WhatsApp On The Up
Mobile app unlocks social networking potential
Social media aids large scale interaction and circulation of information, but it’s notoriously difficult to calculate the numbers of shares that content is getting on Facebook and Twitter. This is not simply due to inaccurate counting but because it appears that most sharing actually happens away from these major platforms; instead instant messenger is favoured, with one study finding that nearly three-quarters of sharing taking place on mobile app WhatsApp. Somewhat surprisingly email is still the most-used channel for sharing content overall, in the form of copy and pasting single links to specific individuals.
The problem with WhatsApp sharing is that it makes content distribution hard to measure, leading to what’s been dubbed the ‘dark social’ of the web. WhatsApp has 400 million users who send 50 billion messages a day, but very little of this shared information can be tracked – you can’t trace which users have come to a site via a link shared on WhatsApp. Clearly though it’s important for brands and companies to understand how their content is being spread.
WhatsApp, however, doesn’t make this easy. One of the platform’s biggest problems is that it doesn’t openly integrate with third-party apps, making it difficult for publishers to implement it. Obviously, WhatsApp is limited to personal chat and messaging, unlike the more news-based scrolling feeds of Facebook and Twitter; this is not to say that important content isn’t being shared on WhatsApp. But importantly, compared to the public shares of Facebook and Twitter, the appeal of WhatsApp lies in its privacy – users communicate on more personal and intimate levels, thus information is shared more privately.
With messaging apps increasingly being viewed as social networks in themselves, and with Facebook set to buy WhatsApp for a tidy $19billion, publishers should consider developing WhatsApp-specific strategies.
WhatsApp On The Up
Reviewed by Anonymous
on
Friday, July 04, 2014
Rating:
Reviewed by Anonymous
on
Friday, July 04, 2014
Rating:
Anonymous
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