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WhatsApp users will likely notice something different with the app in the near future. India’s the Economic Times has reported that WhatsApp vice president Chris Daniels has confirmed on Wednesday that they are planning to place advertisements on the messaging app’s Status feature. Daniels did not mention a timeline for the rollout, but reports say it may start in the summer of 2019.
"We are going to be putting ads in 'Status'. That is going to be primary monetization mode for the company as well as an opportunity for businesses to reach people on WhatsApp," Daniels said at an event in New Delhi.
Tech enthusiasts knew this was going to happen eventually. WhatsApp was founded by former Yahoo! employees Brian Acton and Jan Kuom in 2009 as an ad-free messaging app, but observers have been saying that it was only a matter of time before it was monetized after Facebook acquired the company for approximately $19 billion in 2014.
Acton left the company in September 2017 and he has criticized Facebook for the way they do business. “Targeted advertising is what makes me unhappy,” Acton said in an interview with Forbes’ Parmy Olson in September. “It was like, okay, well, you want to do these things I don’t want to do. It’s better if I get out of your way. And I did,” he added.
Well, Acton can’t blame Facebook for coming up with a plan to monetize WhatsApp. After all, the app does have 1.5 billion users worldwide. Just imagine the possibilities. The Status feature has been quite popular since it launched last year and it is used by a lot of WhatsApp users. The feature allows users to add a text, photos, and videos to their profile.
Meanwhile, Kuom also has left WhatsApp earlier this year. It sounded like an amicable breakup, but reports say he didn’t agree with Facebook's approach to user data privacy and encryption on WhatsApp.
