Why Facebook made WhatsApp free


In February 2014, when Facebook acquired WhatsApp for a whopping $19 billion, the messaging platform was earning only around $15 million in annual revenue but had a user base of around 450 mn, with a million getting added each month. The revenue was primarily from the annual subscription fee, of around $1, the company was charging users in selected countries after rendering one year of free service.

Now, with WhatsApp having decided to make it free for users, it indicates that garnering revenue by charging the users was never the prime focus of its monetisation strategy. With the company now part of social networking site Facebook, the most valuable asset on the WhatsApp platform is the free user-generated data, mostly generated real-time, by close to a billion users that it has worldwide, without paying for it. Read Articles 

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