Will Facebook Be Able to Make WhatsApp Pay?: Leonid Bershidsky
This article is for subscribers only.
With the acquisition of WhatsApp, Facebook is buying into a messaging revolution. According to the tech intelligence firm Analysys Mason, the total volume of messages sent from mobile devices via so-called over-the-top messaging services exceeded SMS -- more traditional mobile text messaging -- volume for the first time in 2013. Services such as WhatsApp handled 10.3 trillion messages, compared with 6.5 trillion for mobile carriers.
WhatsApp, with its 450 million monthly active users, reported a record 10 billion inbound messages on one June day in