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Although ‘free’ to use, WhatsApp needs quite substantial resources to run, not to mention that it cost Facebook over $19 billion in 2014. Facebook is not a charity, or a public service utility – it is a very profitable company, with a net income of over $18 billion in 2019.

Despite this there is no clear explanation of it’s business model. Most ‘Free’ services on the Internet are provided in exchange for advertising revenue, hence are paid for by the companies who use them as advertisement brokers. Because Facebook, and Google etc know so much about you they can, in theory, target advertising more effectively and advertisers are willing to pay a premium for this. In some ways this can be an ‘everybody wins’ scenario – the IT company knows that you like, for example foreign travel to exotic places, so show you advertisements about that, rather than, for example, about collecting miniature figurines which you would not want to know about anyway. WhatsApp, however does not show advertisements, targeted or otherwise.

None of the explanations of the WhatsApp financial model are very convincing, and businesses without a way of making money need careful scrutiny.

Contact information is valuable in itself

Much is made of the message security of WhatsApp, and messages between users are highly secure – many experts have verified that the actual messages are private. The trade off you make in exchange for use of WhatsApp services is to give them access to your contact data – that is not only your phone number, but the phone numbers of everybody whose details you store in your phone.

Your contact data says a lot about you, do you shop expensive shops, who else uses the same hairdresser as you, are you a committed member of a political party, who is your doctor, who are your friends (and their friends, and so on). You are likely to share an income level, some hobbies and interests, political leanings etc with your contacts. In military or security circles this is known as Traffic Analysis.

Who does your contact data belong to ?

If you are in a position of responsibility, a doctor, a teacher, a politician, a social worker, a church leader, and so on, you are probably entrusted with the contact information of people who trust you, as a person, but would not necessarily want their details spread more widely, but this is the data which is being exchanged for a ‘free’ Instant Messaging service.

Potential for abuse

The Guardian Newspaper actually suggests that it’s readers contact it via WhatsApp. This provides Facebook – who can be regarded as a rival media organisation – with the the phone numbers of any of its readership who use that route. If say Fox News, or The Times managed to get hold of this information it would be regarded as a security breach, but for some reason the New Media companies seem to be treated as if they were public utilities, rather than commercial rivals (which they are if you, too, are in the business of mediating and conveying information to an audience).

Asthma UK have launched a WhatsApp chat service. Although I am sure it was not the intention of their service, knowing the contacts of the phone number they list, is a list of phone numbers of contact details of asthma sufferers.

Please note that it does not require deliberate action at WhatsApp for this to be an issue. Big Data means that, for example, people with some medical condition may share other characteristics, such as, in countries which use a medical insurance system, higher medical bills, and this will emerge the algorithm automatically without human scrutiny.

Members of Parliament are very fond of WhatsApp, being sold on the security of the signals, not realizing how revealing the membership of various WhatsApp groups can be. Their faith in its security may be misplaced – there is a Wikipedia page dedicated to Reception and criticism of WhatsApp security and privacy features which outlines some of the historical problems (some quite recent) that there have been.

I would be very happy to discover, somewhere in WhatsApps rather convoluted Privacy Policy, and terms of service, something which puts my mind at rest, but for now I prefer the standardised, federated XMPP for Instant Messaging.

There is no point in being the only person in the world with a telephone, or a fax machine, or to have these, but nobody you want to communicate with has one. You could be the only person you know who has a mobile phone, and as long as your friends have telephone land lines you can talk to them – because the networks interoperate.

Networks need a critical mass to be usable, and the large social media systems, such as Facebook and WhatsApp have turned this into a ‘winner takes all’ game, in which they are the winners. It is at least possible to see a Tweet without being a user, but Whatsapp divides the world very definitively into those who have it and those who don’t. Anyone who has a suitable smartphone can join Whatsapp for no financial payment, but paying instead, not only with information about themselves, but everyone they know. Although Facebook pages can be ‘public’, they are not truly public, they can be seen by anyone is on Facebook, but if you look at them from a web browser which does not know (and tell Facebook) your details (for example in a Private or Incognito window) you will see how you are simply persuading non Facebook users to join.

There are people and organisations who do not like this, but many of them agree with the ‘Winner takes all’ – they just have a different idea about who should be the winner. Most of the systems which claim superiority to Whatsapp, for example, want to replace it with another system, which will be ‘better’ because it uses their walled garden rather than Whatsapp’s.

The answer, unless you have a serious shot at first place, is to stop being greedy and aiming to ‘own’ the market and federate with other systems, adding value for your users, though improved user experience, possibly well targeted advertising, additional services specific to your offering, but Federate – in other words talk over a well defined, open, even if evolving protocol with others. This is a way email and the web work, and chat and social media could work that way too.

For chat there is a stable protocol called Jabber or XMPP (eXtensble Message and Presence Protocol) which is federated very much like email (SMTP – Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). It has addresses which look like email addresses, e.g. jlines@debian.org, and like email jlines@debian.org can messages john@chat.paladyn.org. Google used XMPP for its Gtalk chat (and which was able to talk to other XMPP implementations until they stopped), underlies Facebook Messenger (basically XMPP using your Facebook user as the user name and it can only talk to other Facebook users), Whatapp (uses your mobile number as the username and can only talk to other Whatsapp users).

Competitors to the market leader should try federating their offering, and working out ways to provide a better offering by using them. They also think an economic case, which might be to prevent your user base migrating to your market dominant competitor, in the case of a commercial, or a desire for an ‘everybody wins’ game for governments or social or charitable organisations.

There are some markets which are completely dominated by one product. That product is not necessarily the best, but once it becomes dominant in the market number of social, rather than technical factors help it to stay there.

I can’t get this to work – I must be stupid

Everybody knows that Microsoft’s Office products are easy to use – that is why everybody uses them. Thus if somebody finds that they can not get Word to do something, they conclude that the fault must lie with them.

Similarly everybody knows that everyone uses Zoom, so if they can’t get it to work the fault must lie with them, or their computer, or their Wifi, or something, whereas any other Video conferencing system has to work perfectly first time or it will never have a second chance.

I can’t get this to work – it must be stupid

Consider someone who is not technical, just wanting to get a job done, for example to produce a spreadsheet, and is persuaded to try, for example LibreOffice Calc rather than Excel. The person suggesting this probably does not, by preference, spend a lot of time producing spreadsheets, and so will have to do a bit of learning themselves to get the desired result. When this does not happen instantly the person who just wants a spreadsheet will switch to Excel, known universally to be easy.

Can I help you ?

Despite being ‘easy to use’ the market dominant products are not, in reality always easy to use, and there are lots of tips and ways of doing something that someone who spends a lot of time on Facebook, Word, Powerpoint, Zoom etc can share with their friends and colleagues who are struggling with some aspect of them. This makes the person who has helped feel good, and the recipient of the advice get the job done. This is good for everybody – especially the vendor of the market dominant product.

Can you help me ?

However hard you try, if you have a profession which has computers, or IT in the title, people will assume you are automatically going to help with one of the market leading products, even if, for example a network engineer or a software developer does not require advanced skills in office products.

As all spreadsheets, word processors, presentation software, video calling software and so on, have a common facilities ‘under the hood’ a computer professional is likely to find themselves, for example sorting an Excel spreadsheet by column into numerical order, or some such. This is not something I need to do very often myself, either in LibreOffice Calc, or Excel, but because I know it can be done, and have been using spreadsheets a bit every since Visicalc, if someone asks for help I groan inwardly, and find how to do it in Excel.

This not only means the spreadsheet user knows how to do another thing in Excel – which they can proudly show to others – but reinforces my reputation as someone to go to for help with Office products.

Feedback and networking effects

Google’s search engine is very good, and they do work hard to keep it that way, but they have a big benefit from the fact that not only do they want their users to be able to find what they are looking for, but the owners of websites want people to be able to find them through a Google search.

Similarly people want to use an Instant Messenger or Social network to keep in touch with their friends, and that means the one which dominates the market.

Willingness to learn in non dominated markets

When I learnt to drive my driving instructor had, I think, some kind of Triumph, with a normal gear level in the centre of the car, but the handbrake to the right of the driver (I am in the UK, so drive on the right – that is to say left 🙂 side of the road). My parents had a Peugot 404, which had a dashboard mounted gear lever, and a sickle handbrake. While still learning they switched to a Peugot 504, with a more conventional layout of controls. After I passed my test I bought a Mini, and since then have owned a variety of cars, and driven many other types of cars and vans, manual and automatic, on both sides of the road.

Because they are cars. people know, and expect them to be different and are prepared to spend a bit of time learning the differences. They also realise that different vehicles are good for different things. A little sports car is similar in concept to a minibus, but you would not try to carry a football team in the sports car. As it is software many medium companies which have grown gradually try to do everything on increasingly massive and ill-suited spreadsheets (Excel of course)

Even when there is a choice brand loyalty can be very significant. Switching between Android and Apple phones is something many people are not willing to do. (or persuading some small children to switch cereal brands !)