WhatsApp, in the hands of its original developers charged anominal annual fee. Later, Facebook bought it and made it free.
But, there are no free lunches in this world.
WhatsApp later split the apps into two – one for personaland another for business. The business version of WhatsApp is the one that isbeing maneuvered towards monetization.
In next step towards monetizing WhatsApp after introducingshopping and pricing tiers to the mobile-messaging platform, Facebook has nowannounced a new way for businesses to store and manage their WhatsApp chatswith customers using Facebooks secure hosting infrastructure, which will rollout early next year.
This essentially means that Facebook hosting service willoffer the same end-to-end encryption as WhatsApp currently provides to chats.
When Facebook acts as a hosting provider to a business, itwill use the messages it processes on behalf of and at the instruction of thebusiness.
"While Facebook will not automatically use messages toinform the ads that a user sees, as is always the case, businesses will be ableto use chats they receive for their own marketing purposes, which may includeadvertising on Facebook," explained Nate Cardozo, Privacy Policy Managerat Facebook.
The move, said Facebook, will make it easier to onboard toWhatsApp Business API, allow the businesses to respond to WhatsApp messagesfaster, keep their inventory up to date and sell products through chats.
"We're committed to providing people with a secure,transparent and privacy-protective way to communicate with businesses", itsaid in a statement late on Thursday.
Earlier, Facebook said it will finally start chargingcompanies using WhatsApp for Business, as it expanded ways for its users tocheck out available products and make purchases right from a chat.
Some 50 million businesses and 175 million people message aWhatsApp Business account every day and this move will help WhatsApp continuebuilding a business of its own while it provides and expands free end-to-endencrypted text, video and voice calling for more than 2 billion people.
According to the social network, every message sent onWhatsApp -- be it text, call, voice note or video -- uses the same industryleading Signal protocol that protects messages from before they're sent untilthey're delivered to the intended recipient.
But messaging a business is different than messaging a lovedone.
Chats with businesses that use WhatsApp Messenger, WhatsAppBusiness app or that self-host the WhatsApp Business API to manage and storecustomer messages themselves are end-to-end encrypted.
"If a business chooses to use a third-party vendor tooperate the WhatsApp Business API on their behalf, we do not consider that tobe end-to-end encrypted since the business you are messaging has chosen to givea third-party vendor access to those messages," Cardozo said.
This will also be the case if that third-party vendor isFacebook.
While Facebook will not automatically use messages to informthe ads that a user sees, as is always the case, "businesses will be ableto use chats they receive for their own marketing purposes, which may includeadvertising on Facebook".
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has time and again reiteratedthat all his apps -- WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram -- will soon become aunified experience for billions of users.
The pandemic COVID-19 has hastened the process of digitizationof business processes and this emergence of WhatsApp Business as a businesscommunications and shopping cart is a sign of the times to come.