Whats Up with WhatsApp?

Statement from Paul Sweeney, EVP of Product at Webio regarding WhatsApp recent release of pay-to-use tools for businesses.

Webio provides solutions for companies wishing to communicate with customers across messaging and voice interfaces. On September 6^th it will host ConverCon in Dublin – Europe’s first and only conversational interface conference.

“With its recent release, WhatsApp is positioning itself as the place where companies and customers can communicate and interact. If this does take off, it would result in the kind of growth not seen since the early days of the iPhone and mobile apps. Whether it’s getting a flight status update or receiving a purchase receipt, WhatsApp is betting that this is something we will all want to do because its messaging service is so embedded in our lives.”

“In a time when Facebook has just lost $120bn in value due to concerns about its growth and increased regulatory oversight, messengers are seen as the path to future growth. For Facebook as a company, it simply has to make this work. It would be foolish to bet against them.”

“With WhatsApp’s market dominance we may even see companies paying Facebook to access their own customers. It’s happened on the main Facebook site so why not here? Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram are three of the world’s most valuable messaging and communications applications and Facebook owns them all.”

“Irish companies need to have a messenger strategy not only for interacting with customers over WhatsApp but for all messengers. As the saying goes – if you’re going fishing you have to go where the fish are.”

Convercon will bring together developers, designers and digital strategists to discuss the particular challenges in designing solutions that interact with employees and customers over messengers, chatbots and voice interfaces such as Alexa and Google Home. Experts from the leading platform players – Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Facebook – are part of the speaker line-up More at: convercon.ie