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The most intriguing thing about WhatsApp could be the way in which it is creating billionaires. The humble messaging app has already turned two obscure engineers from Silicon Valley into billionaires, and it is greatly bolstering the fortune of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

The ability of Facebook and WhatsApp to make people rich is now so pronounced that a number of financial journalists are writing about what Forbes writer Jennifer Wang has labeled “The Facebook Effect.” In a recent article, Wang noted that eight of the richest American entrepreneurs under the age of 40 have close connections to Facebook.

Meet the WhatsApp Billionaires

At least two of them, Jan Koum and Brian Acton, made their money directly from WhatsApp. The two are the engineers who created the app in 2009, built it into a global communications platform, and sold it to Facebook for $22 billion in stock and cash in February 2014.

Jan Koum, who is now worth $8.7 billion, is definitely living the American dream. He grew up in the Ukraine in a home with no electricity or running water and suffered persecution under the Soviet Union. After coming to the U.S. at age 16, Koum swept floors at a grocery store, and his family went on food stamps in order to eat. Koum is a college dropout who worked at Yahoo for nine years.

The man who once swept floors now serves on Facebook’s board of directors. He is also a philanthropist who donated $555 million in Facebook shares to the Silicon Valley Foundation in October 2014. Koum is also one of America’s most eligible bachelors, according to Forbes.

Koum, who is of Jewish heritage, is an outspoken supporter of Israel and a critic of antisemitism. He made a social media stir in November 2015 when he sent this message to the owner of an Apple laptop covered with “Boycott Israeli Goods Stickers” and a note attacking Apple for using Israeli technology.

“Hi there! Just thought you should know the flash-storage inside this computer was designed and built by Anobit, an Israeli technology company! If you don’t want it any more, please pass it to the desk behind you,” Koum wrote.

Facebook Paid $3.3 Billion to the Man It Would Not Hire

Koum’s partner in establishing WhatsApp was Brian Acton, a computer engineer who, ironically enough, was turned down when he applied for a job at Facebook in 2009. Just five years later, the same company paid Acton $3 billion in stock and cash for his share of WhatsApp.

Brian Acton was the first investor and cofounder of WhatsApp. He also tapped a surprising source of business expertise when they set up the company. Acton’s mother, who also ran a freight-shipping company, reportedly did the payroll and helped set up the company. Like Koum, Acton is now part of the legendary Forbes 400—the 400 richest people in the United States; he’s worth $4.4 billion.

Unlike Koum, Acton, who lives in Palo Alto, California, is married and has one child. He is also well known for his hatred of advertising and commercialism.

A Few More Social Media Billionaires

Like railroads in the 19^th century, computers in the 1980s, and the Internet in the 1990s, social media is making billionaires. The epicenter of the gold rush is Facebook, which has been among the most successful companies in history.

Founder Mark Zuckerberg is now worth around $47.1 billion. Most of that money comes from Facebook’s stock, which increased in value by 40% over the past year. Interestingly enough, Forbes attributed that increase to WhatsApp and Jan Koum, noting that it occurred after Facebook took a gamble and bought WhatsApp.

Two other beneficiaries of WhatsApp are Facebook cofounders David Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. The two are former Harvard College classmates of Zuckerberg who helped him form a website called the Facebook. The site was originally based in Moskovitz and Zuckerberg’s dorm room at Harvard.

Moskovitz is now worth $9.7 billion because of Facebook, and Chris Hughes netted $400 million. Since leaving Facebook, Hughes worked on President Obama’s successful election campaign in 2008 and bought the magazine The New Republic.

Also raking in some cash is Napster creator Sean Parker, who served as Facebook’s first president. Even though Parker has not worked at the social network for 10 years, he still raked in $2.5 billion in stock profits.

Two other billionaires that Zuckerberg helped make were Evan Spiegel and Brian Murphy, the founders of Snapchat. Zuckerberg offered them $3 billion for their app in 2013. The former fraternity brothers from Stanford University turned Zuckerberg down and went their own way; their company is now worth $16 billion.

How Facebook Turns Nerds into Very Rich Guys

There are at least two other major players in Silicon Valley that have major ties to Facebook. Matt Cohler, who served as Facebook’s first vice president of product management, is now a venture capitalist worth $700 million. His investments include Dropbox, Quora, and Instagram. Former Facebook Chief Technology Officer Adam D’Angelo founded Quora. Quora is now worth $900 million, and D’Angelo is worth $600 million, according to Forbes.

Finally, there’s Palmer Luckey, the video gamer who used Kickstarter to raise the money to start his virtual reality headset company Oculus. In July 2014 Facebook paid Luckey, who was just 21, $2.3 billion for Oculus. Luckey is now worth $700 million, but he still wears Hawaiian shirts and flip flops to the office. At Facebook, Luckey is developing a new generation of video and video game technology.

It looks as if Facebook and WhatsApp are now the places to go if you want to be very rich. The humble messaging app and the simple social network have become two of Silicon Valley’s hottest and most successful money machines. Those associated with them are raking in the cash.

One has to wonder how many other billionaires WhatsApp and Facebook will create. Will those people be located in Silicon Valley or perhaps elsewhere, such as India or even Africa? Since WhatsApp is now a platform that connects the entire world, it will facilitate international trade and communication, which will generate fantastic new fortunes in the future to rival those it has already created.

Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and the American blogosphere were shocked in February 2014 when Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg spent $21 billion in stock and cash to buy an obscure messaging app company called WhatsApp.

Strangely enough, even many tech savvy Americans had never heard of WhatsApp even though it was an all-American company based in San Jose, California.

Yet those who understood WhatsApp’s capabilities, including Zuckerberg himself, were wondering if Facebook had underpaid. A year later many of the same business writers who had knocked the WhatsApp acquisition were praising Mr. Zuckerberg’s vision and foresight.

Not buying WhatsApp would have been a disaster for Facebook because a competitor, probably Alphabet, the company formerly known as Google, would have gobbled up the messaging solution, TechCrunch writer Josh Constine noted . Facebook, which is a computer-based solution, needed WhatsApp to enter the brave new world of the mobile Internet.

So How Much Is WhatsApp Really Worth?

Okay, so how much is WhatsApp really worth? That’s a fair question because just one week before Zuckerberg acquired WhatsApp, the Japanese ecommerce company Rakuten spent $900 million to buy another messaging solution called Viber. It spent less than one 20^th of what Facebook spent.

Interestingly enough, Viber’s level of growth actually exceeded that of WhatsApp. Viber had around 280 million users at the time of purchase, while WhatsApp had 450 million. Since then, WhatsApp’s user base has nearly doubled, to around 900 million in September 2015, while Viber’s has grown to 664 million , or more than tripled.

Despite these numbers, Forbes contributor Eric Jackson believes that WhatsApp could one day be worth $100 billion. The reason Jackson believes that is that Viber is not a messaging app, while WhatsApp is.

The key difference is that Viber was designed to make phone calls, while WhatsApp is a messaging or chat solution. WhatsApp is designed to facilitate communication instantly across platforms, while Viber is designed only for calls.

Jackson thinks that messaging apps will serve the function in the mobile web that search engines like Google and Yahoo and browsers such as AOL served in the old Internet; that is, to act as a gateway to the Internet, the first place people go to look for information.

WhatsApp will become the introduction to the Internet for tens of millions of people in the developing world, particularly Africa, just as AOL or Yahoo introduced many Americans to the Web. The real opportunity for Facebook to make money comes after people have signed on to WhatsApp.

Is WhatsApp the New Facebook?

This makes WhatsApp a lot like Facebook. Facebook is basically a browser that is disguised as a social media solution. Zuckerberg’s genius was to lure large numbers of people that were uncomfortable with information solutions like email and Google online.

Once he set up his network, Zuckerberg looked for opportunities to monetize it, such as selling advertising. Observers like Jackson believe Zuckerberg will follow the lead of Asian solutions such as WeChat and start monetizing WhatsApp once it hits a certain level of users.

Some Ways Facebook Could Harness WhatsApp for Ecommerce

There are a number of ways Facebook could monetize WhatsApp that its Asian peers are pioneering. China’s WeChat added an Apple Pay-style solution that lets people transfer money and pay for everything from taxis to snacks from vending machines. An app called Line has been running flash sales in Thailand.

These flash sales have attracted 5.5 million customers for such popular brands as Maybelline lipstick and Line’s own branded merchandise, Tech in Asia reported . It also distributed discount coupons for a brick-and-mortar supermarket chain through the same mechanism.

Line’s partnership with an ecommerce company called aCommerce could be a model for Facebook and WhatsApp. Its success has been rather astounding; Line has around 22 million users in Thailand, meaning that nearly one fourth of its customers are participating in the flash sales.

One strong possibility is that Facebook and WhatsApp could partner with an ecommerce company such as Amazon, eBay, or Alibaba or a major retailer such as Walmart, which is making a huge push into ecommerce, to develop ecommerce. Walmart is spending billions to construct giant ecommerce fulfillment in the United States. It will need some means of attracting customers; WhatsApp could be it.

This means WhatsApp’s value could be far higher than we thought, and Mr. Jackson’s $100 billion speculation could be justified. It remains to be seen if such technology could work in the United States, although at least one American retailer, Target, has experimented with such flash sales.

Another potential partner is Google, which already operates Google Shopping and is experimenting with its own delivery service. Google and Facebook recently entered into an alliance to share some data about WhatsApp and Android.

Why WhatsApp Could Be So Valuable

The ecommerce potential is what could make WhatsApp so valuable. If Facebook could charge a small amount, say 1¢ on each transaction, it could open up a vast stream of revenue.

Line could have generated $550,000 in revenue from its flash sales in Thailand alone. Just imagine what Facebook could do if it could set up similar ecommerce arrangements in Argentina, where 78% of Internet users utilize WhatsApp, or Germany, where 56% of those online take advantage of WhatsApp.

Obviously, there are serious challenges here; for example, sales taxes and local laws governing ecommerce. Delivery is also a major concern. How do you get the items purchased through the flash sale to the customer? Does the customer pick them up at a brick-and-mortar store, or are they shipped?

Either way, there will have to be some sort of logistical infrastructure in place to get the merchandise to the customer. This makes WhatsApp valuable because Facebook could simply open it up for ecommerce. It would take a small cut of the purchase price in exchange for connecting the buyer to the seller, a business model already pioneered by Amazon and eBay.

This, of course, brings us to the real value of WhatsApp. How much is each customer worth? That remains to be seen because we are only scratching the surface of mobile ecommerce right now.

Therefore it is impossible to tell how much WhatsApp is truly worth because nobody has determined what the limits of mobile ecommerce are, although my guess is that WhatsApp could ultimately be worth a lot more than that $100 million.

WhatsApp can be far more than just a text messaging service. It can also be a highly effective business communications and marketing tool.

In fact, WhatsApp is such an effective means of communication that it can actually be used as the basis for certain businesses. Some entrepreneurs are designing and creating companies based on the kind of instant connectivity between customers and companies that WhatsApp can provide.

News stories indicate that successful WhatsApp-based businesses are now operating in countries such as India and the United Kingdom. It might only be a matter of time before such enterprises start appearing the United States and Canada.

Some Examples of Successful WhatsApp–Based Businesses

Service businesses are among the best WhatsApp-oriented enterprises because the solution improves contact between the business and the customer. It can increase the level of customer contact and enhance customer service.

Successful WhatsApp service businesses include:

• Concierge services. In Mumbai, India, a company called Russsh bills itself as “your personal assistant.” Russsh allows people to book a wide variety of tasks directly on WhatsApp. For example, a person could use it to hire a babysitter or to contact somebody that would pick up laundry or do simple tasks such as grocery shopping, assistance for senior citizens, and almost anything else you need done. A person can use WhatsApp to instantly contact an assistant, who will come to perform the service.

• One variation on this service would be to offer handyman, house cleaning, and other services on an emergency basis over WhatsApp. A person that needed help around the house immediately, such as somebody to clean up a mess, could send out a message for help.

• Courier and delivery services. In today’s hectic world, a lot of people simply do not have the time to pick stuff up. Russsh lets people contact a driver or a bicyclist, who will pick up flowers, baked goods, flowers, food, documents, or anything else. For example, a lawyer could contact a person with a motorcycle to take a document that needs to be signed across town. Small businesses such as bakeries and restaurants could use the service to reach new customers.

• Custom jewelry and tailoring. In London, jeweler Rare Pink has successfully sold expensive, custom diamond rings by putting videos of them on WhatsApp, The Telegraph reported. High-end tailor Robert Revilla also uses WhatsApp to keep in contact with clients. Any business that does custom work could use WhatsApp to send pictures or videos of the work to its customers and potential customers.

A tailor could use WhatsApp to send video of the alterations she was making to a customer. A cake decorator could send pictures of a cake and so on. That way the client could know that the job was going properly.

• Driving. Many people are familiar with apps like Uber and Lyft that allow a person to summon a vehicle and driver on demand. A driver could cut out the middle man—Uber and Lyft take a percentage of the fare—and maintain direct contact with passengers via WhatsApp. A person could advertise specialized driving services such as hauling children to school, transporting senior citizens, or delivering documents on WhatsApp.

• Food delivery. Fewer and fewer people are cooking for themselves these days, which is greatly increasing the demand for takeout. Many people want something besides pizza or Chinese. A person could contract with local restaurants to deliver food directly to customers’ homes.

• Marketing. Not everybody likes to market or promote their products. A person that is proficient at marketing could set up a WhatsApp marketing agency to promote businesses or services directly over the app.

• Personal shopper. Not everybody likes to shop, and some people do not have the time. You could organize a personal shopping service in which customers send shopping lists to you via WhatsApp. You would then buy the items or pick them up from the store and take them to the customer. Some major retailers like Walmart and the Kroger supermarkets are making this business easier by offering click n’ pull services in which a customer sends in an order that one of their employees pulls off the shelves and prepares. The personal shopper could simply pick up such orders and take them to the customer.

• Dog walker/pet sitter. Dogs need to be walked all the time. One way to distinguish yourself from the crowd is to become an on-demand dog walker that comes anytime Fido needs to take a walk. WhatsApp could let pet owners call you anytime.

• Repair and service businesses. People often need repair services such as plumbing on a moment’s notice. The instant communication provided by WhatsApp can enable a person to summon a professional such as a plumber or a computer technician at a moment’s notice.

• Hauling. A person that owns a truck or van could start a hauling service, for example, to come to haul heavy items such as furniture or to get rid of junk quickly.

• Catering. Many people need custom meals or food prepared quickly and delivered. A caterer could use WhatsApp to instantly receive menu requests, prepare the food, and have it delivered fast via a driver. A variation on this could be a personal chef that prepares meals for a number of customers in a particular area and has them delivered.

The number of potential businesses that could leverage the power of solutions like WhatsApp is incredible. Instant messaging allows instant communication, which can create a wide variety of moneymaking skills.

If you want to start such a business, sit and brainstorm then try to think of something that you like to do. If you enjoy shopping, cooking, walking dogs, or driving, why not try to make some money while having fun at that activity?

The main ingredient needed for a successful WhatsApp business is imagination. If you can be the first to think up such an enterprise and implement it in your area, you could give yourself a new stream of income. New communications such as WhatsApp are always business opportunities for those willing to take advantage of them.