Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta (parent company of Facebook, Instagram, Oculus, and WhatsApp), has announced to employees during a meeting his intention to begin monetizing the company’s messaging apps, which would include both Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.
After the lukewarm reception of the Metaverse, Zuckerberg sees it as more plausible to generate revenue from these platforms than from virtual reality, a sector to which Meta is dedicating 20% of its resources through its Reality Labs division, without the investment yet yielding a proportional return.
WhatsApp, which was already a paid app in its early days, could soon offer a premium version of the application with a subscription and exclusive features.
In this way, instant messaging stands out, in Zuckerberg’s own words, as “the next big business pillar.” In the case of WhatsApp, the app has more than 2 billion users worldwide and, in fact, was initially a paid app, even if it was just a dollar a year. Currently, it is free except for the premium version of WhatsApp Business, the business version of the instant messaging app.
Zuckerberg’s goal would likely be to offer a paid premium version of the app with exclusive features, as is already the case with other apps that have subscription versions like Twitter Blue and Telegram Premium.
Another option for generating revenue is undoubtedly the inclusion of advertising in messaging tools, but in the current era of SaaS (Software as a Service), platforms prefer subscription models where a premium version gives access to exclusive features. One of the main advantages of this model is its recurrence, since even though the amounts are not very high, they are recurring monthly revenues.
