There is no business reason why Facebook should not introduce adverts. Investors, and advertisers themselves, will be crying for ads on any platform with 1 billion users. Interestingly, Mark Zuckerberg says he does not think advertising is the right way to monetise messaging because of the private nature of chatting, but this is not about right or wrong. Facebook however, only introduced ads 18 months later after Instagram had reached 150 million users, a pattern which they are most likely to follow with the WhatsApp purchase.
Going to the back to the Instagram template, Facebook acquired it when it had just 27 million users and expecting a surge in users after it became available for Android devices. However, the pace at which Facebook will introduce ads will be determined by how fast WhatsApp reaches the 1 billion user milestone.įacebook said WhatsApp is well on course to reach 1 billion users which suggests a target is at play here. WhatsApp will likely retain its brand and work independently just as Facebook says. So if the Instagram is a template to the WhatsApp acquisition, then we shouldn’t expect any drastic changes to WhatsApp as yet. We’ll focus on delivering a small number of beautiful, high-quality photos and videos from a handful of brands that are already great members of the Instagram community. Seeing photos and videos from brands you don’t follow will be new, so we’ll start slow. In the next couple months, you may begin seeing an occasional ad in your Instagram feed if you’re in the United States. We have big ideas for the future, and part of making them happen is building Instagram into a sustainable business. Let look at the Instagram purchase and subsequent changes that came to it.Īnnouncing the $1 billion acquisition of Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook was “committed to building and growing Instagram independently” and “ our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people”. Fast forward 18 months, Instagram announced ads by saying The Whatsapp acquisition also has some similarities to Facebook’s purchase of Instagram in 2012 that Facebook says it used as a “template” for this new acquisition. Loosely read, that statement had nothing in it but speculatively, phrases “ help people share any type of content with any group of people they want” may translate to advertisers sharing advertising content to their desired target market, which of course, WhatsApp will help Facebook achieve, or do better. WhatsApp will help us do this by continuing to develop a service that people around the world love to use every day. We do this by building services that help people share any type of content with any group of people they want. Our mission is to make the world more open and connected. However, earlier remarks in his statement are bound to raise some eyebrows. The product roadmap will remain unchanged and the team is going to stay in Mountain View”. It’s easy to speculate that the WhatsApp statement reassuring users that nothing will change about the app is just a way to ease out the transition and avoid a mass exodus from ad resistant users.įacebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, also eased fears by saying “WhatsApp will continue to operate independently within Facebook. Both parties in the deal moved quickly to squash any uncertainty on whether WhatsApp will now ditch its famous “ no ads, no games and no gimmicks” policy to enable the new master to recoup it’s $19 billion.
Facebook’s $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp has already got people worked on what will become of the popular messaging app, which arguably has more users than Facebook in Zimbabwe. Today we woke up to the biggest news in Tech so far this year.