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Whatsapp Will Become Free, Companies Can Pay To Reach Users (nytimes.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the here's-your-exciting-daily-offers dept.

speedplane writes: The popular messaging service Whatsapp will soon become free (they previously charged $0.99 per year after the first). The troubling news is that to compensate for the lost revenue, companies will now be able to pay to contact users directly. "[Whatsapp founder] Mr. Koum said that his team was still experimenting with how such services could work, and that many companies were already using the messaging service, particularly in developing countries, to connect with mobile-savvy customers." If this smells like advertising, Whatsapp vehemently disagrees. A portion of their statement reads: "...people might wonder how we plan to keep WhatsApp running without subscription fees and if today's announcement means we're introducing third-party ads. The answer is no."

3 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Telegram by WiPEOUT · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you're going to suggest an app, Signal is the one. For one, it's open source. Second, it's backed by the EFF and a number of luminaries not the least of whom is Edward Snowden.

    https://ssd.eff.org/en/module/...

  2. Re:Telegram by UnsignedInt32 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Signal looks interesting. It reminds me of the old standby app on Android, called TextSecure, which not just was a decent app for texting, but stashed the messages somewhere encrypted, as a secondary layer of protection.

    Naturally, because Signal is the successor of TextSecure. They have merged functionalities of TextSecure and RedPhone into one, and that's Signal, to make it consistent with their iOS offering.

  3. Re:"Messaging service"? by xvan · · Score: 4, Informative

    1) SMS are still not free in lot's of the world, and obscenely expensive in comparison to the data fees.
    2) e-mail is SOooo 90's, lot's of people not even check it any more.
    3) Default messaging apps (Google’s and Apple's ) are still not interoperable, some people never generate / are aware of generating an ID for those.
    4) Facebook is not universal, not all facebook users use facebook on the phone, and there is people actively avoiding it for multiple reasons.
    5) Whatsapp is free , just works TM and filled the niche first.