If this was a movie The target would be a family with problems, a meta version of the pampered, muscular and “winning” son and WhatsApp stepdaughter, whom no one pays attention to, but who finally, and when they are about to lose everything, surprises her and others by masterfully handling the situation, while the prodigal son suddenly grows a long beard it reveals his more than obvious limitations and inability to perform more complex tasks than adding two plus two, helping himself with his hands. And Facebook? Well, he’s the oldest of the kids, he’s already married, he’s living his own life, and he can’t be relied on.

As you may remember, about a year ago Facebook (the company) decided to change its name to Meta, symbolizing that the social network is no longer the epicenter of its business activity. The new focus will of course be metaversionthat virtual space inspired by movies and novels of the last 20 or 30 years (and a little bit by previous projects like Second Life), a space for play, work, social interaction, rest… in short, the proposal that On paper it sounds very interesting, but its implementation is terribly more complicated than Meta would like.

A year later, the numbers don’t follow. The company made a huge economic investment that did not serve to attract users, and on the contrary had a disastrous effect on their accounts, forcing the company to anticipate layoffs and closing some divisions. And with even worse forecasts for the coming years, Meta sees its profit and loss statement shrinking, its investors’ confidence eroding, and it has to respond in some way. And yes, when I say respond, I mean generate income that stops the bleeding. And what can WhatsApp do about it?

Mark Zuckerberg may have made a big mistake with his metaversion bet, but in an all-employee meeting reported by Reuters, he said that the company’s biggest monetization potential is in WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. A point at which it is important to remember that both instant messaging services are among the three most used in the world (along with WeChat) and, as the company’s CEO stated, the monetization potential of both services has barely been tapped yet. .

Good news for the company and shareholders, maybe not so much for users. And it’s because ad inserts are the sword of Damocles that has been hanging over WhatsApp for quite some time now. And now that the Meta accounts are in their current state, it makes sense to expect plans in this regard to be substantially accelerated. And it’s that being able to start monetizing the service’s 2,000 million or so accounts through advertising seems like more of a lifeline than a 30-foot yacht getting out of a shipwreck.

WhatsApp, on the other hand, has been taking steps for some time to, without losing its essence as an instant messaging service, also become a buying and selling platform, something that can also be very profitable and can add value to users unlike a purely advertising model. On that note, WhatsApp this week launched its directory service (in the style of the traditional Yellow Pages) in Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, Mexico and the UK.