this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
962 points (96.2% liked)
Technology
59605 readers
3578 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
they have access to the metadata, which can be as valuable as the content of the messages.
Maybe you're right, but I'd be hesitant to say WhatsApp user's contacts list would be worth US$ 20B.
My theory is they bought WhatsApp just because it was organically growing to be the dominant messaging app, and Facebook didn't want to lose this marked and bought them to squash the competition.
contact list? not really.
knowing who they talk to, how often, where from, for how long on average, and, in case of the countries where Whatsapp for Business is popular, what businesses do they spend money at? probably quite worth it.
The WhatsApp Business stuff is a more recent development. When FB bought them they had very little to work with.