The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
Social is not in our vocabulary, says Whatsapp’s Acton
IF YOU thought Whatsapp will add so many new features that it will morph into a social network on its own, then here is the final answer. Whatsapp co-founder Brian Acton said “social was never a part of their vocabulary”.
“We think of ourselves as a servicewiththefocusoncommunication and utility on conversation, not necessarily the social constructs. We are not a product thatyouwanttoputgamesordating into,” said Acton. “We want peopletohaveconversationswith people who are meaningful to them...”hesaidthatatwhatsapp they have always thought of building “a private, secure, safe communication service”.
However, there is no denying thatwhatsappisclearlyseeingan opportunityinconnectingitsmillions of users with enterprises. “What we have started doing is sort of create the foundations of how businesses will engage with consumers,” Acton told Indianexpress.com.
Hesaidtheeffortwillbetoensure that his foray is done “in a waythatisclean,straightforward, simple and spam-free communication”. “People engaging with businessfortransactionsandcustomerssupportispositive.forenterprisesitmightbeapis,forsmall scale business it might be a mobileclient.wearereallyinthatexploratory stage,” he said.
Asked how Whatsapp plans to monetise, Acton said: “The business model is probably the million dollar question, how all this will manifest in terms of revenue. We are actively ideating on that. We are thinking of how we can build this business in such a waythatwecanpreservetheutility and simplicity of our product.”
India is Whatsapp’s largest market with over 200 million users.“indiaiscriticallyimportant, it is our leading market. India guidesuswithrespecttowhatwe build and how we build it,” he said. Acton thinks the numbers in India is an opportunity for them in California to connect with people on the other side of the world. “...understandingindiahasbeena pure enjoyment for us.”
Acton has two perspectives to offerwhenitcomestothecontent that is floating around on his platform. “We are an end-to-end encrypted service and have limited capability to understand the content that flows through our system. That does not take away our responsibilitiesandhelpusersget the empowerment to report or block content,” he says, adding that they will create those tools and get out of the way. “We want to make sure users are in control.”
So will there be space for so many messengers in different markets? “Classic economics sort of dictates that there will be consolidationtowardsthreeplayers.i think of the world in two ways — Id-based messengers likes Skype ormessengerandphonenumber based messengers like Line or Wechat. If I was to make a prediction, maybe there would be three each in both categories that survive,butthatdoesnotmeanthere will be no disruption.”