One thing we have seen in the technology industry is that Facebook has made some wise business decisions in the past. While many might not like the platform and Facebook, on the whole, we have to acknowledge their brains when it comes to business. This is because if you think about it, they have the three most popular platforms under their umbrella. These are Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook all owned by a single company. While many might say that this is too much control over the internet, it is what it is right now.
Talking about Facebook, the company acquired WhatsApp in 2014 for a record amount and said that they will not tinker with the product much. But they are acquiring it to make it even popular. At that time, WhatsApp had around 500 million active users which meant that it was quite popular then.
But a new report released by Facebook reveals that their plan has worked. Because WhatsApp now has 2 billion active users as per the latest report. This means that only Facebook with 2.5 billion active users comes on top of WhatsApp in terms of active users.
However, this also shows how much Facebook is losing out in terms of revenue. As we all know, WhatsApp was founded on the no-ads ideology and it does not have premium services too. So there is no way that Facebook can generate revenue from the platform at the moment.
Having said that, we are also seeing reports of Facebook trying to integrate revenue options inside WhatsApp. Recently, a report also emerged where Facebook dispersed the team made to integrate ads inside WhatsApp Status feature. Now, we know that Facebook might have realized the negative effect ads could have caused inside WhatsApp so they backed out of it. But they will still be looking for monetizing the platform as it has become too big not to generate revenue from.