WhatsApp Drops Subscription Fee; Exploring Alternate Business Models

WhatsApp, the popular messaging service, has decided to get rid of its $1 / year subscription fee starting from today. The company which was acquired by Facebook for its One billion base should now be looking for alternate way of to make money. This is not a surprising move as its now owned by Facebook, and the completion is now steep with other messaging services like Telegram and Hike.

To be very honest, I have seen a lot of people who have got extension every year, and skip the payment. WhatsApp had been trying the free subscription model from sometime already. I guess probably in many emerging countries its free.

This also bring the question if WhatsApp may now choose for showing advertisement, specially with Facebook owning them, and they had been charging only to keep the advertisements off. The answer is still no. WhatsApp shared on their official press :

Naturally, people might wonder how we plan to keep WhatsApp running without subscription fees and if today’s announcement means we’re introducing third-party ads. The answer is no. Starting this year, we will test tools that allow you to use WhatsApp to communicate with businesses and organizations that you want to hear from. That could mean communicating with your bank about whether a recent transaction was fraudulent, or with an airline about a delayed flight.

We all get these messages elsewhere today – through text messages and phone calls – so we want to test new tools to make this easier to do on WhatsApp, while still giving you an experience without third-party ads and spam.

Would you be interested in using a messaging service with paid options?  What if WhatsApp starts rolling out premium service ? Like calling could go premium.