- Acquired a decade ago for $22 billion, WhatsApp has yet to become a big business for Facebook.
- This has become something “we have to do,” said Matt Idema, a vice president of business messaging.
- Executives and workers at WhatsApp spoke to Insider about Facebook’s ambitions for the texting app.
A sense of urgency is building inside Facebook. It’s trying to get WhatsApp making real money as the company deals with falling growth and continued criticism for Mark Zuckerberg’s risky bet on “the metaverse.”
Facebook, which last year rebranded as Meta, acquired WhatsApp in 2014 for $22 billion. It’s a staggering amount for the company to spend on a straightforward and free messaging app, though one that had grown to 400 million users in five years. It remains the company’s most expensive acquisition, but it has yet to directly recoup the investment.
Reported under “other” revenue, messaging across Facebook’s apps pulled in a relatively paltry $218 million in the most recent quarter, driven by paid messaging on WhatsApp. The company generated nearly $29 billion in total revenue, driven almost entirely by digital advertising. That was an overall drop of 1% compared with the previous year, its first-ever revenue decline.