WhatsApp: Chasing More Money
January 1, 2025
Meta aims to make WhatsApp indispensable to businesses around the world. The app is currently responsible for just a fraction of the company’s revenue, but Zuckerberg seems to have high hopes for the messaging platform. Rest of World‘s thorough piece, “How WhatsApp Ate the World,” describes the plan. Writer Issie Lapowsky details the app’s evolution since Facebook (now Meta) bought it and examines where the company plans to take it from here. We learn:
“WhatsApp initially achieved that global dominance in large part by doing just one thing very well: enabling cheap, private, and reliable messaging on almost any phone, almost anywhere in the world. But in the decade since Meta acquired WhatsApp for an eye-watering $22 billion in 2014, the app has been transformed from a narrowly focused utilitarian tool into a sort of ‘everything app.’ In countries like India, Brazil, Mexico, and Indonesia, WhatsApp is now also a place for scheduling doctor’s appointments and conducting real estate deals — and buying Sabharwal’s ceramic ducks. In Brazil, the beauty juggernaut L’Oréal now makes an average of 25% of its online direct-to-consumer sales on WhatsApp. The shift has been driven, of course, by money. WhatsApp has never been much of a moneymaker. While Meta makes billions off mining people’s personal data to sell more ads, WhatsApp is an encrypted app, whose founders once very publicly swore off advertising altogether. Lately, however, WhatsApp has been aggressively luring big businesses to its suite of paid messaging products for businesses, and openly flirting with the possibility of introducing ads in the not-too-distant future.”
Because of course it is. Meta insists it respects WhatsApp’s original mission of privacy, pledging to keep its end-to-end encryption intact. The company has even added privacy tools that remind us of the old Telegram: disappearing messages, encrypting backups, and shielding IP addresses in calls. Is Meta attempting to move forward by stepping into the past? Even with these privacy promises, Lapowsky notes:
“And yet, with each new revenue-boosting feature, WhatsApp has added a little asterisk to its core privacy promises, according to Nathalie Maréchal, co-director of the privacy and data program at the Center for Democracy & Technology in Washington, D.C. ‘It’s not necessarily that those asterisks are illegitimate. It’s that they’re complicated,’ she told Rest of World, ‘and many users are either not going to take the time, or aren’t going to prioritize, fully understanding it.'”
Ah, details. Another key part of Zuck’s vision is no surprise—generative AI. Meta’s chatbot is now a standard part of the app’s search bar, while a customer-service version and AI marketing tools are now available to businesses. Will all these changes turn WhatsApp into the moneymaker the tech mogul envisions?
Cynthia Murrell, January 1, 2025
A New Frankie Bursts on the Music Scene
November 27, 2024
So here is a minor but unfortunate thing that just happened to our culture: As the BBC reports, “Zuckerberg Records ‘Romantic’ Cover of Explicit Rap Hit.” Let me advise you, dear reader, to avoid hearing even a portion of this track if you possibly can. That goes double if you are a fan of the original. I wish I could unhear it. Writer Paul Glynn tells us:
“Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has recorded his own version of rap track Get Low alongside US star T-Pain, in tribute to his wife Priscilla Chan for their ‘dating anniversary.’ Zuckerberg sings with the help of Auto-Tune on an acoustic guitar reworking of the filthy floor-filler, which was originally a hit for Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz in 2003. ‘Get Low was playing when I first met Priscilla at a college party, so every year we listen to it on our dating anniversary,’ the Meta boss explained on his own platform Instagram.”
How sweet. Would that Zuckerberg (or “Z-Pain,” as he has styled himself for this stunt) had left it at that. His “lyrical” treatment renders the raunchy lines surreal, and not in a good way. Fortunately for him, his wife welcomed the gesture as “so romantic.” But why subject the rest of us to this acoustic, Auto-Tuned abomination? Shouting one’s love from the rooftops is one thing. This is quite another.
For the morbidly curious, here is a link to Zuckerberg’s (not safe for work) creation. Don’t say we didn’t warn you. For comparison and/or a palate cleanser, here is the original (even less safe for work) Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz video on YouTube. What a time to be alive! A new Frank Sinatra is upon us.
Cynthia Murrell, November 27, 2024
EU Docks Meta (Zuckbook) Five Days of Profits! Wow, Painful, Right?
November 19, 2024
No smart software. Just a dumb dinobaby. Oh, the art? Yeah, MidJourney.
Let’s keep this short. According to “real” news outfits “Meta Fined Euro 798 Million by EU Over Abusing Classified Ads Dominance.” This is the lovable firm’s first EU antitrust fine. Of course, Meta (the Zuckbook) will let loose its legal eagles to dispute the fine.
The Facebook money machine keeps on doing its thing. Thanks, MidJourney. Good enough.
What the “real” news outfits did not do is answer this question, “How long does it take the Zuck outfit to generate about $840 million US dollars?
The answer is that it takes that fine firm about five days to earn or generate the cash to pay a fine that would cripple many organizations. In case you were wondering, five days works out to about 1.4 percent of a calendar year.
I bet that fine will definitely force the Zuck to change its ways. I wish I knew how much the EU spent pursuing this particular legal matter. My hunch is that the number has disappeared into the murkiness of Brussels’ bookkeeping.
And the Zuckbook? It will keep on keeping on.
Stephen E Arnold, November 19, 2024
Meta, AI, and the US Military: Doomsters, Now Is Your Chance
November 12, 2024
Sorry to disappoint you, but this blog post is written by a dumb humanoid.
The Zuck is demonstrating that he is an American. That’s good. I found the news report about Meta and its smart software in Analytics India magazine interesting. “After China, Meta Just Hands Llama to the US Government to ‘Strengthen’ Security” contains an interesting word pair, “after China.”
What did the article say? I noted this statement:
Meta’s stance to help government agencies leverage their open-source AI models comes after China’s rumored adoption of Llama for military use.
The write up points out:
“These kinds of responsible and ethical uses of open source AI models like Llama will not only support the prosperity and security of the United States, they will also help establish U.S. open source standards in the global race for AI leadership.” said Nick Clegg, President of Global Affairs in a blog post published from Meta.
Analytics India notes:
The announcement comes after reports that China was rumored to be using Llama for its military applications. Researchers linked to the People’s Liberation Army are said to have built ChatBIT, an AI conversation tool fine-tuned to answer questions involving the aspects of the military.
I noted this statement attributed to a “real” person at Meta:
Yann LecCun, Meta’s Chief AI scientist, did not hold back. He said, “There is a lot of very good published AI research coming out of China. In fact, Chinese scientists and engineers are very much on top of things (particularly in computer vision, but also in LLMs). They don’t really need our open-source LLMs.”
I still find the phrase “after China” interesting. Is money the motive for this open source generosity? Is it a bet on Meta’s future opportunities? No answers at the moment.
Stephen E Arnold, November 12, 2024
Meta, Politics, and Money
October 24, 2024
Meta and its flagship product, Facebook, makes money from advertising. Targeted advertising using Meta’s personalization algorithm is profitable and political views seem to turn the money spigot. Remember the January 6 Riots or how Russia allegedly influenced the 2016 presidential election? Some of the reasons those happened was due to targeted advertising through social media like Facebook.
Gizmodo reviews how much Meta generates from political advertising in: “How Meta Brings In Millions Off Political Violence.” The Markup and CalMatters tracked how much money Meta made from Trump’s July assassination attempt via merchandise advertising. The total runs between $593,000 -$813,000. The number may understate the actual money:
“If you count all of the political ads mentioning Israel since the attack through the last week of September, organizations and individuals paid Meta between $14.8 and $22.1 million dollars for ads seen between 1.5 billion and 1.7 billion times on Meta’s platforms. Meta made much less for ads mentioning Israel during the same period the year before: between $2.4 and $4 million dollars for ads that were seen between 373 million and 445 million times. At the high end of Meta’s estimates, this was a 450 percent increase in Israel-related ad dollars for the company. (In our analysis, we converted foreign currency purchases to current U.S. dollars.)”
The organizations that funded those ads were supporters of Palestine or Israel. Meta doesn’t care who pays for ads. Tracy Clayton is a Meta spokesperson and she said that ads go through a review process to determine if they adhere to community standards. She also that advertisers don’t run their ads during times of strife, because they don’t want their goods and services associates with violence.
That’s not what the evidence shows. The Markup and CalMatters researched the ads’ subject matter after the July assassination attempt. While they didn’t violate Meta’s guidelines, they did relate to the event. There were ads for gun holsters and merchandise about the shooting. It was a business opportunity and people ran with it with Meta holding the finish line ribbon.
Meta really has an interesting ethical framework.
Whitney Grace, October 24, 2024
META and Another PR Content Marketing Play
October 4, 2024
This write up is the work of a dinobaby. No smart software required.
I worked through a 3,400 word interview in the orange newspaper. “Alice Newton-Rex: WhatsApp Makes People Feel Confident to Be Themselves: The Messaging Platform’s Director of Product Discusses Privacy Issues, AI and New Features for the App’s 2bn Users” contains a number of interesting statements. The write up is behind the Financial Times’s paywall, but it is worth subscribing if you are monitoring what Meta (the Zuck) is planning to do with regard to E2EE or end-to-end encrypted messaging. I want to pull out four statements from the WhatsApp professional. My approach will be to present the Meta statements and then pose one question which I thought the interviewer should have asked. After the quotes, I will offer a few observations, primarily focusing on Meta’s apparent “me too” approach to innovation. Telegram’s feature cadence appears to be two to four ahead of Meta’s own efforts.
A WhatsApp user is throwing big, soft, fluffy snowballs at the company. Everyone is impressed. Thanks, MSFT Copilot. Good enough.
Okay, let’s look at the quotes which I will color blue. My questions will be in black.
Meta Statement 1: The value of end-to-end encryption.
We think that end-to-end encryption is one of the best technologies for keeping people safe online. It makes people feel confident to be themselves, just like they would in a real-life conversation.
What data does Meta have to back up this “we think” assertion?
Meta Statement 2: Privacy
Privacy has always been at the core of WhatsApp. We have tons of other features that ensure people’s privacy, like disappearing messages, which we launched a few years ago. There’s also chat lock, which enables you to hide any particular conversation behind a PIN so it doesn’t appear in your main chat list.
Always? (That means that privacy is the foundation of WhatsApp in a categorically affirmative way.) What do you mean by “always”?
Meta Statement 3:
… we work to prevent abuse on WhatsApp. There are three main ways that we do this. The first is to design the product up front to prevent abuse, by limiting your ability to discover new people on WhatsApp and limiting the possibility of going viral. Second, we use the signals we have to detect abuse and ban bad accounts — scammers, spammers or fake ones. And last, we work with third parties, like law enforcement or fact-checkers, on misinformation to make sure that the app is healthy.
What data can you present to back up these statements about what Meta does to prevent abuse?
Meta Statement 4:
if we are forced under the Online Safety Act to break encryption, we wouldn’t be willing to do it — and that continues to be our position.
Is this position tenable in light of France’s action against Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, and the financial and legal penalties nation states can are are imposing on Meta?
Observations:
- Just like Mr. Zuck’s cosmetic and physical make over, these statements describe a WhatsApp which is out of step with the firm’s historical behavior.
- The changes in WhatsApp appear to be emulation of some Telegram innovations but with a two to three year time lag. I wonder if Meta views Telegram as a live test of certain features and functions.
- The responsiveness of Meta to lawful requests has, based on what I have heard from my limited number of contacts, has been underwhelming. Cooperation is something in which Meta requires some additional investment and incentivization of Meta employees interacting with government personnel.
Net net: A fairly high profile PR and content marketing play. FT is into kid glove leather interviews and throwing big soft Nerf balls, it seems.
Stephen E Arnold, October 4, 2024
The Zuck: Limited by Regulation. Is This a Surprise?
September 25, 2024
Privacy laws in the EU are having an effect on Meta’s actions in that region. That’s great. But what about the rest of the world? When pressed by Australian senators, a the company’s global privacy director Melinda Claybaugh fessed up. “Facebook Admits to Scraping Every Australian Adult User’s Public Photos and Posts to Train AI, with No Opt-Out Option,” reports ABC News. Journalist Jake Evans writes:
“Labor senator Tony Sheldon asked whether Meta had used Australian posts from as far back as 2007 to feed its AI products, to which Ms Claybaugh responded ‘we have not done that’. But that was quickly challenged by Greens senator David Shoebridge. Shoebridge: ‘The truth of the matter is that unless you have consciously set those posts to private since 2007, Meta has just decided that you will scrape all of the photos and all of the texts from every public post on Instagram or Facebook since 2007, unless there was a conscious decision to set them on private. That’s the reality, isn’t it? Claybaugh: ‘Correct.’ Ms Claybaugh added that accounts of people under 18 were not scraped, but when asked by Senator Sheldon whether public photos of his own children on his account would be scraped, Ms Claybaugh acknowledged they would. The Facebook representative could not answer whether the company scraped data from previous years of users who were now adults, but were under 18 when they created their accounts.”
Why do users in Australia not receive the same opt-out courtesy those in the EU enjoy? Simple, responds Ms. Claybaugh—their government has not required it. Not yet, anyway. But Privacy Act reforms are in the works there, a response to a 2020 review that found laws to be outdated. The updated legislation is expected to be announced in August—four years after the review was completed. Ah, the glacial pace of bureaucracy. Better late than never, one supposes.
Cynthia Murrell, September 25, 2024
What are the Real Motives Behind the Zuckerberg Letter?
September 5, 2024
Senior correspondent at Vox Adam Clarke Estes considers the motives behind Mark Zuckerberg’s recent letter to Rep. Jim Jordan. He believes “Mark Zuckerberg’s Letter About Facebook Censorship Is Not What it Seems.” For those who are unfamiliar: The letter presents no new information, but reminds us the Biden administration pressured Facebook to stop the spread of Covid-19 misinformation during the pandemic. Zuckerberg also recalls his company’s effort to hold back stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop after the FBI warned they might be part of a Russian misinformation campaign. Now, he insists, he regrets these actions and vows never to suppress “freedom of speech” due to political pressure again.
Naturally, Republicans embrace the letter as further evidence of wrongdoing by the Biden-Harris administration. Many believe it is evidence Zuckerberg is kissing up to the right, even though he specifies in the missive that his goal is to be apolitical. Estes believes there is something else going on. He writes:
“One theory comes from Peter Kafka at Business Insider: ‘Zuckerberg very carefully gave Jordan just enough to claim a political victory — but without getting Meta in any further trouble while it defends itself against a federal antitrust suit. To be clear, Congress is not behind the antitrust lawsuit. The case, which dates back to 2021, comes from the FTC and 40 states, which say that Facebook illegally crushed competition when it acquired Instagram and WhatsApp, but it must be top of mind for Zuckerberg. In a landmark antitrust case less than a month ago, a federal judge ruled against Google, and called it a monopoly. So antitrust is almost certainly on Zuckerberg’s mind. It’s also possible Zuckerberg was just sick of litigating events that happened years ago and wanted to close the loop on something that has caused his company massive levels of grief. Plus, allegations of censorship have been a distraction from his latest big mission: to build artificial general intelligence.”
So is it coincidence this letter came out during the final weeks of a severely close, high-stakes presidential election? Perhaps. An antitrust ruling like the one against Google could be inconvenient for Meta. Curious readers can navigate to the article for more background and more of Estes reasoning.
Cynthia Murrell, September 5, 2024
Good News: Meta To Unleash Automated AI Ads
August 19, 2024
Facebook generated its first revenue streams from advertising. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, continues to make huge profits from ads. Its products use cookies for targeted ads, collect user information to sell, and more. It’s not surprising that AI will soon be entering the picture says Computer Weekly: “Meta’s Zuckerberg Looks Ahead To AI-Generated Adverts.”
Meta increased its second-quarter revenues 22% from its first quarter. The company also reported that the cost of revenue increased by 23% due to higher infrastructure costs and Reality Labs needing a lot of cash. Zuckerberg explained that advertisers used to reach out to his company about the target audiences they wanted to reach. Meta eventually became so advanced that its ad systems predicted target audiences better than the advertisers. Zuckerberg plans for Meta to do the majority of work for advertising agencies. All they will need to provide Meta will be a budget and business objective.
Meta is investing and developing technology to make more money via AI. Meta is playing the long game:
“When asked about the payback time for investments in AI, Meta’s chief financial officer, Susan Li, said: ‘On our core AI work, we continue to take a very return on investment-based approach. We’re still seeing strong returns as improvements to both engagement and ad performance have translated into revenue gains, and it makes sense for us to continue investing here.’
Looking at generative AI (GenAI), she added: “We don’t expect our GenAI products to be a meaningful driver of revenue in 2024, but we do expect that they’re going to open up new revenue opportunities over time that will enable us to generate a solid return off of our investment…’”
Meta might see a slight dip in profit margins because it is investing in better technology, but AI generated ads will pay for themselves, literally.
Whitney Grace, August 19, 2024
Meta Deletes Workplace. Why? AI!
June 7, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
Workplace was Meta’s attempt to jump into the office-productivity ring and face off against the likes of Slack and MS Teams. It did not fare well. Yahoo Finance shares the brief write-up, “Meta Is Shuttering Workplace, Its Enterprise Version of Facebook.” The company is spinning the decision as a shift to bigger and better things. Bloomberg’s Kurt Wagner cites reporting from TechCrunch as she writes:
“The service operated much like the original Facebook social network, but let people have separate accounts for their work interactions. Workplace had as many as 7 million total paying subscribers in May 2021. … Meta once had ambitious plans for Workplace, and viewed it as a way to make money through subscriptions as well as a chance to extend Facebook’s reach by infusing the product into work and office settings. At one point, Meta touted a list of high-profile customers, including Starbucks Corp., Walmart Inc. and Spotify Technology SA. The company will continue to focus on workplace-related products, a spokesperson said, but in other areas, such as the metaverse by building features for the company’s Quest VR headsets.”
The Meta spokesperson repeated the emphasis on those future products, also stating:
“We are discontinuing Workplace from Meta so we can focus on building AI and metaverse technologies that we believe will fundamentally reshape the way we work.”
Meta will continue to use Workplace internally, but everyone else has until the end of August 2025 before the service ends. Meta plans to keep user data accessible until the end of May 2026. The company also pledges to help users shift to Zoom’s Workvivo platform. What, no forced migration into the Metaverse and their proprietary headsets? Not yet, anyway.
Cynthia Murrell, June 7, 2024
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