Facebook most likely also bought WhatsApp because of the available metadata. Metadata refers to who you send what kind of messages to, when. So Facebook does not get to read anything about the exact content of your WhatsApp messages. Still, the metadata is worth a lot. Because the more data Facebook receives from its own platform and WhatsApp (and Instagram), the better Facebook is able to link this data to advertisers and show you better ads on Facebook. More relevant ads are clicked on better, and that yields much more in Facebook’s wallet.
Companies are also willing to pay a lot more to have their messages appear in the newsfeed of a relevant audience than they would pay for random banners. I also suspect that buying WhatsApp is valuable to Facebook because they probably have a verification of your phone number via the app. This way they know they are dealing with a real person and also have rich metadata about this person.
Scenario Competitors follow
If the above revenue models are not sufficient, there are other ways for WhatsApp to earn money. By looking at the uae phone number librarycompetitors, the outlines of four other possible future revenue models become visible.
Stickers
Stickers are a huge moneymaker for chat apps in the East. Line – big in Japan – sells sticker packs for about $1. That earns the app $10 million a month. In addition, the app offers sticker packs created by users themselves. These earned Line another $12 million in the first three months after its introduction. Users themselves get 50 percent of the sticker revenue. Line even has prepaid cards on the shelves in Japan, so that young users are more likely to open their wallets.
Publishing games
A do with publishing games for the time being, but it has proven to be a big cash cow for other chat apps. Line (Japan), KakaoTalk (Korea) and WeChat (China) have successful freemium games. Think of Candy Crush-like games in which users pay to have faster access to energy to marketing list play the next levels, or strategy games in which you can buy card packs for stronger characters. It is difficult to determine how successful the games of the various chat apps are at the moment. what is email marketing? What is known is that Line already generated 338 million dollars in revenue in the last quarter of 2013.