Everyone’s favorite instant messaging app, WhatsApp has been quite in news this week. This was primarily due to a big change which they did and an announcement which might excite atleast for the users in India.
First the Blue tick. BlackBerry Messenger initiated with the concept of marking messages as read when the receiver actually reads it. This actually became one of the key differences when we used to compare WhatsApp with BBM until the time WhatsApp introduced. WhatsApp added more value to their service by adding this feature especially now been acquired by Facebook. This service has been introduced at the backend and has nothing to do with the app. This definitely requires more resources which explains why this was not made available before the acquisition. With the huge user base of 70 million consumers the app does not have any ads and survives on a simple user subscription business model.
Neeraj Arora, Vice President for business development, WhatsApp speaking at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad on Tuesday stated that WhatsApp will continue to be available as a free service for the time being. He also added that monetization is on its way but there is still time to introduce it here. WhatsApp will never implement monetization by opting for advertisements and it shall be only done via user subscription. WhatsApp could tie-up with carriers and collect subscription charges offline because the debit and credit cards subscription is still not prominent in India.
While the blue tick might not be serving good to all, but the free WhatsApp for India definitely excites the Indian users. Let’s see what new this Facebook-ified WhatsApp brings up in future.
