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| WhatsApp Money Making Secret � How They Get Returns |
WhatsApp was released in 2009 by Brian Acton and Jan Koum. Initially, the main intention was to send short messages over the internet, but later as people gets addicted and still they are, the app then allow the user to send media including text, images or videos to their friends only from the contact list who already had install WhatsApp-app on their device too. Its code is open-source to download for iPhone, Android, windows phones and recently they started to access messages on desktops through browser.
Later on, few years back, Facebook took over the WhatsApp for $19 billion in Feb-2014, there are 940+ million subscribers who are still using WhatsApp in their smartphones and those are still rising day by day. WhatsApp announced that, it�s free of cost to use for first one year and after that it will be charged for $1/year as subscription fees. There are lots of questions about WhatsApp, how they are producing profits from; since there are no ads shown in the app. Why it is free? How they make money from it? There are lots of security questions too.
Mystery is so simple, here goes the answers...
How they get returns on Collected information:
WhatsApp is not involved in ad marketing & the fact that it does not support advertisements. With my solid guess, the returns are made for WhatsApp is mainly through database-management. The social networking sites like Facebook, twitter, Instagram collect personal information from the users and stored into their huge database. And yeah! you are right, the WhatsApp is also one of them. They also get the personal information in the database and stored it. Further it�s been used to sold out to big enterprises like E-mail marketing database companies. These companies are then able to show and pass the advertisements according to the user�s interest and activities. What they do is not directly sell the data to the advertisers, but rather let the advertisers target you based upon the information provided by you. Let's say, you've mentioned your location as 'Mumbai' and interests as 'movies' ; and if PVR wants to advertise their upcoming cinema hall to all the movie lovers in Mumbai then they are able to do so.In short; A lot of modern social apps (and non-social apps) do not generate any ad based revenue. They do however collect a lot of data that is valuable to them or other companies. Think about Microsoft buying Skype or Facebook buying Instagram. Having these services allow the purchasing company to have data that they can then use to build other targeted products. According to one report, WhatsApp exceeds 600 million monthly active users. With such extensive data available on WhatsApp database, the big companies are willing to pay attractive amounts for data-extraction.
WhatsApp & Your Private Information:
How they got and are using my personal information ? Its going to be misuse of my information? - If you are thinking like this, then stop - Because you already accepted this kind of rules and regulations of WhatsApp on installing app by clicking on 'Accept' button. Most of us no cares for reading terms and conditions of any of applications. But what actual "Terms and Conditions" you accepted while installing, check out official wordsWhatsApp :: Legal Info:
The Way WhatsApp Uses Information
If you submit Personally Identifiable Information to us through the WhatsApp Site, or WhatsApp Service, then we use your personal information to operate, maintain, and provide to you the features and functionality of the WhatsApp Site [ and so on] ...
[�] We may share non-personally-identifiable information (such as anonymous User usage data, referring / exit pages and URLs, platform types, asset views, number of clicks, etc.) with interested third-parties to assist them in understanding the usage patterns for certain content, services, advertisements, promotions, and/or functionality on the WhatsApp Site. We may collect and release Personally Identifiable Information and/or non-personally-identifiable information if required to do so by law.. [and so on] ...
Read full on: https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/
WhatsApp Money Making Secret via Subscription Fees :
Fees are only $1 at a time. In some countries, the app costs about $1 to download and as a promotion, the first year is free. After the one year WhatsApp takes $1 as a subscription fees. So think, there are 920+ million users and each one paid $1, this is a huge profit for WhatsApp. In India, this subscription fees are not appropriate but it started in other countries. Everyone get install constantly where lots of peoples paid subscription fees yearly. WhatsApp charges yearly subscription fees in most of the western countries, that causing one of the main source of income for them. Now WhatsApp is owned by Facebook and it does not show advertisements. Facebook bought them only to be in control of the world's favorite mobile messenger. By growing market saturation, the app becomes essential and the user database is still rising. As the number of users are growing, not only this does the subscription service of $1/year bring in considerable income but advertising and alternative forms of monetization generate huge profits.The Bottom Line
The success story of WhatsApp can be credited to its simplicity and ease of use. I do hope that they keep it that way. Also Net neutrality is one hurdle they will have to cross soon enough. If they will have to pay to the telecom providers just to keep the usage at reasonable speed and uninterrupted, they can't keep the free thing going on for too long...
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