Connect with us

FACEBOOK

Facebook Backs Off on Plan to Bring Ads to WhatsApp

Published

on

facebook backs off on plan to bring ads to whatsapp

In a deviation from its normal monetization strategy, Facebook is reportedly reversing course on its plans to insert ads into messaging platform WhatsApp.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Facebook is re-thinking it’s approach to WhatsApp as a revenue-generating tool:

“WhatsApp in recent months disbanded a team that had been established to find the best ways to integrate ads into the service, according to people familiar with the matter. The team’s work was then deleted from WhatsApp’s code, the people said.”

That would mean that while WhatsApp has more than 1.5 billion users, it won’t be contributing significantly to Facebook’s overall revenues anytime soon.

Facebook purchased WhatsApp for $19 billion back in 2014 with a view to expanding its global empire, and tapping into the platform’s popularity in order to build another huge revenue pipeline for the company. At that time, WhatsApp was generating around $20 million p.a. by charging a $1 per year subscription fee in certain regions, but the company removed subscription fees in 2016, which most saw as part of a larger shift towards coming monetization plans from Facebook – i.e. ads in your message streams.

But monetizing messaging is not so easy, especially on WhatsApp, which has long made user privacy a focus, particularly through elements like end-to-end encryption as standard. 

Without access to in-depth user data, and with ads being more intrusive in private messaging streams, Facebook hasn’t been able to establish a clear way forward for WhatsApp monetization, while conflicts over potential ad targeting reportedly lead to WhatsApp founder Jan Koum leaving Facebook back in 2018.

Following Koum’s departure, it did seem as though WhatsApp ads were inevitable. In November 2018, WhatsApp confirmed that it would soon allow companies to purchase ads within WhatsApp Status, the platform’s own variation of Stories.

That report was re-iterated in several presentations to potential advertisers over the last year, but now, even Status ads are being shelved.

As per WSJ:

“For now, the focus is on features [which allow] businesses to communicate with customers and organize those contacts, said one person familiar with the matter.”

As noted, this conflicts with Facebook’s documented approach to app monetization, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined back in 2016.

At Facebook’s annual stockholder meeting in that year, Zuckerberg said that Facebook follows an established three-stage process for monetization:

  1. Build a product that people love
  2. Facilitate organic business behavior on the app (free of charge)
  3. Prove additional avenues for businesses who are seeking to expand their reach and presence

This latest update would suggest that WhatsApp remains stuck on step two, which is where it was at back in 2016, and seems likely to be stalled on for some time yet. 

The logical focus, then, will likely be on WhatsApp Pay and facilitating eCommerce in the app. Back in August, reports indicated that Facebook was in talks with regulators and potential business partners in both India and Indonesia in order to facilitate the arrival of WhatsApp Pay in both markets. These two regions have a combined WhatsApp user base of 500 million, and this would appear to be where Facebook is likely to derive the most revenue potential from the messaging platform, at least in the immediate term.

Building on this, last June, Facebook acquired Indian eCommerce platform Meesho, which connects sellers with customers on WhatsApp, as well as other social platforms.

Meesho

Through the expansion of WhatsApp Pay, and expanded investment in eCommerce providers like Meesho, Facebook could still create a broader business eco-system within WhatsApp, and eventually, generate revenue through either payment facilitation fees or targeted messaging options from previous customers who’ve agreed to receive such. 

There’s likely a range of options to consider in this respect, and with Facebook backing down on its traditional advertising approach, it may suggest that it’s confident that such alternatives will end up paying off significantly. 

So, no ads in your WhatsApp streams, which seems like a good move, and one that will please WhatsApp users. But expect Facebook to ramp up its focus on payments and eCommerce as a result.

Socialmediatoday.com

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address

FACEBOOK

Individual + Team Stats: Hornets vs. Timberwolves

Published

on

CHARLOTTE HORNETS MINNESOTA TIMBERWOLVES You can follow us for future coverage by liking us on Facebook & following us on X: Facebook – All Hornets X – …

Source link

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

FACEBOOK

What went wrong with ‘the Metaverse’? An insider’s postmortem

Published

on

What went wrong with 'the Metaverse'? An insider's postmortem


It’s now two years since Facebook changed its name to Meta, ushering in a brief but blazing enthusiasm over “the Metaverse”, a concept from science fiction that suddenly seemed to be the next inevitable leap in technology. For most people in tech, however, the term has since lost its luster, seemingly supplanted by any product with “artificial intelligence” attached to its description. 

But the true story of the Metaverse’s rise and fall in public awareness is much more complicated and interesting than simply being the short life cycle of a buzzword — it also reflects a collective failure of both imagination and understanding.  

Consider:

The forgotten novel

Ironically, many tech reporters discounted or even ignored the profound influence of Snow Crash on actual working technologists. The founders of Roblox and Epic (creator of Fortnite) among many other developers were directly inspired by the novel. Despite that, Neal Stephenson’s classic cyberpunk tale has often been depicted as if it were an obscure dystopian tome which merely coined the term. As opposed to what it actually did: describe the concept with a biblical specificity that thousands of developers have referenced in their virtual world projects — many of which have already become extremely popular.

Event

GamesBeat at the Game Awards

We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited!


Learn More

Snow Crash.

You can see this lack of clarity in many of the mass tech headlines attempting to describe the Metaverse in the wake of Facebook’s name change: 

In a widely shared “obituary” to the Metaverse, Business Insider’s Ed Zitron even compounded the confusion still further by inexplicably misattributing the concept to TRON, the original Disney movie from the 80s.

Had the media referenced Snow Crash far more accurately when the buzz began, they’d come away with a much better understanding of why so many technologists are excited by the Metaverse concept — and realize its early incarnation is already gaining strong user traction.  

Because in the book, the Metaverse is a vast, immersive virtual world that’s simultaneously accessible by millions of people through highly customizable avatars and powerful experience creation tools that are integrated with the offline world through its virtual economy and external technology. In other words, it’s more or less like Roblox and Fortnite — platforms with many tens of millions of active users. 

But then again, the tech media can’t be fully blamed for following Mark Zuckerberg’s lead.

Rather than create a vision for its Metaverse iterating on already successful platforms — Roblox’s 2020 IPO filing even describes itself as the metaverse — Meta’s executive leadership cobbled together a mishmash of disparate products. Most of which, such as remotely working in VR headsets, remain far from proven. According to an internal Blind survey, a majority of Zuckerberg’s own employees say he has not adequately explained what he means by the Metaverse even to them.

Grievous of all, Zuckerberg and his CTO Andrew Bosworth promoted a conception of the Metaverse in which the Quest headset was central. To do so, they had to overlook compelling evidence — raised by senior Microsoft researcher danah boyd at the time of the company acquiring Oculus in 2014 — that females have a high propensity to get nauseous using VR.

Meta Quest 3 comes out on October 10 for $500.
Meta Quest 3.

Contacted in late 2022 while writing Making a Metaverse That Matters, danah told me no one at Oculus or Meta followed up with her about the research questions she raised. Over the years, I have asked several senior Meta staffers (past and present) about this and have yet to receive an adequate reply. Unsurprisingly, Meta’s Quest 2 VR headset has an estimated install base of only about 20 million units, significantly smaller than the customer count of leading video game consoles. A product that tends to make half the population puke is not exactly destined for the mass market — let alone a reliable base for building the Metaverse. 

Ironically, Neal Stephenson himself has frequently insisted that virtual reality is absolutely not a prerequisite for the Metaverse, since flat screens display immersive virtual worlds just fine. But here again, the tech media instead ratified Meta’s flawed VR-centric vision by constantly illustrating articles about the Metaverse with photos of people happily donning headsets to access it — inadvertently setting up a straw man destined to soon go ablaze.

Duct-taped to yet another buzzword

Further sealing the Metaverse hype wave’s fate, it crested around the same time that Web3 and crypto were still enjoying their own euphoria period. This inevitably spawned the “cryptoverse” with platforms like Decentraland and The Sandbox. When the crypto crash came, it was easy to assume the Metaverse was also part of that fall.

But the cryptoverse platforms failed in the same way that other crypto schemes have gone awry: By offering a virtual world as a speculative opportunity, it primarily attracted crypto speculators, not virtual world enthusiasts. By October of 2022, Decentraland was only tracking 7,000 daily active users, game industry analyst Lars Doucet informed me

“Everybody who is still playing is basically just playing poker,” as Lars put it. “This seems to be a kind of recurring trend in dead-end crypto projects. Kind of an eerie rhyme with left-behind American cities where drugs come in and anyone who is left is strung out at a slot machine parlor or liquor store.”

All this occurred as the rise of generative AI birthed another, shinier buzzword — one that people not well-versed in immersive virtual worlds could better understand.

But as “the Metaverse” receded as a hype totem, a hilarious thing happened: Actual metaverse platforms continued growing. Roblox now counts over 300 million monthly active users, making its population nearly the size of the entire United States; Fortnite had its best usage day in 6 years. Meta continues plodding along but seems to finally be learning from its mistakes — for instance, launching a mobile version of its metaverse platform Horizon Worlds.  

Roblox leads the rise of user-generated content.
Roblox.

Into this mix, a new wave of metaverse platforms is preparing to launch, refreshingly led by seasoned, successful game developers: Raph Koster with Playable Worlds, Jenova Chen with his early, successful forays into metaverse experiences, and Everywhere, a metaverse platform lead developed by a veteran of the Grand Theft Auto franchise.

At some point, everyone in tech who co-signed the “death” of the Metaverse may notice this sustained growth. By then however, the term may no longer require much usage, just as the term “information superhighway” fell away as broadband Internet went mainstream.  

Wagner James Au is author of Making a Metaverse That Matters: From Snow Crash & Second Life to A Virtual World Worth Fighting For 

GamesBeat’s creed when covering the game industry is “where passion meets business.” What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you — not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings.

Source link

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

FACEBOOK

Social media blocks are “a suppression of an essential avenue for transparency”

Published

on

In this photo illustration the word censored is seen displayed on a smartphone with the logos of social networks Facebook, WhatsApp and YouTube in the background.

Once praised as the defining feature of the internet, the ability to connect with physically distant people is something that governments have recently been seemingly intent on restricting. Authorities have been increasingly pulling the plug, putting over 4 billion people in the shadows in the first half of 2023 alone

Social media platforms are often the first means of communication to be restricted. Surfshark, one of the most popular VPN services, counted at least 50 countries guilty of having curbed these websites and apps during periods of political turmoil such as protests, elections, or military activity.

Source link

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

Trending