WhatsApp Is Rapidly Approaching Monetization
WhatsApp monetization, as good as it sounds, is it really going to happen. If “Yes” then how soon? Here’s what CEO Mark had to say.
To ease employees’ fears about Meta’s finances following its first major layoffs, CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised them that WhatsApp and Messenger will fuel the company’s next wave of sales growth.
A week after Meta announced it would dismiss 11,000 employees, Zuckerberg received pointed questions at a company-wide meeting.
He classified the messaging apps as “quite early in monetizing” in comparison to advertising heavyweights like Facebook and Instagram.
“We speak a lot about long-term potential like the metaverse, but the fact is that business messaging will most likely be the next big pillar of our company as we try to monetize WhatsApp and Messenger more,” he continues.
Some consumers now communicate and interact with retailers using chat apps enabled by Meta, including a new feature revealed in Brazil.
Zuckerberg emphasized the company’s investment in Reality Labs, the entity in charge of its metaverse efforts.
According to him, the most important expenditure for Meta was people, followed by capex, the great bulk of which went to infrastructure to support its portfolio of social networking apps. Reality Labs received about 20% of Meta’s funding.
Reality Labs was spending more than half of its money on augmented reality (AR), with smart glasses products expected to arrive “over the next several years” and some “really outstanding” AR glasses later in the decade, according to Zuckerberg.
The Reality Labs spent around 40% of its resources on virtual reality, while the remaining 10% was spent on futuristic social platforms such as Horizon, a virtual world.
The Reality Labs’ Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth stated that AR glasses must be more helpful than mobile phones in order to appeal to potential users and achieve a higher standard for attractiveness.
Bosworth stated that he was hesitant to explore “industrial applications” for the devices, seeing them as “niche,” and that he preferred to focus on designing for a large audience.
