Mark Zuckerberg’s sister firm — WhatsApp — is gearing up to start showing ads and the tech team is working in the direction on the ad placement tools in the Status section of the app’s iOS version. Reports say that this is being done to monetize the world’s most popular messaging app, just like the way Facebook did.
As per the reports, the due to the monetization issues between Facebook’s top management and WhatsApp founder, co-founders Brian Acton and Jan Koum, resigned in last one year. Shedding the light about Facebook’s plans to bring ads to WhatsApp, popular WhatsApp tracker WABetaInfo recently tweeted the news.
Acton during his interview with the Forbes had stated that prior to acquisition of WhatsApp, Facebook already had plans in place to bring Facebook-enabled ads in the messaging app. Acton had added that Zuckerberg’s firm wants to link user account to their WhatsApp numbers to enable greater data sharing with Facebook, reports BeeBom. This being done to target ads.
The news website further reports that the idea of showing ads was taken from another social media app — Instagram — and most likely will start from 2019. Adding more information, WhatsApp COO Matt Idema said, “We’ve seen it working well on Instagram and so we’re learning a lot from that.”
Looks like the monetization issues by Facebook had led a tiff between the founders of WhatsApp and Mark Zuckerberg. It is believed that both the founders of WhatsApp were upset with the way things were shaping up in their product by the Facebook — which acquired WhatsApp. Due to the issues, both resigned within a year.
Now with the latest news of WhatsApp to show ads from 2019 onwards, it would be interesting to see how Facebook saves the privacy of the users and helps intact the inscription of the data.
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