10 years since Facebook bought WhatsApp: how has instant messaging changed in a decade?

Exactly ten years ago, Facebook bought WhatsApp. for a whopping $19 billion. “It was completely unexpected and shows two things. On the one hand, the financial strength of Mark Zuckerberg’s company. On the other hand, their interest is to fully enter the mobile telephony market,” we noted on this occasion in Hypertext. The American conglomerate (now Meta) then demonstrated its power. It’s worth remembering that two years earlier it had acquired Instagram, expanding its shadow in the social media business.

The purchase of the app was confirmed in October that year, and since then WhatsApp has seen numerous changes. The application has secured leadership in the category: its competitors, including Telegram, follow at a great distance. Along the way, it abandoned much of its original essence, freeing itself from its creators and adding countless new features.

Yes, indeed: WhatsApp remains WhatsApp. Even in the hands of a tech giant and the many mutations it has undergone over these 10 years, the program continues to focus on instant messaging. In this sense, he did not undertake extravagant pivots of the kind that Twitter, for example, has suffered from since it came into the hands of Elon Musk. The tool also did not merge with Facebook Messenger, contrary to what many predicted on February 19, 2014, when the announcement of the operation shocked the world. Additionally, the app remains free and ad-free. At least for now.

Facebook bought WhatsApp 10 years ago: why the giant became interested application chat?

The acquisition was successful. Now it’s easy to say, knowing that the application has over 2 billion active users per month, and this is obviously the paradigm of mobile messaging. According to Statista, WhatsApp easily outperforms its competitors. WeChat, very popular in China, has 1.3 billion users, and FB Messenger has almost 930 million users. Telegram ranks fourth with 800 million.

Valuation wasn’t so simple 10 years ago when Facebook bought WhatsApp. As the publication noted then ForbesCalifornian company paid for messaging app figure exceeds Iceland’s gross domestic product. What were Zuckerberg’s reasons for making such a payment? What charms did you see in this? softwarethen thriving, although far from a superpower in the mobile business?

The key lies in the aforementioned area: the mobile business. “WhatsApp will allow us to reach more people,” the CEO of the company we now know as Meta said in 2014. A year earlier, Facebook unsuccessfully tried to buy Snapchat, which at the time was very popular among young audiences. In any case, the conglomerate’s intention was to actively promote smartphones. Trying which is out of the area Hardwarestumbled when in 2013 it released its own phone together with the manufacturer HTC.

This setback aside, the move was timely. Facebook bought WhatsApp and Instagram, cementing its role as the lord and overlord of social media. If you add up the number of users of the three main services, the calculator shows an impressive figure: more than 7.4 billion.. With obvious caveats – such as the fact that many people use all three platforms – this figure is almost equal to the number of people in the world.

Facebook, WhatsApp and Mark Zuckerberg’s Trojan horse

Odyssey, a classic text by the Greek poet Homer, explains as follows the gadget known as the Trojan Horse, which Meta’s CEO imitated in his own way when Facebook bought WhatsApp. “Ulysses planned to build a wooden horse and leave it on the beach as an offering. But the horse was empty and full of Greek soldiers, who came out of hiding at night, opened the gates of the city and began its destruction.

Facebook didn’t destroy WhatsApp, although it revolutionized it from within with its acquisition.. The duo behind the messaging app, Brian Acton and Jan Koum, are no longer part of the company or project. The first became one of Zuckerberg’s main detractors after his departure. “They wanted to do things I didn’t want to do,” he once said. His tweet, in which he called for the elimination of Facebook, also became famous. Kuom, for his part, joined the firm’s board of directors after the 2014 operation, but years later also slammed the door. Chronicles at the time mentioned tensions with Zuckerberg that could not be overcome. hide.

This was not the only Trojan horse “Tsuka”, which also made its way into Instagram with its millions, sheltered first of all the creators of this application, and eventually pushed them out. Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger also left, upset by Facebook’s decisions, accepting their millions.

“What happens when you create something amazing and then sell it to someone with a completely different agenda?” Acton said in a 2019 magazine interview. Forbes. “I sold the privacy of my users for more profit. “I made a choice (…) and I face it every day,” he added. What is the entrepreneur talking about? In addition to Facebook’s scandals over data management, WhatsApp’s founders are unhappy with plans to monetize the app. However, despite numerous threats, WhatsApp users do not pay to use it and do not see ads on the screen..

Facebook bought WhatsApp ten years ago and left its mark on it

The messaging app came onto the scene in 2009. Since its inception, the app’s creators have expressed their visceral hatred of ad-based business models. At the time, WhatsApp was only supported with a $1 subscription in select markets. It is therefore easy to understand Acton’s discomfort with Facebook is trying to include advertising in its tool.

However, even though Facebook bought WhatsApp ten years ago, you don’t pay to use the regular app, and there are no ads popping up between chats. True, over these ten years there have been many rumors and even official plans about this. But they were never implemented. Will there ever come a time when apps will be divided into paid and free ones?

The truth is that WhatsApp has added a lot of delights in these 10 years. One of the most pressing, especially for a company that has come under attack for its privacy policies, is end-to-end encryption, which was enabled in 2016. The app also adds calls and video calls; and was released to more platforms with the release of PC versions. It also reached more environments when the rollout of WhatsApp Business, aimed at businesses, began in 2017.

Among the most notable recent changes are the States – a copy of Instagram Stories; the ability to use one account from multiple devices; and alternative communication spaces, channels and communities. Meta itself recently confirmed that it will soon be possible to send messages to others Programs in the sector, including Telegram. This is a real bomb.

What will happen to advertising on WhatsApp?

A lot of water flowed under the bridge. Facebook has threatened many times to include advertising in its messaging app., a step that may be confirmed earlier or later. Recently, WhatsApp CEO Will Cathcart admitted that they have not ruled out this plan. In dialogue with the publication TechCrunch, noted that the change will be applied in the States section. That is, there will be no advertisements in the chats.

The executive said that advertising will also appear on channels – one-way communication platforms focused on specific topics and interests. In this regard, Cathcart noted that users will also be able to monetize in these spaces with the ability to create subscriptions. Meta did not provide an implementation date for this change, which is sure to be one of the most relevant since Facebook bought WhatsApp on this day 10 years ago.

As we’ve already noted, this move wouldn’t be all that surprising in the current mobile app and social media business. At this point, it goes without saying that numerous platforms – Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook and Netflix to name a few; each in its own way – now offering paid versions without ads and with exclusive benefits. On the other hand, those who remain in the free version also “pay”: not with money, but by watching advertisements.