Meta will start a more active monetization phase for WhatsApp and Messenger

An interesting statement was made by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He told employees that WhatsApp and Messenger will help create a new wave of sales and monetization of these messengers will be more aggressive. Thus, Mark made an attempt to allay their concerns about the financial condition of Meta, which recently went through massive layoffs.

Recall that recently the creator of Facebook spoke about his intentions to lay off about 11,000 workers. After that, he said that messengers, which are at an early stage of monetization, can become the main tools for income. Their weak monetization is especially noticeable if we draw an analogy with Facebook and Instagram.

According to Zuckerberg, business messengers could become a major new pillar for their business, and Meta will start to become more active in monetizing messaging services:

We talk a lot about long-term opportunities like the metaverse, but the reality is that business messengers are likely to be the next big pillar of our business, and we've started working hard to monetize the WhatsApp and Messenger apps.

Mark Zuckerberg is periodically criticized for his activities and the big bet on the development of the world of metaverses. Last year and 2022, he spent a lot of money so that Reality Labs could go into the black and start making money. However, his idea has not materialized so far, and Zuckerberg's estate has dropped from $126,000,000,000 to $37,000,000,000. The reason for this was the fall of Meta shares, which became 3+ times cheaper in a short time.

Zuckerberg recently reported on various expenses. According to him, most of the funds are spent on the maintenance of the company's employees. In second place in terms of costs is the capital expenditures spent on maintaining the infrastructure of social networks included in Meta. Another 20% of the company's total budget goes to Reality Labs, a division that develops metaverse technology. Of the 20% allocated to Reality Labs, approximately half is spent on creating innovative augmented reality technologies. For example, the Meta division promises in the coming years to show a prototype of smart glasses that will bring people closer to the augmented reality sector. The other 40% of the total budget allocated to Reality Labs goes to the development of a virtual reality headset. The remaining budget, which is 10% of the total incoming money, goes to the development of the social platforms of the metaverse. Their list includes the virtual worlds of Horizon.

As for the monetization of messengers, Mark Zuckerberg has not yet announced how this will be implemented. It is possible that maintaining such a function will require initial investment and periodic budget investment. Probably, the head of Meta will give some details about this later.