiudrami 8y ago
The fact is that you will likely continue to use WhatsApp as long as all your friends remain on there though. The trick is to work out how much garbage can be stuffed into the app before people will abandon it en masse. I suspect the threshold is a little lower for Whatsapp than Facebook Messenger as WhatsApp has a higher third world user base who have older, slower handsets and will see performance difficulties - hence Facebook's Lite apps for Android.
- msravi 8y ago
  That threshold is going to be very low, at least for me. If my friends decide not to move, I'll just switch back to plain old regular SMS. I already have an SMS app that has spam filters, and that'll do just fine.
  - roel_v 8y ago
    SMS can't do groups, those are a killer feature of whatsapp.
    - xbmcuser 8y ago
      The new rcs standard solves most of the problems of sms apart from end to end encryption. It might take off if mobile carriers support it.
      - r_c_a_d 8y ago
        I was not aware of RCS until today. Looking at it I can see governments also being very keen to see it take off; since many of them are worried about end-to-end encryption hindering their ability to snoop on private conversations.
      - petepete 8y ago
        It's going to be a long process. Mobile carriers, like mine (O2 UK) don't really stand to gain anything from RCS. Until companies begin to offer additional functionality for RCS users, like branding, rich media and bespoke action buttons[0] and normal people start moaning or switching to a network that does support it, I really can't see them budging on their stance. [0] https://www.openmarket.com/blog/rcs-to-eclipse-apps/ https://www.openmarket.com/blog/rcs-to-eclipse-apps/
    - saagarjha 8y ago
      > SMS can't do groups It can't? My iPhone seems to do this pretty well for SMS; what exactly is it doing to make this work?
      - roel_v 8y ago
        You can send to multiple, I guess that's what you mean? When someone replies, it doesn't neccessarily get send to everyone. It's like email with a bunch of cc's vs listserv.
        saagarjha 8y ago
        So, when I form an SMS group, do my recipients not get it as a group? I was not aware of this. I thought that if I formed a group with A and B, and sent a message to A, it would show up on their side as "saagarjha sent a message to the saagarjha, A, and B group".
        roel_v 8y ago
        Not sure, maybe your SMS client has a way of encoding it somewhere in the metadata, and if the recipient uses the same client, it does show up like that? The SMS 'protocol' (if it's called that) doesn't have it, AFAIK, and no SMS I ever used had such functionality.
      - mugsie 8y ago
        That is probably using MMS, which never really took off (at least in IE)
      - baby 8y ago
        I think this is of iMessage? It's probably not working if one of the user doesn't have an iPhone.
  - ctack 8y ago
    What about Signal or Telegram?
  - baby 8y ago
    how do you SMS your friends abroad?
product50 8y ago
No ads are coming in the messages part of Whatsapp. This is all about showing ads in the Status feature of Whatsapp. I am not sure if that will be enough for you to lose the sheen of their app..
- anilgulecha 8y ago
  Yet.
avip 8y ago
Call me naive, but I hope and believe there’ll be a paid opt out
- tomcooks 8y ago
  At its very beginning, WhatsApp was a paid app so that wouldn't surprise me
  - breakingcups 8y ago
    It would surprise me. The first thing Facebook did when it bought WhatsApp was to rollback the price on iOS and to halt the Android pricing rollout. They don't want you to pay for it, it singles the remaining (ad-served) population out as being less willing to spend money. Not a good message to your advertisers.
- chrisper 8y ago
  I already paid for this app. Why should I pay again?
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > I hope and believe there’ll be a paid opt out I don’t. This isn’t how Facebook works. Paid opt outs drain the highest-earning advertisees from the pool. That removes Facebook’s ability to charge dubious ad rates.
  - anticensor 8y ago
    Do you mean "user" by "advertisee"? If you do, it is like Stallman saying "used" for SAAS users.
- Fnoord 8y ago
  I'd rather pay than see ads, but either way I got a better alternative waiting for a network effect (Signal).
kayoone 8y ago
In some asian markets messengers are exactly the nightmare you describe and it seems to work brilliantly for them, users essentially spend all their time inside those messenger and even buy a lot of the stuff they need from there. If it's convenient enough, sadly not a lot of people will care.
- umichguy 8y ago
  China and WeChat springs to the top of my mind. You can pretty much buy anything you need using it, including giving tips, giving money to buskers etc.

realusername 8y ago

A better way to monetize than Ads would be to slightly follow the Telegram model, they should create a store, ability to access an API, bots... Whatsapp did not evolve much in the past 3 years, it's maybe time to make it larger than just a chat app and create a real platform. Especially when you have entire countries using the app.

avip 8y ago
I believe whatsapp is so popular exactly because it did not evolve. People love wa as-is, why break it?
- realusername 8y ago
  They don't necessarily need to "break it" but to evolve it a bit into a service. I'm sure you have people who would be happy to pay for bots, larger groups and business features (including myself). In some countries, WhatsApp is larger than a chat app, it's a social network but without any features, there's a gap somewhere here.
  - msravi 8y ago
    That gap is the feature, and I'm willing to pay to keep it that way. The moment bots start spamming my WA feeds/groups I'll be gone. I'll move to Signal and if my contacts don't do the same, I'll just switch back to SMS with spam filters.
    - realusername 8y ago
      When I meant "bots" I meant only manually. I can't subscribe manually to a bot right now and I can't add a bot to a group I own.
      - acqq 8y ago
        I agree with you: if the subscription has to be by the user, the subscribed entity is managed like other contacts and I never get unsubscribed messsges/requests I would surely like to subscribe to the info that actually matters to me directly (conceptually opposite to “following feeds” on twitter). Completely personalized information and without installing one more app for every subscribed entity.

gaius 8y ago

I wonder if this will prompt Apple to open up group iMessage, such as BlackBerry (belatedly) attempting to go cross-platform with an app. Charge Android users $1/year or /month for access to the ecosystem or something. Bye-bye WhatsApp overnight, in lucrative developed markets.

batiudrami 8y ago
Apple doesn't need 'em though. What's $1/year to a $265bn/year company? Maybe Apple converts a few hundred million of them to iMessage. 0.1% revenue bump in return for devaluing a USP of their product and increased ongoing development and operating costs. Plus I think you overestimate Android users' propensity to hand over even $1 in return for no ads. The reason Apple Music is on Android is that the larger userbase directly gives Apple more bargaining power with labels.
- gaius 8y ago
  What's $1/year to a $265bn/year company? Maybe Apple converts a few hundred million of them to iMessage. 0.1% revenue bump in return for devaluing a USP of their product and increased ongoing development and operating costs. It would just be the same as them selling a 99c app, and the goal would be some of those users for their next phone switching to iPhone. And more high-ground kudos as “the privacy company” which is where their marketing is positioned right now. Plus I think you overestimate Android users' propensity to hand over even $1 It seems to be a general thing on all platforms, people will pay $1000 for a handset and $5 for a coffee but hesitate to spend 99c on an app.
  - batiudrami 8y ago
    I think iMessage is currently a strong unique selling proposition for iPhone (in the US anyway; no one cares about it elsewhere), and offering it for $1 would reduce the likelihood of switching to iPhone - not increase it. Apple isn't really in the business of making $1 apps (that I can think of) - just of selling them on behalf of others.

abhiminator 8y ago

I still remember the first installation of WhatsApp messenger on an old Samsung device of mine in 2012 as a high-schooler. It was incredibly liberating to finally discover an IM app that enabled me to send unlimited messages to my friends and not get hamstrung by SMS limits that existed in my country; especially one that was resource-light enough to run on my device's 866 MHz processor. I'd largely glossed over Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp back in '14 as just another big tech company eating up a smaller 'potential future competitor,' but in hindsight it looks like it was the beginning of the end of WhatsApp as a simple, reliable and ad-free private messenger. Super glad I quit the platform in 2017 -- never been more tranquil.

cauldron 8y ago
All company need to make money, it's just a matter of when and how, Facebook's resources may have even did them good, as they can stay away from predatory investment funds that otherwise would bite they hard in the end.
- mnsc 8y ago
  Messaging is infrastructure and nothing that any single company should "need to make money" off. RCS can't come fast enough. https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/what-is-rcs-messaging/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/what-is-rcs-messaging/
  - cauldron 8y ago
    Tell that to Tencent. And their Wechat helped created the biggest misinformation system, the so called self-media.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
    I don't get the "messaging is infrastructure" argument. When in the past has this been free? Phone calls, the postal service etc. have always had a cost for the end user.
    - 8y ago

skrebbel 8y ago

I remember reading in some Brian Acton interview that Facebook leadership believes that ads would bring in more money than charging businesses for access, integrations and premium features. Living in a country where WhatsApp is ubiquitous, I really don't understand that. Is it just a lack of imagination on Facebook's part? Companies, from tiny ones all the way up to enterprises, will pay serious money to be able support customers over WhatsApp in an effective way. And then I've not even begun to consider the marketing channel WhatsApp could be (also without turning into a spam hotbed). Facebook is the gatekeeper to WhatsApp, effectively a monopoly to a piece of core telecom infrastructure for a lot of countries. They could squeeze this out to the max. Right now, they give all of this away for nearly free and share the profit with the likes of MessageBird and Twilio. TBH i'd prefer they tax businesses than my eyeballs.

johnchristopher 8y ago
> I remember reading in some Brian Acton interview that Facebook leadership believes that ads would bring in more money than charging businesses for access, integrations and premium features. Verbatim: it wouldn't scale. Acton said he tried to push Facebook towards an alternative, less privacy hostile business model for WhatsApp — suggesting a metered-user model such as by charging a tenth of a penny after a certain large number of free messages were used up. But that “very simple business” idea was rejected outright by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who he said told him “it won’t scale”. “I called her out one time,” Acton also told Forbes. “I was like, ‘No, you don’t mean that it won’t scale. You mean it won’t make as much money as…,’ and she kind of hemmed and hawed a little. It looks like to me that the multi-billion dollar company that Facebook is, with all the very intelligent people working there, is a one pony trick that only knows how to make money by putting ads everywhere.
- realusername 8y ago
  That's exactly it, Facebook is an advertising business and they struggle to think that they would be better and other ways to monetize a product, especially on WhatsApp where you have entire countries using it.

teekert 8y ago

I have many friends and a whole family who don't care about this. I tried to get people on Signal but it worked only for a handful. It would be nice if at leat I could pay to keep WA clean (and please let me pay to keep my addresses to myself as well), because leaving it completely is impossible for now. Here in the Netherlands WA is the communications standard, even most company helpdesks are on it.

Angostura 8y ago
The reason I don’t use WhatsApp is simply because it requires full, unfettered access to your entire contacts to work properly. When I explain to people that giving Facebook access to the contact details of my bank, psychotherapist, doctor, all work colleagues etc., they tend to understand
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > it requires full, unfettered access to your entire contacts to work properly I don’t give it these permissions. It requires punching in phone numbers, but that adds the right amount of friction to bounce communications to iMessage or a call.
  - crtasm 8y ago
    Is there any way to get (nick)names to show up instead of just phone numbers? I tried revoking the contacts permission then realised how it could be quite difficult to find a chat in a long list.
  - AdamSteel 8y ago
    Unfortunately on Android you have no choice.
    - macintux 8y ago
      That was long a differentiating factor between iOS and Android: Android's permissions were granted at install, iOS asked for each one individually, allowing much greater control. But, I thought that was changing. Is Android not moving to the more granular model?

garyclarke27 8y ago

After moving to Portugal from UK, and terrible experience with local telecoms provider MEO (lies and horrific bills) I have to use VOIP. Recently I’ve switched to using WhatsApp instead of Skype for most voice calls, curious if others are doing the same?? Audio Quality is mostly good and it’s much easier to find contacts than with Skype, because it’s based on their mobile number not a Skype ID. On monetisation I would pay for voice calls to landlines/mobiles. Also maybe they could do some kind of deal for international data roaming packages linked to a separate WhatsApp number. Predictable reasonable costs for voice and data - linked to a single mobile number - is still a major unsolved problem for travellers.

umichguy 8y ago
I am in the UK/ EU as well, my friends and I mostly use Whatsapp, FB messenger, Facetime for voice/video calls (especially when traveling/roaming) as most of them use this. Skype is mainly used for business or other "non-quick" purposes.Quite a few of them don't even have Skype enabled in the "always on" mode, open and login only when needed, unlike the others I mentioned.
siquick 8y ago
I always find the voice calls on WA much lower in volume than normal phone calls.
nicoburns 8y ago
Hardly anyone I know uses skype anymore, due to their call quality being significantly worse than the competition, and it eating up battery life. Facebook Messenger and whatsapp dominate the home market. Zoom.us, slack, hangouts and others are popular for business.

yazaddaruvala 8y ago

Please join my protest: If you see an ad on Facebook messenger or WhatsApp, don’t hide it, instead Report It. Report it as sexual content, report it as a scam, report it for whatever reason. Guidelines, try to use different reasons and try to make it a realistic reason. Facebook likes to gather our data for their ML, so let’s weaponize it. If we feed their platform garbage data, the ML will block the ads automatically, driving advertisers away or making report handling prohibitively expensive. We likely only need 0.01% of users to feed garbage data to trigger their ML decisions. They’ll eventually be forced to find a better alternative.

namdnay 8y ago
So you will make individual ads less effective, therefore lowering their value, therefore lowering their cost, therefore in order to secure revenue facebook will need to show you more ads?
- tinus_hn 8y ago
  No, he is just making reports less effective.
gota 8y ago
This is interesting, but I have a feeling I'd face less resistance with friends and family if I just tried to switch them over to Signal and be done with the whole problem
- 3eto 8y ago
  I've been helping family and closest friends to ditch WhatsApp for Signal, without much success, so decided to come up with a deadline, announced to everyone and will be deleting WhatsApp then. More friends have joined Signal the week I told them I was living by the deadline than in the previous years, where I was mostly ignored.
thecatspaw 8y ago
I click on all ads that my adblocker doesnt filter. Charges them the PPC price while still beeing worthless. If enough people do that it will stop beeing worth it to the advertiser

fragebogen 8y ago

What about us who actually paid 1€/$ for WhatsApp in the first place?

thijsvandien 8y ago
That was a price per year and it's been a while since you paid that.
- ahakki 8y ago
  Initially IIRC it was a 99 Cent App on the App Store without an annual fee, as there were no in-app purchases on iOS yet

onetimemanytime 8y ago

Whatsapp paid for itself, more or less, IMO. A lot of people don't need FB to stay in touch with extended family, just Whatsapp groups. They are still in FB ecosystem, of sort. FB needs to worry about the next quarter so they might ruin this and allow other apps to take over.

aneeqdhk 8y ago

As a business owner, I would love to use Whatsapp to communicate with my users. Not to spam or advertise, just communicate. The email open rates for our target audience (Indian college students) are abysmal, and SMS is just too unpredictable (but what we end up using because that's the best we've got). I reckon that there would be similar business owners in my predicament who would just like to genuinely notify users. Just like with email, users can have an opt-out option as well. I think some of this functionality is already there in their Business API (which is quite opaque fwiw). On the other hand, I can see how this can quickly devolve into spam if used incorrectly (which is inevitable).

sxp62000 8y ago

There's no stopping Facebook from shoving ads down our throats, but I hope they consider creating an option to remove the ads and provide extra features. For example, charge me something per year to add chat+media backups and group video calls. Also, before Whatsapp was acquired by Facebook, didn't they charge something like 99 cents per year to provide backups?

Pica_soO 8y ago

I wonder, could one use users as bridges- like in irc - and communicate with whats app groups from outside the walled garden?

tmalsburg2 8y ago

I like WhatsApp because it works really well and is easy to use. But on the day I see an ad and no option to get rid of ads by upgrading to a paid subscription, I will close my account.

atomicnumber1 8y ago
> I will close my account. And here lies the issue. Just you closing the account doesn't work. Your friends, your family, others you talk to on whatsapp shall also migrate. And that's the biggest issue.
- booleandilemma 8y ago
  I could never get my family on whatsapp in the first place, so I’m not too concerned.
- reitanqild 8y ago
  Successfully participated in moving my entire family and in law family and another group of 300+ members since Facebook bought them. None of those people use Whatsapp anymore as they prefer other solutions. I still have WhatsApp on one device and it is active but nobody contacts me there anymore. Feels good.
  - beagle3 8y ago
    What did you switch them to?
    - reitanqild 8y ago
      Telegram. I know half of HN hates Telegram and I like it less than when I started moving (and to my defense that was before WhatsApp improved their crypto from close to nothing to state-of-the-art.) It has served us well but I don't like the constant bragging combined with breaking a number of best practices and I'm looking for alternatives now and might start moving users to a system that stresses me less sometime during the next year. Alternatives right now are signal, matrix etc. (Did I regret moving away from WhatsApp after they fixed their crypto? Not at all: they still uploaded all chats and sneakily tried to use all WhatsApp data to feed their spam cannon.

flurdy 8y ago

When Netflix a few months ago prompted me with "Hey your number is a Whatsapp account, do mind if we send notifications via Whatsapp?" I was generally horrified. It felt a serious transgression of my privacy. Though in hindsight I realised it was an easy task, I can, after all, see if people are using Whatsapp if I have their number so there is little to stop companies doing the same lookup if they have my number. But it felt very uncomfortable. I don't want companies involved with my Whatsapp, it is exclusively for messaging my missus, and group chats with friends and family. Nothing else. I did read somewhere that one of the founders said the aim was to integrate apps/companies into Whatsapp, but for me "No!". I am dreading what the ad monetisation will be like. Since everyone I am friends with, related to or worked with use Whatsapp, their market penetration is ubiquitous here in my London ecosphere. Hope they don't ruin that.

yesforwhat 8y ago
> I did read somewhere that one of the founders said the aim was to integrate apps/companies into Whatsapp, but for me "No!". Everyone on WeChat claims it's amazing, I hated it.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
gsich 8y ago
>I did read somewhere that one of the founders said the aim was to integrate apps/companies into Whatsapp, but for me "No!". https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp
Already__Taken 8y ago
Whatsapp specifically though, it is just your phone number. You don't have that control over your phone number. Seems a little harsh to hold that one company to higher standards than literally anything else with your number. Direct marketing rules should still apply, in the UK you can't legally cold-call mobile numbers. I mean, I get it I agree with you and use whatsapp the same way. The one time I tried to use it to message for a takeaway they just ignored the order.

intopieces 8y ago

The article mentions ads on the private feed. I don’t use this feature, is it the leftmost tab — statuses? Since most of the world runs on Android, they are already accustomed to ad supported software. While not a welcome change for me, I doubt I will ever encounter them.

addedlovely 8y ago

Facebook killed their core platform by watering down the communication between my friends and family with business adverts and pages. I suspect they will kill WhatsApp the same way.

pier25 8y ago

I would gladly pay a "pro" subscription to get rid of ads. I've already tried to move friends and colleagues to Signal. It didn't work.

pgm8705 8y ago
Why do you think it didn't work? I've had the same experience, but with trying to move friends from telegram to signal. For me, I think it is because telegram is such a better experience from a UI standpoint. Signal is getting better, but it still feels clunkly.
- pier25 8y ago
  I think it's simple inertia. Maybe I should try again with Telegram. It looks quite nice.

Yizahi 8y ago

I highly doubt that Whatsapp was ever for user privacy. Have you tried installing it first time? It won't function without permission to intercept your SMS, it won't function without giving it complete contact list (as opposed to select few numbers) and so on. And of course that data is sold... er... how they say it now - "analyzed" or "exchanged".

user5994461 8y ago
The SMS interception permission can be disabled. It's only used the first time you register your phone number to whatspp, to send a SMS with a unique code to verify the number. Someone thought it was a good idea to intercept all SMS rather than have the user write the code.

Mc_Big_G 8y ago

Hopefully it means everyone stops using Whatsapp (Facebook)

thinkloop 8y ago

Signal is open-source and can be forked if they ever add ads, it's the final answer.

robjan 8y ago
It has a place (I use to to communicate with my friends in China, rather than using WeChat) but it's clunky and delivery is unreliable even to people in countries without censorship. Sometimes messages take hours to arrive at the other side.
sandov 8y ago
AFAIK, It requires Google play services, which is a deal breaker.
- redsparrow 8y ago
  For others, who may not have seen this reply to the same comment above, it's no longer required: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18434172 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18434172

tsunamifury 8y ago

Its interesting that many people here don't seem to know that in most of the world WhatsApp is already the go-to business messaging platform and a large portion of its user base subscribes to business services via WhatsApp. Organic promotion groups, local business contacts, and messaging lists have existed in India and other regions for a long time now. Its interesting to me that it seems that in the EU/US users generally so shocked by this.

calimac 8y ago

Can Anyone build a what's app replacement and does anyone want to JV to market and scale the app through the wave of pissed off users that is eminent upon the roll out of WhatsApp Monetization. We know one thing. Whats app monetization will be so nefarious and parasitic that there will be a mass exodus. Be there to catch the fall out and provide a responsible replacement that respects data sovereignty of individuals. The opportunity is inbound now.

garysahota93 8y ago

I really don't mind the ads - they are a business after all. This will just push me to stop using the platform. HOWEVER, I wish they had chosen a different monetization tactic. I would have much rather paid their $1 a year for the service. And given the amount of users they have, that could generate more than enough revenue for them to fund development. Additionally, monetizing businesses and their integration into the platform also seems like a great idea. The businesses that find value in the platform will more than happily pay for the service. Or, another idea: why not make me just pay for chat backup (like $1 a year for the app, $10 a year for chat storage, $20 a year for chat and pic storage, $30 a year for chat/pic/video storage) or something like that. That's something that's user AND privacy friendly. It just makes me really sad that these ads are what Facebook chose. It's an excuse to not innovate and find creative ways to increase their revenue. It seems like they're taking the easy way out.

dbbk 8y ago
They already had that setup. Facebook removed the $1 a year subscription when they bought it.

tmaly 8y ago

If I start seeing ads, I will move back to regular SMS. It is that simple.

anoncoward111 8y ago
I use whatsapp for tons of foreign numbers and sending images. SMS is torturously bad for this use-case! I would tolerate any amount of ads for this service, or alternatively pay maybe $10 a year.