Economics of Whatsapp

Many people found that it is quite inconvenient to have only one whatsapp and some go to the extreme of jailbreak to have two or more whatsapp on their phones.

The reason we need more than one whatsapp is the same like we have more than one email address esp for those who have multiple businesses, employed but moon lighting, wants to segregate a close group with the rest, better manage the growing list of contacts, but why then if the need is so great, whatsapp, wechat, viber, line are not fulfilling their customers need or requests?

Now comes the hard part, if you allow such segregation, the people who have multiple apps will merge them into one, when valuing the app biz and very importantly the ads coverage to individuals, there could be a direct impact and shrinkage in the audience and thus affect the ad rates. No one wants a lowering of the ad rates should the shrinkage becomes material.

Even allowing an additional charge on the app for specialized treatment like multiple phone numbers for one app, the annual fees could be less than the ads placed on your app so every click of your app, you are forced to watch it at the front or the top or bottom.

So the prognosis for one app allowing segregation with multiple numbers or IDs isn't looking good at the moment at least for existing apps, a new app allowing such segregation will have to get the momentum of adoption by users before it can challenge the entrenched apps to introduce such features.