WhatsApp is a messaging service owned by Facebook that is incredibly popular.
It is considered to be the most used client in the world, beating the likes of Facebook Messenger and Snapchat that also place a heavy emphasis on communicating with others.
WhatsApp’s ease of use and wide-array of functionality are surely some of the reasons it has achieved its crown as the biggest chat app in the world.
Although fans of the service continue to love all that it offers, there could be some bad news coming soon.
WhatsApp used to charge users 69 pence to download the app and take advantage of its messaging offering.
vCard.red is a free platform for creating a mobile-friendly digital business cards. You can easily create a vCard and generate a QR code for it, allowing others to scan and save your contact details instantly.
The platform allows you to display contact information, social media links, services, and products all in one shareable link. Optional features include appointment scheduling, WhatsApp-based storefronts, media galleries, and custom design options.
However, once it was acquired by Facebook the initial fee was dropped in favour of a free model.
And it appears the latter is interested in monetising WhatsApp and could be set to implement ads on the service.
Brian Acton, a co-founder of WhatsApp, recently sat down with Forbes and declared he had left the social media giant after being involved in disagreements about profiting from the client.
He claimed Facebook wanted to implement targeting advertising strategies into WhatsApp.
Such a move would mark an end to WhatsApp’s ad-free experience.
He explained: “Targeted advertising is what makes me unhappy.”
And now more information seems to have emerged about the future of WhatsApp’s monetisation strategy.
WABetaInfo, a website renowned for analysing WhatsApp code, recently declared in the latest beta for the Android version of the app there are ads for the Status section.
WhatsApp Status launched last year and attempts to replicate similar functionality to the Story feature from Snapchat.
The feature allows users to post video, images and text in a format that will vanish after 24 hours.
However, WABetaInfo instead the ads are “not visible yet” but that they will surely be added in the future.
The site tweeted: “WhatsApp beta for Android 2.18.305: WhatsApp is implementing in this version ads for Status.
“They are not visible yet and the feature will be enabled in future.”
It was not mentioned whether a similar update is present in the iOS version of the application.
Moreover a precise launch date for the ads in a full version of WhatsApp was not provided.
And there was no mention of ads arriving on other sections of WhatsApp, suggesting the actual messaging segment of the application could remain ad-free for the time being.