WhatsApp called off its plan to put adverts on its platform. (Image via Liputan6.com)

WhatsApp pulls back advertisement idea

Alfonsus Adi Putra
Business & Industry
Internet & IT
Jan 17, 2020
3232
Facebook, as the owner company of the cross-messaging platform WhatsApp, canceled the plan to monetize the platform by putting advertisements. Recently, Facebook dismissed the advertisement development team at WhatsApp, even the work had been deleted from WhatsApp source code.

Until now, WhatsApp is ad-free. However, Facebook still aims to put an advertisement in WhatsApp “Story”. Regarding the plan, WhatsApp’s spokesperson declined to comment.

In 2014, Facebook bought WhatsApp with a fantastic price of US$22 bil! As the world is shifting from test messaging to WhatsApp, it is evident that Facebook also enjoyed the profit. The action, however, saw the resignation of the founder, Jan Koum, and its co-founder, Brian Acton, both in 2018. In 2016, Koum and Acton restricted advertisements on WhatsApp.

Currently, WhatsApp stores more than 1.5 billion users. The monetization plan was already proposed in 2018. In 2019, CEO of WhatsApp, Chris Daniels, said that the advert will be the “gold mine” for WhatsApp.

The cancellation of the advert plan caused Facebook to shift its focus to the “Business” feature on WhatsApp that enables the business account to communicate with its customers. Koum and Acton worried that it would only weaken the end-to-end encryption security on the platform.

The CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, in 2019, said that the encryption security for instant messaging is his priority. Therefore, the end-to-end encryption will not be available only on WhatsApp but also on Facebook and Instagram.

Source: https://bit.ly/30v67B6

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