WhatsApp currently uses more than 3 billion people per month, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted in a first-quarter results conference call on Wednesday.
Founded in 2009 and acquired by Facebook in 2014 for $19 billion, WhatsApp remains at its disposal and does not offer advertising. The app reached the 2 billion monthly active user mark in 2020, but the latest milestone has made it one of the few apps besides Facebook to surpass the 3 billion user mark.
Its huge user base makes WhatsApp a key business in the meta. In particular, the company has bet on farms on its AI strategy. The company previously said the app is one of the largest distribution platforms for AI services.
“People are seeing involvement in meta AI from several different entry points. WhatsApp continues to see the most powerful use of meta AI across the app family,” Meta CFO Susan LI said in a conference call. She also said that most WhatsApp users are involved in Meta AI in one-on-one chat.
Zuckerberg said that while WhatsApp has easy access to AI capabilities, Meta needs to take a different approach to promote adoption of AI products in markets like the US, and that the majority of people prefer to use mobile phone stock messaging apps to send text messages. That’s where the company’s newly released meta AI apps come into play.
“We hope to become leaders over time. [in the U.S. messaging market]however, we are in a different position from most people in the rest of WhatsApp world. So I think that meta AI apps as standalone will become especially important in the US to establish leadership as the main personal AI people use. But we will continue to carry our experience across the board in all these different areas,” he said.
The company said WhatsApp Business, the chat app business platform, is growing, accounting for a large portion of the $510 million revenues brought by the app’s family.
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Meta is testing AI tools from WhatsApp Business, and Li said Wednesday that it is building a new AI agent management interface and dashboard that allows businesses to train Meta’s AI with information. That information can include your business’s website, WhatsApp profile, or Instagram and Facebook pages. They are also testing businesses to activate Meta’s AI chatbots in chats with customers.
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