Finally, Facebook Is Ready to Monetize WhatsApp

It's about time that Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) starting taking WhatsApp monetization more seriously. It's long overdue, even by Facebook's own standards. When Facebook acquired WhatsApp in 2014, the popular messaging service had 450 million monthly active users (MAUs). On the 2014 conference call to discuss the acquisition, CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested that Facebook really only starts thinking about monetization once a service gets to 1 billion users:

Our explicit strategy is for the next several years to focus on growing and connecting everyone in the world. And then we believe that once we get to being a service that has billion, two billion, maybe even three billion people one day, that there are many clear ways that we can monetize, but the right strategy we believe, is to continue focusing on growth and the product and succeeding in building the best communication tools in the world.

But WhatsApp hit 1 billion MAUs in February 2016 -- nearly a year and a half ago. The most recent update was reaching 1.2 billion MAUs in February of this year. Yet monetization efforts have seemed like an afterthought, and as an investor I'm still concerned that Facebook overpaid and the amount of goodwill associated with the deal is a time bomb waiting to be written down.

Source: Fool.com