WhatsApp started off in 2009, was developed by a self-taught programmer- Jan Koum and his colleague Brian Acton. The company was bought by Facebook in 2014 and has since become the most popular messaging application across the Globe.
While the company announced that it hosts 1 billion calls every day, that’s not all they’re looking at. Statements from the company’s officials steer towards the probable release of a video calling feature as well as the possibility of generating revenue for the service.
Koum agreed to the acquisition by Facebook because it would allow him to concentrate on developing new services instead of worrying about how to raise money to run an ad-free service. He has been against Facebook’s ad-based revenue models as well as those of its allied businesses like Instagram.
Koum states that WhatsApp has found it difficult to penetrate its home-market in the USA because of the availability of many pre-existing messaging services that the customers are currently loyal to. In line-with keeping WhatsApp free, the company also announced that it would be ditching its yearly fee of $1. So how exactly does the company plan on introducing a new feature as well as keeping its services free?
Why you won’t hear about new features
WhatsApp says it would never talk about its future launches after they missed their only launch-date post an announcement for the voice-calling services. Due to a high inclination and demand on the part of their users, WhatsApp began to develop a voice calling feature in 2013 and unveiled the idea during the MWC 2014 meet. Due to quality issues, the company introduced the feature a year later with full functionality in 2015.
When asked about ‘video-calling,’ the company says ‘it won’t announce its future features but will provide what its users ask for.’ The introduction of video-calling will grab a huge customer-share out of industry leaders like Microsoft’s Skype.
There will still be no advertisements
Yes, the company does plan to raise money through its services, but regular customers won’t pay anything. Kuom says that WhatsApp will introduce a feature that will be very similar to Facebook’s chat-bots. The service will allow WhatsApp users to interact with businesses in the very same manner they get in touch with their friends and colleagues currently.
With a growing user-base and the feature to stay constantly connected to one address (either your mobile number or email), WhatsApp may grow to become the World’s single largest connected platform for both regular users as well as businesses and consumers; where the possibilities of service integration can be endless.
