With more than 1.2 billion monthly active users globally, Facebook Inc.-owned messaging application WhatsApp undoubtedly knows how to keep consumers engaged on its network. Will WhatsApp, however, be able to gain similar traction when it eventually launches its payment and WhatsApp for Business apps?
Sanchit Vir Gogia, Chief Analyst and CEO of Greyhound Research, concurs with this view. “WhatsApp for Business is often confused with Facebook at Work but the audience, intent and expected outcomes from both are quite different,” he said, adding, “While the latter is targeted at medium and large organisations, the former is meant to address micro and small businesses—traders and professionals who aggressively use the platform to communicate with customers and prospects.”
“With data and identity theft and spamming increasingly becoming an issue, customers are increasingly getting wary of sharing personal information and more importantly being targeted with ads of platforms such as WhatsApp,” Gogia noted. He recommends that to make WhatsApp for Business a success “it needs to walk the fine balance between ad revenues and subscription fee. More importantly, it needs to learn from the customers’ current pains with SMS and email spam and ensure it steers clear of making the same mistakes”.
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Analyst:
Sanchit Vir Gogia: Sanchit is the Chief Futurist, Founder & CEO of Greyhound Knowledge Group, a Global Strategy & Transformation Research, Advisory & Consulting Group. He also serves as Chief Analyst & CEO of Greyhound Research, a Global, Award-Winning, Independent Technology & Innovation Research, Advisory & Consulting firm. To read more about him, click here.
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