The extraordinary success of WhatsApp seems unstoppable. In fact, this multi-platform messaging service has nearly reached one billion users, and Facebook (its official owner, who last year bought the app for nearly 22 billion dollars) doesn’t want to miss the opportunity to gain more from the service by opening it to businesses.
During the last F8 Conference we have seen how Facebook has transformed the Messenger platform into a service increasingly rich of features. Between them, surely stands out Messenger for Business, a well-known dedicated service that allows businesses to communicate with their customers in a more simple and effective way, offering assistance and customer care through the Messenger chat.
According to what David Wehner (the CFO of Facebook) declared to Bloomberg, this functionality could be extended to Whatsapp, although, in this case, it would be a long-term project and not something that will be made available immediately. Wehner, at the JPMorgan Technology Conference held in Boston, has specifically stated that: “We think that enabling that [business to consumer] messaging has good business potential for us. As we learn those things, I think there’s going to be opportunities to bring some of those things to WhatsApp, but that’s more longer-term than the near-term.”
At the moment Facebook has not added further comments or details to Wehner statement, but it is clear that WhatsApp could become in the future a very important source of income for the Californian company owned by Mark Zuckerberg, and approaching the business sector could be a winning choice.
However, the fact that some companies already use WhatsApp for their business is not new. In fact, more and more companies offer their customers the possibility to have a real-time support, directly from their smartphones.