How can whatsapp be monetized?
In the wake of the recent decision from Whatsapp to kill their yearly subscription , one thing is for sure. They are more concerned about maintaining their user base rather than going for quick revenue out of the paying customers thereby losing a section of the user base who will just migrate to the next messaging platform that is available for free.
Now that's good news for consumers, but what's the catch? How can a company survive just by providing quality services for free? And that too the founders of whatsapp are vehemently against ads. Well I am not an expert in any field so I can't confirm what their plans are. But we have a similar model already.
Who is your current personal email provider? I don't think we need a poll there. For almost everyone it will be Gmail. The free email service by google. Of course they have tried to monetize it based on space and some minor ads here and there, but by far it was free and it will be free. Now still their email business is thriving. The reason? Google Apps. Their email and app suite for businesses. By providing their email service for free for a long time, Google made sure most of the current Internet users are more familiar with using Gmail and this is a high advantage for them when entering into the business email suite. It is just like how irrespective of all Operating Systems, Windows will stay relevant at least for the next 20 years if not beyond.
My guess is that just like how 'Google it' became a common term, 'Whatsapp me' is already becoming a common term. In the near future it will be one of the apps we cannot stay without. That will be the time 'Whatsapp for Business' could be easily introduced with a per user pricing and with already present desktop support it will not be long before companies decide to use them internally. In fact I know many companies where employees almost informally use Whatsapp for all day to day discussions too.
Whatsapp is currently testing to monetize B2C business model, which I think will be a stable and viable model. But if they crack the internal business communication specially with many unhappy users of Hangouts (I am one of them, gtalk was way-way more useful and simpler) I think they have a goldmine ready to be tapped.