Today's Edition
SAN FRANCISCO (THE NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE)
When Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014, the messaging app had a clear focus. No ads, no games and no gimmicks. Now that is set to change.
On Monday, WhatsApp said it would start showing ads inside its app for the first time.
The promotions will appear only in an area of the app called Updates, which is used by around 1.5 billion people a day.
WhatsApp will collect some data on users to target the ads, such as location and the device’s default language, but it will not touch the contents of messages or whom users speak with. The company added that it had no plans to place ads in chats and personal messages.
"Thinking through the lens of privacy was incredibly important for how we thought about bringing these features to market,” said Nikila Srinivasan, a vice president of product management at WhatsApp. "Your personal messages, calls and statuses, they will remain end-to-end encrypted.”
In-app ads are a significant change from WhatsApp’s original philosophy. Jan Koum and Brian Acton, who founded WhatsApp in 2009, were committed to building a simple and quick way for friends and family to communicate with end-to-end encryption, a method of keeping texts, photos, videos and phone calls inaccessible by third parties. Both left the company seven years ago.
Since then, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, now Meta, has focused on WhatsApp’s growth and user privacy while also melding the app into the company’s other products, including Instagram and Messenger. Putting ads into WhatsApp opens a lucrative opportunity for Meta while potentially raising questions about privacy.
In a statement, Will Cathcart, the head of WhatsApp, assured users that the app would remain secure and guard their privacy.
"We work hard to protect the privacy of people’s communications,” he said. "Some people only use WhatsApp for private chats and calls, and nothing is changing about that.”
WhatsApp also said it was introducing paid monthly subscriptions for content creators, similar to offerings from competitors including X, YouTube and Twitch.
The app will also let users and businesses advertise their "channels,” which are one-way broadcasts that can be sent to large groups of people.
