Is WhatsApp the social media giant no one is talking about?
With Meta stock on the rise and the company moving beyond its year of efficiency with new product and platform launches, could it be about to turn its attention to Whatsapp in a quest to find its next great business platform?
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The growth of WhatsApp for Business?
Meta has owned WhatsApp, which it acquired for $19 billion back in 2014, for nearly a decade and despite introducing channels and business capabilities the platform has effectively been allowed to exist in much the same way as it did when it first launched back in 2009.?
That may all be about to change though as Mark Zuckerberg said at an internal meeting last year that business messaging "is probably going to be the next major pillar of our business". So the focus for WhatsApp could shift from how to service a growing global userbase to how to drive revenue from business customers. Some have suggested that this shift is well overdue as WhatsApp has over the last decade slowly grown to become the biggest messaging platform in the world, with a reported 2 billion active monthly users. The platform is the most used messaging service in India, has close to 99% penetration amongst messaging app users in Brazil, the most popular communication app in Germany and close to 1 in every 4 US adults uses WhatsApp.
A big part of the platform's success is its simplicity and despite recent developments with channels, following the 2018 launch of WhatsApp for Business the platform remains pretty much as it was when Facebook acquired the platform. But with the growth of WhatsApp for Business - according to internal reporting around 175 million people send messages to WhatsApp business accounts every day - Meta is now looking at how to make changes in order for it to maximise the opportunity to monetise business interaction.?
How this might look has not yet materialised but apps like Line in Japan could show Meta the way with its success around promotional messaging. Internally within Meta, there have been suggestions that ads might start appearing in both channels and statuses for business accounts as well as potentially seeing paid-for, exclusive channels in which brands might ask users to pay to subscribe.?
The size of the opportunity is clear, currently around 200 million brands use WhatsApp for Business monthly, a big number in and of itself but it only represents about? 5% of Meta business accounts so there’s huge headroom for Meta here. Not only that but the total number of businesses using WhatsApp has quadrupled in the last two years alone.??
Flows and the next phase of customer interaction?
Back in September WhatsApp launched perhaps their biggest development in WhatsApp for Business with Flows. Effectively Flows are a set of template experiences that allow brands to create custom experiences such as choosing a train seat, ordering a meal, or booking an appointment, all without leaving WhatsApp.?
Not only that but WhatsApp made it easier to complete a purchase directly within a chat on WhatsApp. Starting in India but rolling out globally the plan is to create true one-touch chat commerce meaning you never need to leave the chat or WhatsApp to complete a purchase.
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The friction that currently exists has potentially held back WhatsApp from becoming more ubiquitous with brands but with the ability to go from chat to purchase all within the app experience, WhatsApp could become the default customer engagement tool for brands across the globe.?
Meta is also rolling out Meta Verification for Businesses on WhatsApp giving consumers the piece of mind that they are talking to the right business account whilst the brand receives enhanced account support and impersonation protection as well as key features such as the ability to create a discoverable custom WhatsApp page and multi-device support so any employee within the business can respond to customers directly.?
AI-powered customer experience?
What could propel WhatsApp for Business into a massive global business is the recent launch of Meta AI; a series of 28 conversational AI’s that can assist you to find information and answer queries. These AI assistants are available in WhatsApp (available in beta in the US only).?
But more interesting once brands are able to easily develop their own AI customer service via WhatsApp could be a complete game-changer. Having the ability to reach more than 2 billion customers globally and then engage with them throughout the purchase cycle could change how we engage with brands.?
Meta had suggested their AI studio, a platform that allows for the creation of our AIs by coders and non-coders was coming, initially for Messenger and then for WhatsApp.? But with the news last week that ChatGPT marker Open AI is going to allow people to build their own customised ChatGPT apps or “GPTs” as they refer to them we may see Meta move more quickly into this space.
Meta’s vision is that Businesses will also be able to create AIs that reflect their brand’s values and improve customer service experiences but the plan was for this to roll out at scale next year. The timelines for this might well be brought forward as the pace of innovation around AI is moving so rapidly.?
If Meta can get more businesses using WhatsApp as its primary mode of communication with customers then it is possibly better placed than any other platform to take advantage of the business opportunities around conversational AI. No platform in the world has the scale and ad capabilities combined with a global messenger userbase that WhatsApp and Meta can boast.
So if, as many people are predicting, generative AI transforms how we purchase and interact with brands then WhatsApp and ultimately Meta are going to win out.?
Communications and Marketing Manager
1 年It's really interesting that you are talking about this - Hootsuite's trends webinar earlier this week showed that more organisations find WhatsApp as one of the apps that is delivering positive ROI for their business!