Eavesdropper: A signal for others

Not many would remember, but WhatsApp’s initial plan, at the time of the launch, was to provide the service for free for one year and then charge $1 for its annual subscription. As the company started gaining more users, the free period kept on getting extended until Facebook acquired the chat platform in 2014.

With 600 million users, WhatsApp at the time had the potential to grow bigger than Facebook. However, the real challenge was to harness data. As chats were encrypted, Facebook could do little but to connect personally identifiable information. Given that pesky ads would have deterred people from using the service, the company’s only option was to grow its business use cases.