Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Sharing phone numbers and offering ads may irk the security-focused service’s users.WhatsApp, which was acquired by Facebook in February 2014, finally made an announcement last week that most industry watchers saw as inevitable: It would begin sharing information with Facebook about its users, allowing Facebook to offer “more relevant” ads as well as ads within WhatsApp itself, which until now has been ad-free.

eMarketer estimates that 12.8 million people in the US used WhatsApp on a monthly basis in 2014, the year it was bought by Facebook. Since then, we estimate, about 5.6 million more people have gotten on board with the free mobile messaging service—many likely taking seriously assurances by WhatsApp that it would not harvest user data for ad targeting, or serve ads at all.Indeed, such assurances were seen as especially important to WhatsApp users because the service itself foregrounds privacy and security.

Messages in WhatsApp are encrypted end-to-end, meaning the company can never see any of the content sent by its users around the globe.WhatsApp can share phone numbers, however, and Facebook has been trying to get that information from its users—many of whom have been reluctant to share it—for a while....

If your company is still trying to figure out how to make the most of Facebook and Twitter, consider:

• WhatsApp has rapidly become the biggest messaging service in the world with more than a billion users.

• Snapchat is a juggernaut with the 18-24 age group, now earning more daily check-ins than Facebook. The company founder insists it is “not a social network.”
• Facebook is the social network for most of the world, yet their major investment is in the development of private Facebook Messenger, including bots that would help companies scale “human” interaction through the service. More than 900 million people use Messenger now. Other private messaging services like Viber and Kik have attracted millions of users.

Of the Fortune 100 companies, 77 use Slack. The average Slack user keeps the app running 10 hours a day, and is actively using it for over 2 hours a day.

Instagram started private DM in 2014 that focuses on the sharing of content with up to 15 people in a threaded approach.

Twitter has experimented with Snapchat-style doodles and photo editing and in 2015 expanded the character limit via private direct messaging.

The movement of consumers from public social media to private messaging has been so rapid that Business Insider reported that the combined usage of the top four messaging apps now exceeds the combined usage of the top four social media apps. Falling data prices, cheaper devices, and improved features are helping propel this growth....