“The best business experiences meet people where they are. Advanced messaging services engage customers Meta is hoping to “get revenue from enterprise solutions,” O’Connell adds, as Facebook becomes less popular with younger generations.Īlongside the premium announcement, Meta also announced a cloud-based WhatsApp business API that will allow developers and small firms to integrate WhatsApp functionality into their products and services. “You could do a lot more with WhatsApp, you could book airline tickets, take payments and integrate bots.” “In China there is so much done in WeChat and where we may have 50 or 100 apps, in China they have far less because WeChat replaces so many apps,” O’Connell says. He believes Facebook is looking to copy the model successfully pioneered by WeChat, through which users can access a wide range of services and make payments.

Gartner analyst Daniel O’Connell told Tech Monitor that many tech leaders are grappling with whether to adopt a service like WhatsApp as it allows businesses to communicate with customers through a platform they’re already using. It is also competing with popular apps such as Telegram, Signal and Chinese messaging service WeChat. Pricing and full feature details have yet to be released by Meta, but it will build on existing business-exclusive features such as automated quick replies, greeting messages, away messages, better statistics and FAQs.Ĭompetition in the space is fierce, with WhatsApp going up against another service in the Meta stable, Facebook Messengers.

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