Posted on: 19-01-16 23:05:55
Whatsapp is moving away from yearly subscription fee based model to charging fee to businesses to "communicate" with Whatsapp subscriber based model.
Starting this year, we will test tools that allow you to use WhatsApp to communicate with businesses and organizations that you want to hear from.
From Whatsapp Blog at https://blog.whatsapp.com/
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Making WhatsApp free and more useful
Nearly a billion people around the world today rely on WhatsApp to stay in touch with their friends and family. From a new dad in Indonesia sharing photos with his family, to a student in Spain checking in with her friends back home, to a doctor in Brazil keeping in touch with her patients, people rely on WhatsApp to be fast, simple and reliable.
That's why we're happy to announce that WhatsApp will no longer charge subscription fees. For many years, we've asked some people to pay a fee for using WhatsApp after their first year. As we've grown, we've found that this approach hasn't worked well. Many WhatsApp users don't have a debit or credit card number and they worried they'd lose access to their friends and family after their first year. So over the next several weeks, we'll remove fees from the different versions of our app and WhatsApp will no longer charge you for our service.
Naturally, 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. Starting this year, we will test tools that allow you to use WhatsApp to communicate with businesses and organizations that you want to hear from. That could mean communicating with your bank about whether a recent transaction was fraudulent, or with an airline about a delayed flight. We all get these messages elsewhere today ? through text messages and phone calls ? so we want to test new tools to make this easier to do on WhatsApp, while still giving you an experience without third-party ads and spam.
We hope you enjoy what's coming to WhatsApp, and we look forward to your feedback.
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I don't think, it would replace the MS Communicator anytime and day for its easy integration with the widespread usage of Outlook on Windows machines
Adding to the watchup glory .. latest in the market news :
With nearly a billion users and not an advert to be seen, WhatsApp represented something of a refuge from sales pitches; the service generated income by introducing a 69p subscription charge to users who joined the service after 2012 (though it's still free for the first year). But now, in a supposedly magnanimous announcement, that charge has been waived. WhatsApp will, over the next few weeks, become completely free. The catch ? which, of course, is presented to us as an exciting opportunity ? is that we'll be able to use WhatsApp to "communicate with businesses or organisations". There's no escape. Where we go, they follow.
Really 
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Like you - a Canadian .. but still DESI 
The catch is, they will gather your data in a big Data Warehouse. This will be massaged, worked upon, the pattron permutations/combinations to be sold off to the big Marketeers. Nothing is free. Facebook needs to pay Developers and Support staff that takes care of the App.
So, the next time you discuss buying a Headphone with your sister on the Whatsapp, don't be astonished to see the Amazon ads in your browser trying to sell you the exact brand. Deleting the messages doesn't mean they actually delete it from their database. Unless, the data is fully purged, it still stays in the storage and God knows to what other integrated systems it does move to.
Free! But, beware.
Quote:
Originally posted by febpreet
The catch is, they will gather your data in a big Data Warehouse. This will be massaged, worked upon, the pattron permutations/combinations to be sold off to the big Marketeers. Nothing is free. Facebook needs to pay Developers and Support staff that takes care of the App.
So, the next time you discuss buying a Headphone with your sister on the Whatsapp, don't be astonished to see the Amazon ads in your browser trying to sell you the exact brand. Deleting the messages doesn't mean they actually delete it from their database. Unless, the data is fully purged, it still stays in the storage and God knows to what other integrated systems it does move to.
Free! But, beware.
Nothing new. It is already going on with Google (AdChoices), Facebook, etc.
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That's true, Rajcanada. Google and Facebook are portals and the information is quite public, while Whatsapp and emails are personal and (s0-called) secret communications. That's the difference. I don't think they mine your personal messages in any of the communicators. Please enlighten me, if they do. Or, may be they do, and I am the novice here.
Quote:
Originally posted by febpreet
That's true, Rajcanada. Google and Facebook are portals and the information is quite public, while Whatsapp and emails are personal and (s0-called) secret communications. That's the difference. I don't think they mine your personal messages in any of the communicators. Please enlighten me, if they do. Or, may be they do, and I am the novice here.
I probably cannot tell you the extent because I do not know. For sure Google has the ability to go through your email, mine the data, share some information with their partners and services, etc. If you have a Gmail account and other services like Youtube, Android phone, etc., they already have some profile information about you like age group, interests, your locations if you use maps on you phone, etc. and they can market it to advertisers and probably are.
I once added to Google calendar an appointment with address and was getting notification like "leave for the appointment in 5 minutes to arrive on time." Looks quite invasive that they know when I have an appointment, with whom I have an appointment, and they tied it with my location and my appointment's location. Every service provider with multiple services can do the same.
End user probably is not going to know what is "secret" and what is not, it is all controlled by the service provider.
When you install an app even from big corporations, just look at the permissions. Do you really need to access my address book, access to pictures on my phone, etc. ?
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