Facebook mulls B2C version of WhatsApp

Social networking giant Facebook is considering allowing interaction of businesses with users of WhatsApp via live chats and alerts.

''We think that enabling that B2C [business-to-consumer] messaging has good business potential for us,'' Facebook chief financial officer David Wehner said yesterday at a tech conference in Boston. ''As we learn those things, I think there's going to be opportunities to bring some of those things to WhatsApp, but that's more longer term.''

WhatsApp might use a number of functions that are being tested with Facebook Messenger, for example, business-to-consumer interaction that marketers could pay for, Bloomberg noted.

WhatsApp, with 800 million users now (up from 600 million last August), had grown rapidly since ex-Yahoo employees Jan Koum and Brian Acton founded the company in 2009.

The company owned by Mark Zuckerberg bought the popular messaging service last year for $21.8 billion.

According to commentators, as Facebook becomes a marketplace in itself, an integrated WhatsApp could as well help the social networking giant leverage the potential held by its 800 million users.

Following the acquisition, WhatsApp chief Jan Koum had said, that the messaging app would not serve ads or games and had kept its promise, as the app still remains ad free.

According to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, when WhatsApp reached 1-billion user milestone, it could start to become a meaningful business.

Facebook's Messenger app was already testing B2C communications.

According to Facebook, the changes to Whatsapp were "more longer-term than the near-term" but it looked likely that the face of free messaging was changing.