Rumours that WhatsApp will become paid have been circulating for a long time. They appeared even before the management of the messenger decided to oblige users to share their data for advertising purposes. True, neither the mandatory fee for use, nor the advertising itself eventually appeared, and the service was not monetized. However, now the probability that Meta banned in Russia will introduce a subscription to WhatsApp is higher than ever before. Moreover, gradually, developers have already begun to test paid access to the service.
WhatsApp Premium may well appear this year or maybe next year.
The reason for the introduction of a paid subscription to WhatsApp may be, oddly enough, the launch of Telegram Premium. Although Pavel Durov in the past has repeatedly assured everyone that Telegram will be completely free, over time he changed his mind and launched a paid access to the messenger, to which users were quite loyal.
Paid WhatsApp – Benefits
Telegram Premium was received quite loyally
Since the Telegram Premium subscription is optional, it did not alienate users at all. After all, if you don’t want to pay, don’t pay. You can continue to use the messenger in the same way as before, without any restrictions. And those who want to access additional chips can pay for them. So, two birds were killed at once.
But what does WhatsApp have to do with it, you ask? Everything is logical. First, WhatsApp can evaluate the experience of Telegram and adopt it with minimal damage to its reputation, making the subscription as optional as possible. And, secondly, WhatsApp has a lot of restrictions that can be removed for money. So surely there will be quite a lot of people who want to do this.
Here’s a rough list of WhatsApp features that could theoretically be included in your subscription:
- Work on multiple devices at the same time;
- Increase the weight of files that can be sent via WhatsApp;
- Grouping of chats and channels;
- Ability to hide your online status;
- Ability to install animated avatars;
- Additional reactions to messages;
- Exclusive stickers;
- Transcription of voice messages with translation into the text;
- Delete sent messages;
- Edit sent messages.
As you can see, the list of potential benefits of a paid subscription to WhatsApp is quite extensive. Yes, some chips are available in Telegram for free and so, but since WhatsApp did not have them before, developers may well add them and include them in the premium subscription. After all, why waste goodness if you can raise money for it.
A paid subscription to WhatsApp
WhatsApp has even more opportunities to launch a really useful subscription than Telegram
No matter how much a paid subscription to WhatsApp costs, it will gain followers. This is a logical conclusion from the total audience of the messenger. Today, it is used by more than 2 billion people around the world. Therefore, if 0.001% of all users decide to subscribe to WhatsApp Premium, it will already be 2 million paid subscribers. But their number will almost certainly grow constantly. Especially if the messenger offers them additional functions.
It is clear that everything that will be included in the subscription of WhatsApp Premium, I fantasized for myself and in the end, it can be completely different, but in this form, it looks even more profitable than Telegram Premium. Still, the ability to delete and edit previously sent messages, as well as use WhatsApp on multiple devices is what users want. So, if you offer it to them for money, many will probably agree to pay.
Will subscribing to WhatsApp make things worse? I don’t think so. Naturally, the coolest innovations will be introduced only in the paid version, bypassing the public version. However, who even said that the developers planned to add to WhatsApp the deletion of messages after an hour after they were sent or, say, use on several devices at the same time? That’s it. So let it be better, even if it is paid. I would pay for such privileges.
I’m not even talking about the fact that WhatsApp can simply copy all the features that custom versions of the client offer by adding them to the official application. Developers do not even have to think about what privileges to add to the subscription – they are already known to everyone. In addition, the appearance of a subscription to WhatsApp will make it almost meaningless to use the very customs that will seriously lose popularity.