Whatsapp seeks to emulate Telegram’s quiet success with Channels

Whatsapp, the Meta-owned messaging service, is introducing a one-to-many broadcast feature called Channels to the app, which will allow creators, brands, and organisations to speak to an audience like a social network but without the baggage.

Why it matters

Meta is going back to its social networking basics one of its most popular global apps now that a gap in the market has opened up for a sticky, but less toxic social news feed. For brands, it could finally be a route to engaging with WhatsApp’s vast but as yet unmonetized user base.

The news follows the emergence of Telegram as a social network as well as a messaging service, especially in Ukraine, where the service has become an important, if flawed, source of news following Russia’s invasion.

While it’s only in an early phase, WhatsApp’s new feature suggests something similar – and more traditionally respectable – across the app’s more than two-billion-strong user base, along with several other social-network-like features from commerce to content.

The announcement

On the WhatsApp company blog, the service announced the new Channels feature, which will appear alongside the Instagram Stories-style Status, in a new updates tab. The service will launch first in Singapore and Colombia.

“Channels are a one-way broadcast tool for admins to send text, photos, videos, stickers, and polls,” the brand writes. Users will be able to find channels through a directory and links.

Privacy is a significant aspect of the announcement, for both admins and followers, with a suite of features to protect identities and the make-up of the channel community.

Looking ahead

“We also believe there is an opportunity to support admins with a way for them to build a business around their channel using our expanding payment services as well as the ability to promote certain channels in the directory to help increase awareness,” the service adds.

This is particularly interesting, as it starts to push WhatsApp into numerous potential paths built around monetisation through payments – presumably to individual creators or to retailers, depending on the occasion.

In context

When Meta (then Facebook) bought the messaging app WhatsApp in 2014, it knew that the service had the potential to be one of the world’s most popular messaging tools – it now has over two billion frequent users – but it has always proved difficult to monetise.

There have been some promising efforts toward the original hypothesis that it could be a route for businesses to talk to and sell to consumers, especially in India and in Brazil.

Sourced from WhatsApp (Meta), WARC, Business of Apps, DW 

[Image: Meta]