WhatsApp is looking for a way to be popular in the US as in other countries . The instant messaging application owned by Meta has a large market, but outside of their own country, they have not been able to conquer users who until now prefer other platforms, especially Apple’s FaceTime, how will they change this?
Meta, formerly Facebook, will begin its marketing efforts in the United States with one of the key features of this service, and that is the privacy that matters so much to North American users. The platform will highlight its end-to-end encryption system and for this they will use the AFC Championship Game to be held on February 6, in which they will show a comparison between their encrypted messages and what happens, for example, with email physical.
WhatsApp’s strategy to gain more users
The objective of this WhatsApp marketing strategy is that more people in the United States decide to switch to WhatsApp supported by its robust security over other more used means such as traditional SMS, something that they hope to achieve now that COVID-19 has changed the way people communicate. that people interact and much more social activity takes place online.
Currently, more than 5 billion unencrypted SMS messages are sent in the United States each day, a number offered by a CTIA study. Of that vast number, a large percentage is spam and the same is promotional content, but the truth is that SMS is, in many cases, the default method of sending text messages for different models of Android terminals.
To this fact we must also add the RCS; that it is the evolution of SMS and that Google is pushing harder and harder for its adoption, which also adds features such as read receipts and, in some cases, encryption.
However, with all this against the background, the company believes that WhatsApp has the opportunity to capitalize on the interest of frustrated users , both on iOS and Android, who do not have a good experience in sending messages between different platforms.
One feature that you plan to attract users’ interest with is a feature that allows you to easily sync chat history from an iOS device to any Android phone and vice versa. Another feature in its favor and that attracts the attention of users in the United States, are fully encrypted backups.
One step after the arrival of Meta
Although Mark Zuckerberg assures that the name change is due to the new destiny of the company, the truth is that the arrival of Meta gives a second wind to the applications and services that were under the umbrella of Facebook and that were affected by the very bad reputation of Facebook as a brand in the United States.
This refresh in the market that they will do for WhatsApp, comes at the right time. After taking the step and being able to get rid of the suspicions that Facebook planted on the platform.
Now it will be much easier for the company to be able to differentiate between the “Meta” brand and the “Facebook” product , because people will not have to directly link it and feel that the content of one thing is exposed in the other or that the information can cross each other, although at the end of the day it may be possible.
For now, WhatsApp is below many other platforms such as Snapchat, iMessage, even Facebook Messenger in the United States, so it remains to be seen if a marketing push is capable of reversing this effect.
No RCS for WhatsApp
SMS traffic will be encrypted thanks to RCS and that’s a good thing, but not for WhatsApp . This application does not intend to add RCS support since it is an open standard and they claim that adding support would slow down the performance of the platform itself.
WhatsApp is also supported by the fact that RCS is a one-to-one service and does not have the capacity to offer encrypted messaging for conversation groups, a feature that this platform does have and that offers it a clear advantage over this other service.
In addition, WhatsApp would be working on a Reddit-type conversation format called Communities and that would be in charge of expanding group conversations, in spaces of interest by theme, with different administration controls and also having security encryption, something that the RCS could not offer yet.
The privacy crisis
A statement about WhatsApp’s privacy update, noting that messages would somehow pass through Facebook’s servers, received a resounding response. Users are not willing to be forced to share their information.
WhatsApp, in the voice of its executives, considers that they have learned of the need for clear, simple and understandable communication when it comes to privacy. The truth is that the message that remained in the environment was about a violation of their privacy, although later they were able to clarify that it was not that way.
In fact, Meta plans to create a system of general accounts in which the users themselves will be able to manage their presence in the company’s products , be it WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook, which would also involve the fusion of the messaging architecture of WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram.
For now, it only remains to wait if WhatsApp really manages to conquer the US as it has done in the rest of the world.
Via: TheVerge
