Michal Marek The WhatsApp company that since 2014 it has been under Facebook, announced a fundamental change in its business model. Newly, this communication application will be completely free for everyone. Thus, users will not have to pay for WhatsApp even after the first year of use. Until now, the first year was considered a trial, and after its expiration, users already paid annually for the service, albeit only a symbolic amount of less than a dollar.
Paying an annual fee of 99 cents may not seem like a problem, but the fact is that in many of the poorer countries that are critical to the growth of the service, many people do not have a payment card to link to their account. For these users, the fee was therefore a significant obstacle and a reason to use competing services, which are almost always free.
So, of course, the question is how the application will be financed. Server Re / code representatives of WhatsApp they communicated, that in the future the service wants to focus on relevant connections between companies and their customers. But this is not pure advertising. Through WhatsApp, for example, airlines should be able to inform their customers about changes regarding flights, banks to inform customers about urgent matters related to their account, and so on.
WhatsApp has more than 900 million active users and it will be interesting to see how the latest changes will sign on this data. Eliminating the need to own a payment card can make the service accessible to people in developing markets. In the Western world, however, the new "advertising" business model may discourage users.
People are increasingly resentful of how corporations do business with them, and are increasingly looking to independent apps that promise privacy protection from both governments and corporations. This trend could be observed, for example, when WhatsApp was bought by Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook. Following this announcement, the popularity of the communication app skyrocketed Telegram, which is supported by Russian businessman Pavel Durov, the founder of the VKontakte social network, living in exile, and an opponent of Vladimir Putin.
Since then, Telegram has continued to grow. The application promises its users secure end-to-end encryption and is built on the principle of open source code. The main benefit of the application is supposed to be 100% independence from governments and advertising corporations. In addition, the application brings a number of other security features, including the option to have the message deleted after reading.
