WhatsApp parent Meta is moving forward with its push to attract businesses to its popular chat app.
It's part of an effort to find new ways to make money beyond targeted advertisements on its other platforms, Facebook and Instagram. Meta unveiled a developer tool, WhatsApp Cloud API, to businesses so they can message and chat with their customers.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the feature on Thursday at a virtual event. He called it an important step to help more businesses connect with people and help more people message the businesses that they want to support.
Zuckerberg has previously agreed that putting ads on WhatsApp would not be the right way to make money from it, as the Associated Press reported. WhatsApp’s CEO, Jan Koum, left Facebook in 2018 amid disagreements with Facebook management over the parent company’s voracious appetite for personal information and WhatsApp’s dedication to user privacy.