There are currently around 1 billion people using “WhatsApp” to communicate with friends and family. However, a recent announcement from the popular messaging service indicates that it may soon allow businesses to create their own direct chatting solutions with teams and groups. The organisation is apparently already in the process of testing the latest features with companies that have been affiliated with the start-up incubator known as “Y Combinator”.
As per information gathered from “Reuters“, if the latest app development is successful, businesses should be able to provide WhatsApp with the revenue stream it so desperately needs right now. After all, since it was purchased by Facebook during 2014, WhatsApp has let go of its only dependable source of income, which was the annual $1 subscription fee that had been intended for all users. Additionally, no alternative options have been introduced.
A Long-Term Plan for WhatsApp
Shortly after the fee for the service was retired, WhatsApp expressed some interest in leveraging its current user base to attract new corporate clients to their service. We can see the direction that this process would take by looking at Facebook Messenger, which seems to offer a good example of the direction that WhatsApp is heading in.
The competing app for communications has extensively been promoted as a solution for connecting businesses with people for purposes that expand beyond advertising, drawing attention to customer service as a primary goal. WhatsApp hopes that it can follow suit in the same regard, making the feature as attractive to users as possible. The idea is that retailers may be able to use the app to show information about shipment tracking, or banks could use it to tell customers about potential fraudulent charges.
Of course, WhatsApp doesn’t expect to achieve messaging superiority overnight. In fact, the company is wary of the new business-focused tools that they may introduce into their app being used as a service for spam. As per the recent report, the company is now distributing services to its users, asking whether they have spoken with businesses yet, and whether or not they feel that the service they have experienced on WhatsApp has suffered as a result.
Businesses Seem Optimistic
Interestingly, businesses appear to be far more optimistic regarding the birth of this new long-term solution. The founder of Cowlar Inc (one of the start-ups involved in the initial testing phase), Umer Ilyas suggested that communication through WhatsApp could be a hugely beneficial option for his company. Currently, Cowlar makes “smart” collars for cows that monitor the behaviour of livestock and offer actionable data to farmers.
According to Ilyas, the use of WhatsApp represents a huge opportunity, because in all of the largest dairy markets, various farmers have access to the app. Indeed, Brazil and India are two of the territories in which WhatsApp seems to be the particularly successful, so it’s easy to see why the company is currently angling towards a plan that might be more effective in the regions where it already dominates the market share with communication apps.
